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A ferry in the city: Punta Portugalete Vizcaya (Spain)
If, in our homes, stand on a desk or a wall a few pictures of beloved parents, there is often another Nantes, as soon as you notice it is revealed: that of the former ferry whose disappearance remains as an open wound that will not close.
bridges known as "ro" were born in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when he had to find a solution to the crossing of sea or river passes by pedestrians, wagons and early automobiles without impeding the navigation of vessels, which are still sailing. Then appeared the colossal steel structures designed by a brilliant French inventor Ferdinand Arnodin (1845-1924).
Puente Vizcaya in Portugalete
The first was built in Spain on the Nervion, 1893, between Portugalete and Las Arenas, about 10 km downstream from Bilbao. The
Nantes, opened October 28, 1903, was the fifth. He had been preceded by those of Bizerte (Tunisia, 1898), Rouen (1899) and Rochefort (1900). Marseille was built after (1905), as well as that of Brest (1908, actually one of Bizerte transferred to Britain). That of Bordeaux, began in 1910, was never completed.
In Nantes, we had to connect the dock to the Grave Prairie au Duc where were the major shipyards. A project was even consider a stop at the tip of the island gazebo, but the city had preferred a construction slightly downstream, facing the Rue de la Verrerie. To avoid the destruction of buildings, Quai de la Fosse, to build the imposing massive anchor cables that were holding the pylon on the right bank, Arnodin invented a new system of express ferry said counterweight and joints.
Every day, 5 hours from 30 to 20 h 30, the cable carrying the deck which overlooked the high waters of the Seine about 50 meters, transported from one bank to another up to 6000 pedestrians per hour.
But the development of the automobile more readily accepted without waiting for a detour bridges where traditional upstream, the damage caused by the Second World War, and the costs of maintaining a work that became obsolete, condemned the ferry that could not save the crusade Nantais desperate love with their beautiful bridge. Closed December 31, 1954, he disappeared in 1958, the last car of 800 tons of scrap metal leaving the dock at Le Creusot Loire for October 7.
Why not rebuild the Transporter?
A group of Nantes, at the initiative of the architect Paul Poirier Nantes, proposes to construct a new bridge to ferry over the arm of the Madeleine. is a cross-cutting project, consensual, and especially not political says the architect. It would be torpedoed advance. It covers all the Nantais. It is a major project to help reconcile Nantes with its river.
Project of the Association of transshipment
To bring this concept of the twenty-first century, Paul Poirier created this year 2008, with Arnaud Biette, an economist and expert in industrial heritage, the Association transferred .
Association website: http://lestransbordes.fr
Passionate for many years by these remarkable works that were and are still in some places the bridges to ferry, I published several studies on some of them.
- Nantes . The Transporter , CMD Editions, 1996 (print).
- Charente-Maritime. The Transporter Rochefort, CMD Editions, 1998 (print).
- The ferries France, Bordeaux, Brest, Marseilles, Nantes, Rochefort Rouen , editions Alan Sutton, 2005.
Articles in journals:
- The Transporter Rochefort, in Picton, No. 179, September-October 2006.
- Bridges to ferry in Chasse-Marée, No. 201, December 2007.
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