Bain's Passes

Fish River Bridge (Queen's Road)

AndrewAttributedBridge

Andrew Bain was in charge of building it, together with the Ecca Pass, while working under Major Selwyn of the Royal Engineers.

This is a bridge, not a pass, and its identity and location are not established. No source gives the location of the bridge Bain is said to have built. The pin is at Fort Brown, where the Queen's Road crossed the Great Fish River. The only dated bridge found there was built by the engineer William Jervois and completed in 1848, according to Makana Municipality; a later steel bridge (1898) stands on its piers. Whether Bain's Fish River Bridge was an earlier bridge on this crossing, or elsewhere, is not established.
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See it on the mapLog your drive

Before you go

Road conditions change with weather, floods, fires and roadworks. Check the latest conditions with the road authority or local tourism office before you leave, and carry offline maps.

About this bridge

The Heritage Portal says Bain was put in charge of building the Fish River Bridge as well as the Ecca Pass when he worked on the military road from Makhanda to Fort Beaufort, and calls it the biggest in Africa at the time. Makana Tourism likewise says he helped build the bridge in the 1830s, then the largest in the country. No source read gives its location or exact date.

Ross's chronology records four successive Fort Brown bridges on the Queen's Road: the first (1846) built by Alfred Marsh, five timber bays of 17.7 m and three masonry arches, destroyed by the 1874 flood; the second (1876) a plate girder of 12 spans of 17.7 m; the third (1887/98) ten steel spans costing £21,509; the fourth (1977) a six-span reinforced concrete bridge. An earlier bridge may have been built there by Bain, but Dennis Walters (Eastern Cape bridge researcher) and Colin Coetzee's Forts of the Eastern Cape mention only the bridge completed at Hermanskraal in 1846. Artefacts.co.za describes the surviving Fort Brown bridge: completed in 1898, a steel lattice girder wagon bridge of ten spans each about 16.5 m (about 165 m in all, 4 m wide), built on the existing stone piers of the timber bridge washed away in the 1874 flood. A plaque on the Grahamstown approach wall reads "Erected by the Public Works Dep 1897-8". It was made by Joseph Westwood & Co, London (maker's plaque dated 1895), carried to site by ox-wagon, and built by the Cape Public Works Department under Joseph Newey. The nine pairs of circular riveted steel columns stand on the original dressed-stone bases built to deflect the current. The southern approach has been washed away, so it is accessible only from the north, and it is now used to draw irrigation water from the river.

History

Built by
Andrew Bain was in charge of building it, together with the Ecca Pass, while working under Major Selwyn of the Royal Engineers.
Built
Not established. Described as built in the 1830s as part of the Queen's Road works; no source gives a date.
Location
Great Fish River crossing on the Queen's Road, Eastern Cape
Notes
Described as then the largest bridge in the country, or in Africa. Wikipedia notes that Bain's credit for bridge-building is disputed. Several bridges cross the Great Fish River (including at Committees Drift and Espags Drift), so 'the Fish River Bridge' may not be the Fort Brown crossing. Artefacts' Fort Brown Bridge page could not be fetched (the link returned a page for a different pass), and the Makana Fort Brown page was not readable, so the bridge's identity is still unconfirmed. Storrar (1984) says Bain supervised the construction of this bridge, "the biggest bridge in Africa", between 1837 and 1842. Ross cites Nelson (1980) and Walters, who reckon the 1846 bridge was built by Marsh when Bain was already working for Michell, and that any earlier bridge by Bain "appears most unlikely to have been of a size to warrant" that description. Walters also credits Major Selwyn with an all-timber bridge at Fort Brown between 1840 and 1845. The surviving bridge is the third Fort Brown bridge (1898) in Ross's sequence, not Bain's work. The Artefacts text does not mention the 1876 plate-girder bridge Ross lists between the 1846 and 1898 bridges.

Find it

Pin
-33.13000, 26.61760
Approximate position
Pin is Fort Brown, where the Queen's Road crossed the Great Fish River. That Bain's bridge stood here is not established.
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Sources

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