Original Second Narrows Bridge was a disaster magnet for ships
Just before 10 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1930, the ship Pacific Gatherer ran into a 300-foot span of the original Second Narrows Bridge.
An hour later, the span collapsed into Burrard Inlet. Nobody was hurt, but it took four years for the bridge to reopen.
After the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, we looked back at collisions between ships and bridges in our own Burrard Inlet.
There have been a few in recent years, including the freighter Japan Erica running into the CN rail bridge in the Second Narrows on Oct. 12, 1979. A yacht also hit a pier on the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge on Aug. 9, 2014.
But most of the ship/bridge accidents were in the 1920s and `30s, on the original Second Narrows Bridge. The current one is the second.
The first Second Narrows bridge opened on Nov. 7, 1925, and was built in three sections — a 760-metre Vancouver side, 1,220-m North Vancouver side and a 56-m bascule span that lifted to allow ships to pass through. But it wasn't that high above the waterline, and there were three accidents before the bridge even opened.
According to a list published in The Province on Sept. 19, 1930, logs “fouled” one of its six piers on Sept. 8, 1924. On Nov. 9 of that same year, a log boom collided with a pier, and on Sept. 30, 1925, a lumber scow was damaged after hitting the bridge.
It got worse after the bridge opened. In 1926, The Province lists 10 accidents, including three with oil tankers.
Two were with the same ship, the Mina Brea. On Jan. 9, 1926, the Mina Brea was about to enter the opened bascule span when it realized another ship was coming through; it reversed engines and stopped, which caused it to “swing into the nearby shore” and get stranded on a beach.
On Feb. 25, the Mina Brea got “jammed” in the bascule opening when the bascule didn't open as quickly as the ship anticipated. Luckily, there were no oil spills in either incident.
The accidents weren't as frequent from 1927 to 1930, but they were bigger. On March 10, 1927, the freighter SS Eurana struck the bridge, causing $30,000 in damage. On April 24, 1928, the SS Norwich City hit the span, resulting in $50,000 in damage.
On April 24, 1930, The Sun reported the freighter SS Losmar “was swept round by a strong tide” and smashed into the opened bascule span, which was “lifted from its moorings” and “dropped end foremost into the inlet.” It cost $100,000 to repair. A former president of Vancouver Shipyards said the frequent accidents “demonstrated the bridge is a menace to navigation,” and called for changes to the design.
No changes were made when it reopened on June 8, 1930, and two months later, the Second Narrows suffered “the worst (crash) in the history of the bridge.”
On Sept. 19, The Sun reported, the hulk of the Pacific Gatherer was being towed “on the rising tide” by the tug Lorne through the draw span “when the tide rip caught the hulk and dashed it against the north span.”
The Province said “the span was hurled about 15 feet off its south piers by the first impact.” The Pacific Gatherer was “jammed solidly beneath the structure,” and the tug couldn't free it.
An hour later, “with a final scream of breaking bolts and twisted steel, the whole span crashed into the water.”
Initial reports said the span could be rebuilt and back in place within three months. But it didn't reopen until June 18, 1934, and had a new design, with a “vertical lift” replacing the old bascule span.
This seemed to work, although there were still some smaller collisions, such as when the oil tanker Western Shell “was swept into the bridge” by the tide on Dec. 21, 1948.
The current bridge across the Second Narrows opened on Aug. 25, 1960. During its construction part of the new bridge fell into Burrard Inlet on June 17, 1958. Eighteen men working on the bridge were killed, along with a diver searching for bodies.