The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-26 00:00:00

pa-
rent, as the mileage of the road began. to be open ed
and worked, that the directors determined upon gig '-
ing the contractors a bonus of £60,000 if they would
idge to the company, completed, a
ke date fixed in the contract ; and the
ith that spirit of enterprise for which
Messrs. Peto, Brassey, and Betts are so universally
known, and their knowledge of the man in whom
they had to trust, at once undertook to complete the
bridge so as to be ready for traffic Fs December,
1859, instead of in that month of the following
year, as stipulated in the contract. This arrange-
ment was concluded so late in 1858 that all, save
a eared
the one man who had to do the work, looked upon
the thing as next to impossible, and so it pc
to be. But with Mr. Hodges it was not only Vs'
sible but certain, and to this end were his best eller.
gies directed, and not only his but those of all why
were with him. At this time the centre tube, ofen
330 feet span, had not been commenced, and under new state of things thee previous appliances for
the temporary work, such as the c offerdams,&c.,.
were no longer-of any service,
as the tube was to
be erected during the winter
months, with the ice
as the foundation of the works, and thus had new
arrangements, to meet the new phase of the case,
to be devised and matured with no loss of time. Nor
were the difficulties of this unexpected and novel
situation lessened by the fact that in former years
instances were known of the ice moving early in
March, and in just such seasons as that year pro-
mised to be—viz., a mild winter ; and that, in the
event of such a contingency happening on the pre.
sent occasion, it would utterly preclude the possi-
bility of the completion of the bridge, and be at the
same time pregnant with disaster to life and pro-
perty. So much risk, indeed, surrounded the__ pro.
position to place the tube of 771 tons and 330 feet
in length at an altitude of nearly N feet from the
surface of the ice, which was to be the foundation of
.
e
the temporary staging in situ within. a couple
of months, and this, too, in the depth of a Canadians
winter, that few men would have ventured on the ex-'
periment at all; but Mr. Hodges was just the man for
such a task in an emergency. He revelled in the idea
of having a difficulty to surmount, and bravely did he
set himself about it. On the 31st Jan. the staging was
ready to receive the floor of the tube, when the first
rivet was driven, and the 26th of March saw the
tube in place completed, the whole having been
done in 47 days. Right willingly did all employed
to produce this result toil day and night; and every-
thing during the first half of the period, during
which time more than half the work to be done was
accomplished, went " merry as a marriage bell."
The men's hearts were in their work, as each one
felt it to be a feature in his life's history to have
assisted in the erection of such a structure, and the
more particularly when they knew that on their
efforts solely depended the promised opening of the
bridge. They wrought indeed with a will. De-
terred by no adverse circumstances, they strove
bravely on ; and when it is remembered that they
were working in the open air, the thermometer fre-
quently 10, 15, and 20, aye, and even 30 degrees
below zero of Fahrenheit, it will be admitted that
the men were working with no common zeal, and
that the influences which kept them there under
such circumstances were of no ordinary character.
Mr. Hodges, who has just given to the world a
history of the construction of the Victoria-bridge,
thus pays tribute to the exertions of his workmen
in connection with the erection of the centre tube.
He says :—" Indeed, every man employed seemed to
imagine that success depended upon his own indi-
vidual exertion, and all worked with this feeling as
if for very life, irrespective altogether of remunera-
tion. I have frequently witnessed in cases of emer-
gency great enthusiasm displayed by a few men,
but with such numbers as were here employed I
never saw anything so universal or so continued as
upon this occasion." And their labours triumphed;
and though for 48 hours just preceding the termi-
nation of their task it was supposed the ice was in-
capable, from its rotten condition, of holding to-
gether much longer, such was the faith of the men
in their master's calculations that not one left his
labour until the centre tube rested on its stone
foundations. In a few hours afterwards - the
ice moved, and parted in the centre of the river,
carrying with it a large portion of the temporary
staging, of which time had not permitted the re-
moval ; and thus was completed, within seven
weeks, an amount of work which has no parallel
in the history of engineering. This tube in place,
the remaining work to complete the bridge was
easy of accomplishment ; and, therefore, within the
time agreed upon, under the arrangement above
referred to, the Victoria-bridge was opened for
traffic, through the exertions of the man whose
name heads this sketch.
Mr. Hodges was born on April 6, 1814, in Queen-
borough, in the county of Kent, where he was edu-
cated at the grammar-school of that town. After
going through the scholastic duties of a grammar-
school of that day, he was removed, in order to re-
ceive a Government appointment which some of his
Parliamentary friends had promised, but which
promise was never redeemed. After waiting until
his patience was exhausted he apprenticed himself,
at the age of 17, to a builder residing at Brompton,
near Chatham. Having served four years in this
trade, he commenced his railway practice under
Mr. John Rowland, the agent of Macintosh, the
contractor of the Greenwich Railway, his first essay
in railway work being the centring for the arches.
After this he went to Shard, and, at the age of 22,
had charge of the building of the union-houses of
that place. These finished, his next work was at
the Shakspeare Tunnel, Dover, which he superin-
tended at first as the agent of the contractor, Mr.
Rowland, but on his death Mr. Hodges assumed the
charge of the work in concert with the resident
engineer of the South-Eastern Railway; and it is not
a little remarkable that every ounce of gunpowder
used in the large blasts was deposited in its place
by his own hands. During the progress of this
work he attracted the attention of Sir W. Cubbitt,
then engineer-in-chief of the South Eastern Rail-
way, to whom Mr. Hodges has frequently stated
he is more indebted for his subsequent rise and p.he r -
gress in his profession than to any other man-
pupil in this case is a worthy disciple of a very
worthy master.
this, that, it
made by young Hodges, and it was of 35 for
spared, he would work until the ageothers might
whatever amount of remuneration
nati
oant Ntoorwierkh ,
uNpeebd-
time he should
think his labour worth, but after that
ices w
It was at this time that a curious resolve was_
were to be ob-
tained. And to this endt.
name the price at which
tee this period of his life
gressing, so that by the
ficifrmswdinegterm
rintended the driving of
was reached—having Pe
su and Archcliff Fort tun-
the Abbotts Cliff, Seaha
mthe Shakespeare Viaduct,
along and the erection of
along with the blasting of the R d •
oun own Cliff and
in that neighbourhood, several other works
bridges as well
Need-
ham, and Somerleyton, as the agent cf Sir Morton
himself had chosen, and
Peto, Bart., with whom about this time he became
uainted-,--his resolve was no castlethe •
ace on
whhisiCasteheravdhielYattained
bard industry and integrity to the which hey point
within
the time he had himself •
specified. A handsome
testimonial from Sir
Wm. Cubbitt at the termina-
tion of their business relations as to his worth gave
him a fresh start as it were in his upward ten-
dency, and the next appointment he filled was
that of resident engineer, under Mr. G. P.
Bidder, on the
Norfolk Railway. The trammels of
daily routine, and on se limited a scale, were not
in consonance with his feelings, and, retiring from
that position, we next find him as engineer of the
Lowestoft harbour • after which, in connexion with
Mr. James Peto, the brother of Sir Morton, he con-
tracted for and built 50 miles of the Great Northern
Railway, on behalf of his principals, Messrs. Pete
and Betts.
hisas trhmertesre:uttioart

After so many years of active life, under which
his health suffered to some considerable extent, Mr.
Hodges determined on retiring into private life,
and, with that view, purchased a small estate, near
Bagshott, Surrey ; but no sooner had he completed
his arrangements, in 1853, for enjoying his otium
cum dignitate than the organisation of the Grand
Trunk Railway Company, with its Victoria-bridge
across the St. Lawrence, afforded him, as the agent
of the contractors who had undertaken thy work,
the opportunity of handing his name down to p 0.1,3;
terity associated with an undertaking which if":
last through all time. Such an opportunity Was p
to be lost sight of by the active and genialbreced,
The good he has done in the field of his 1
rtunent of such a man, and it was at once_seborn
be summed
tween that time and the presentdaylgratreaj, who
up in the words of the Bishop
of Montreal,
in the
spoke them on the occasion of the
erecting a stone
employ of Messrs. Pete and Betts;
a• 30 tons, taken
—a granite boulder, weigh'n rve from dose•
to prese
from the bed of the river—to
0 emigrants which were
cration the remains of
Po'undations of some of the
found in digging the
works. The rev. gentle-
Grand Trunk hallwaytbere because he wished to
man said :—" Ilo;° his personal respect to Mr.
pay the tribute his high sense of that
gentle.
Hodges, to testify
• and of the Christian principle with
man's integrity,
acted
he had always towards all employed
which He had provided for
under him• _ . . their spiritual
and educational supervision ; and his otherwise
high moral . principles,
his
Christian
philanthropy,
And bin munificent liberality to the charities of their
city would remain on perpetual record," labours be-