The Machines That Built the Brooklyn Bridge And Killed The Men Inside Them (1870-1883)

Beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, buried under the East River, are the machines that made the bridge possible: massive wooden caissons filled with compressed air, mud, stone, fire, and men. Before the towers rose, before the cables were spun, and before the bridge became an American icon, workers were sent into pressurized wooden chambers on the riverbed to dig the foundations by hand. They called themselves sandhogs. Many came back sick. Some never recovered. Washington Roebling, the chief engineer, was nearly destroyed by the same machine he used to build the bridge. This is the story of the wooden caissons under the Brooklyn Bridge, the men who worked inside them, the deadly mystery of caisson disease, the fire that nearly consumed the foundation, and the fraudulent steel wire that was secretly built into the bridge’s cables. The Brooklyn Bridge still stands today. But the machines that built it are still buried underneath it. Topics covered: Brooklyn Bridge construction, Washington Roebling, John Roebling, Emily Warren Roebling, pneumatic caissons, sandhogs, caisson disease, decompression sickness, East River engineering, 19th-century bridge building, cable spinning, steel wire fraud, and the hidden foundation beneath one of America’s most famous bridges.