Ribeiro Seco (bridge)

When he was prefect (prefeito) of Madeira, the illustrious Mouzinho de Albuquerque conceived the plan of building a suspension bridge over the Ribeiro Seco (‘dry brook’). To this end he began the construction of two gigantic piers, besides two very strong abutments, one on each bank of the brook. ‘The plan of the work, says Sérvulo de Meneses in the Colecção de documentos relativos á construção da ponte do Ribeiro Seco, included the idea of raising a monument to the memory of the immortal Jaime, Duke of Braganza, the magnanimous liberator of the Portuguese, and accordingly the work was to be magnificent and grand.’

When Mouzinho left for Lisbon, work on the bridge stopped. The Baron of Lordelo later tried to resume it, but without success, after deciding that the bridge would be of stone rather than a suspension bridge. It was in this governor’s time that work began on the road linking Funchal with Câmara de Lobos (‘seals’ den’).

At the end of 1846, when Councillor (conselheiro, honorary title of the royal council) José Silvestre Ribeiro had come to govern Madeira, he resolved to draw the engineers’ attention to the means of carrying out the work planned by Mousinho de Albuquerque. However, work could begin only in 1848, after the governor had obtained a vow of donations sufficient to cover a quarter of the estimated cost of the works.

The award by public auction (arrematação) of the bridge works took place on 27 February 1848, and work began on 6 March following; shortly before, the Governor had opened a subscription to meet the cost of the bridge. The works were awarded for the sum of 5,799,000 réis (old Portuguese money of account; 1$000 = 1,000 réis, 1:000$000 = one conto = 1,000,000 réis). The successful bidders were the master builder José Pereira and his partners Antonio Joaquim Marques Basto, João António Bianchi and Francisco Luis Pereira.

Through donations, the Governor managed to raise the entire price of the award. The works, however, cost 8,227,302 réis, so the contractors suffered a loss of 2,428,302 réis. According to their own statement, this loss would not have arisen had they not been so determined ‘to present a well-finished and lasting work, generously meeting every instruction of the directing engineer’.

The work on the bridge was carried out under the direction of the captain of engineers Tiberio Augusto Blanc and was finished in February 1849. In his official letter of 5 December of the same year, this officer informed the civil governor that the grand work had been completed with every solidity and perfection. The contracting partnership, he reported, had in many respects exceeded the obligations it had undertaken, moved solely by the wish that the work should fully satisfy public expectation and not belie the good name of the partners; this was the main cause of the heavy loss they suffered.

Among those who contributed gifts towards the construction of the Ribeiro Seco bridge was Queen Adelaide of England, who gave 480,000 réis. The civil governor thanked all the subscribers through the press for the generous help they had given him in carrying out the grand work he had undertaken.

Many people have taken their own lives at the Ribeiro Seco, exploiting the great height of the middle section of the bridge. Of all the deaths that have occurred there, however, the one that perhaps caused the greatest sensation in Funchal was that of a man from a good family who, around 1860, threw himself to the bottom of the brook because the declarations of love he had dared to address to the wife of a civil governor had been rejected. A letter that went unanswered, followed by a ban on returning to the Palácio de São Lourenço (St Lawrence Palace), where he had previously always been well received, drove the unhappy lover to end his life in the manner described. This tragic event was followed by the burlesque act of the suicide’s son, who proposed, or wished to propose, a duel with the governor, whom he held responsible for his father’s death.