For nearly thirty years, two iron towers 95 metres tall stood over the Garonne, opposite the Chartrons district. They appeared on postcards, served as a landmark for sailors and puzzled children. They were waiting for a bridge. It never came. Bordeaux really did start building what was meant to be the longest transporter bridge in the world, then left it to rust, before the German occupiers made it vanish one evening in August 1942. All that remains today is a few blocks of stone on the right bank, which almost nobody notices.
One city, one bridge
Picture the end of the 19th century. To get from one bank to the other by horse-drawn carriage, on foot or by tram, the people of Bordeaux have only one option: the Pont de pierre. The Eiffel footbridge is reserved for trains. Further downstream, towards the Chartrons and Bacalan, where the port is at its busiest, there is nothing. And for good reason: building a conventional bridge there would close the harbour to the tall ships and steamers that sail right up into the heart of the city.
In 1891, the city council launches studies for a new crossing. The solution that emerges is cutting-edge for its time: the transporter bridge. The principle is simple and spectacular. Two pylons, a deck perched very high to let masts pass underneath, and, hanging from that deck by cables, a gondola that glides just above the water from one bank to the other. Neither ferry nor bridge, a bit of both. The inventor of the system, engineer Ferdinand Arnodin, has just put one into service near Bilbao, in 1893. Rochefort, Rouen, Nantes and Marseille will soon have theirs.
Charles Cazalet's dream
In Bordeaux, one man carries the project almost single-handedly: Charles Cazalet, merchant, deputy mayor and a well-known local figure. As early as 1893, he founds the Société anonyme du pont à transbordeur de Bordeaux. He will need patience. The city council approves the principle in the early 1900s, the site is settled in 1909, and in 1910 the Ministry of Public Works declares the bridge to be of public utility.
The chosen site lies two and a half kilometres downstream from the Pont de pierre. On the left bank, the bridge is to take off at the end of cours du MĂ©doc, in the Chartrons. On the right bank, it lands on quai de Queyries, in La Bastide.
A giant on paper
The figures are dizzying. Around 400 metres long. A deck 45 metres above the highest tides. Two metal pylons of 95 metres, taller than the pylons of today's Pont Chaban-Delmas, which reach 77 metres. The gondola, 10 metres wide and 13 metres long, is designed to carry pedestrians, vehicles and even railway wagons, up to 50 tonnes. The crossing is announced at two minutes, at 12 km/h, with six round trips an hour.
Had it been completed, the structure would have been, by far, the longest transporter bridge in the world. The longest ever put into service, the Widnes to Runcorn bridge in England, only just exceeded 300 metres. Bordeaux was thinking big. Too big, some would later say.
19 September 1910: the President lays the first stone
19 September 1910 is a day of celebration. The President of the Republic himself, Armand FalliĂšres, a native of neighbouring Lot-et-Garonne, comes to lay the first stone. Invitation cards have been printed for the occasion, the city is decked with flags, and the works are scheduled to last thirty months.
Things turn out differently. The dressed-stone piers rise from the ground, then the two steel pylons slowly climb above the quays. But the war of 1914 breaks the momentum. Depending on the source, the pylons are finished when the conflict breaks out, or only completed with great difficulty in 1917. One thing is certain: neither the deck nor the gondola will ever be built.
Twenty-eight years of rust
After the armistice, everything has changed. Steel is expensive, so is labour, and money is short. Ferdinand Arnodin dies in 1924. His heirs hold on, have the calculations redone, and even obtain fresh approval from the Ponts et Chaussées administration in 1928. In vain: the funding is never secured.
The two towers, meanwhile, stay put. They become part of the landscape, of photographs of the harbour, of the memories of an entire generation. They even enjoy a moment of glory: on 6 October 1925, a young aviator who has just earned her pilot's licence in Bordeaux flies her Caudron G.3 biplane under the cables strung between the pylons. Her name is Maryse Bastié, and the world will hear of her again.
In the meantime, the motor car has conquered the cities, and the transporter bridge, slow and limited, has gone out of fashion. In 1938, mayor Adrien Marquet officially buries the project. Charles Cazalet, who died in 1933, did not live to see the end of his dream.
18 August 1942, 7.15pm
In the end it is the Germans who settle the fate of the pylons. Bordeaux has been occupied since the summer of 1940, and a few hundred metres away, in Bacalan, the submarine base is rising from the ground. Two 95-metre towers on the riverbank make an ideal landmark for Allied bombers. They are also a fine reserve of steel for the war industry. Another, more romantic version has always circulated among Bordeaux families: a French flag is said to have been hoisted on a cable, and the destruction to have been carried out in reprisal.
On 18 August 1942, at 7.15pm, the first pylon is dynamited. A photograph captured the moment the tower begins to topple. The second is cut apart with blowtorches. Within a few weeks, nothing is left of what was meant to be the pride of the port.
What remains today
On the left bank, everything has gone. On the right bank, however, the ghost bridge has left traces. Stand on the Chartrons quays, at the end of cours du MĂ©doc, and look across: in exact alignment, at the water's edge, two dressed-stone piers emerge from the bank. These are the foundations of the Bastide pylon. Set back a little, on quai de Queyries, two large masonry blocks complete the picture: this is where the cables were to be anchored. One of them was the subject of a climbing site project, voted through the participatory budget in 2019.
Bordeaux had to wait until 1965 and the Pont Saint-Jean to finally get a second road bridge. And until 2013 for a structure to link Bacalan and La Bastide, a few hundred metres downstream from the site Cazalet had chosen. With its four pylons and a span that lifts to let cruise ships through, the Pont Chaban-Delmas answers, a century later, the very same question: how to cross without closing the port. The transporter bridge had the right idea. It simply came too early, or too late.
On the trail of the transporter bridge
Left bank: end of cours du MĂ©doc, quai des Chartrons, 33300 Bordeaux (site of the vanished pylon, viewpoint over the remains opposite)
Right bank: quai de Queyries, 33100 Bordeaux (stone piers of the pylon and cable anchor blocks)
For comparison: Pont Jacques-Chaban-Delmas, between Bacalan and La Bastide, opened in 2013