The construction of the Grand Harbour breakwater

The Gregale was par for the course for the Royal Navy, perhaps the only blight on their Grand Harbour inheritance.

The wind had been known since antiquity: during its brief perennial visitations, ships hunkered down in Dockyard and French creeks or sheltered elsewhere to avoid shipwreck. The wind reached the head of the harbour at Marsa and undid the sedimentation that Deodat de Dolomieu predicted would fill much of the harbour.

Visitors lauded the magnificent harbour, described the fury of the Gregale, Fort St Elmo, Orsi Tower on the foreshore of Fort Ricasoli and, for a time, complained about the ugly sight of pirates’ corpses rotting in cages, dangling in the wind.

Before the breakwater

French Creek followed Dockyard Creek for the navy’s exclusive use after the Resolution of 1858 created a new harbour at Marsa for commercial shipping. Solutions to the exposed entrance included a canal between the harbours and breakwater arms between Fort St Angelo and Imgerbeb Point. Cost, delays at Marsa and two new graving docks in French Creek probably put a damper on plans for the entrance.

Warship strategy was turned upside down in 1866 when Robert Whitehead, an engineer from Bolton, Lancashire, invented the first self-propelled torpedo while working at Fiume (modern Rijeka) with Giovanni Luppis.

Conservatives called the new weapon unsporting – one had to face the enemy in combat, but it fulfilled an age-old dream of delivering an explosive charge surreptitiously, initially by speedy craft and eventually, more insidiously, by submarine.

Britain, with the largest navy stretched in the four corners of the world, became extremely vulnerable to attack by swarms of tiny, nimble craft belonging to nations that bought and improved on Whitehead’s patents.

In 1893, Spencer obelisk, a public amenity and road to Tarxien, was dismantled from Corradino Heights to deny enemy a potential torpedo attack on the fleet. It was the last act in the complete takeover of the massif. A proposed town had been cancelled, the place entrenched from Ras Ħanzir to Cospicua, huge water reservoirs and underground magazines built.

In Grand Harbour, a battery of 4.2-inch guns was built below Lower Castile Bastion to defend against attack by torpedo boats, that, being low in the water, could not be reached by the high trajectory guns of St Elmo and Ricasoli.

In the Mediterranean, France and Italy were enlarging their navies with speed and innovation. Years of experimentation, sometimes with deadly outcomes, led to the development of pre-dreadnoughts with guns in turrets.

Kaiser Wilhelm II entered the fray and fathered the modern German blue-water navy. In 1906, HMS Dreadnought heralded a revolution in battleship design, that typically, where weaponry is concerned, was soon copied by the major powers.

Larger docking facilities were built in naval bases across the world: the Mediterranean Fleet in Malta followed suit with two new graving docks at Għajn Dwieli by S. Pearson & Son, then the largest civil engineering firm in the world.

To build a breakwater

That left the unprotected harbour entrance, and Pearson, who were also building a larger breakwater at Dover, got the contract. Events forced the Admiralty’s hand. Marsa had been financed jointly by Britain and Malta; the docks and breakwater constituted defence expenditure for the Empire. Dover breakwater created another Gibraltar for the Home Fleet, Grand Harbour for the Mediterranean Fleet.

Two arms were planned: a short with parapet from Ricasoli, and a longer, slightly curved, open apron from St Elmo. This was partly laid on a shoal named after HMS Monarch that had briefly grounded there. A third, shorter arm at Imgerbeb Point was cancelled.

Traffic between harbours and water circulation was assured by a short gap between the foreshore and breakwater abutments, linked by a twin-span bridge.

A tunnel in the upper courses starting from the seaward abutment, served to connect the bridge with the lighthouse when rough seas prevented normal access.

A hawser anchorage below St Lazarus Bastion rolled out the boom to close the entrance during wartime.

Methodology

In Malta, as at Dover and other Pearson harbour contracts, the breakwater was a weighted structure consisting of hundreds of joggled concrete blocks, a system that wits liken to Lego. What is on the surface is but a fraction of the structure.

The work ‒ preparation of the seabed, laying course and contract blocks, building abutments, tunnels and lighthouses ‒ was executed by an ‘invisible’ workforce of bellmen and divers who used pre-arranged signals to liaise with surface teams in boats and operators of the Goliath cranes.

It was dangerous work: the papers reported injuries and fatalities from equipment failure to drowning. The Goliaths travelled on parallel wooden piers (staging) held together by strutters; they lifted blocks from barges that were towed all the way from the Mistra blockyard. Granite blocks and aggregate were quarried from Ħondoq ir-Rummien and Għar Dorf in Gozo.

For a parallel description of the methodology used, visit https://wondersofworldengineering.com/dover_harbour.html.

Pearson lost money on both docks and breakwater contracts; he accepted weather damage at Valletta as a contractor’s risk. Għajn Dwieli was another story.

A new steaming course, public access, lessons in shipspotting

The breakwater introduced a new steaming course for mariners who were advised about safe speeds and correct helm turns at the entrance. Failure could result in collision with the breakwater itself as HMS Ariel discovered in 1907, or grounding at Imgerbeb Point or St Angelo Point.

In 1923, Britain and Malta adopted joint responsibility for the breakwater and foreshore, and the Admiralty granted limited public access. It was the heyday of the Mediterranean Fleet, and there was no better place for watching ships, bidding goodbyes and welcoming loved ones. Fishermen dried nets and promenading on the deck was one of those years’ greatest pleasures, unless interrupted by a Gregale, that is.

World War II and all that

It was inevitable that Grand Harbour and the breakwater would be prime targets in wartime. The boom – steel netting suspended from spherical and rectangular buoys – was installed in 1935 during the Abyssinian War scare and for the duration of the war.

Damage to the breakwater was repaired but the bridge was never restored. A new single-span bridge was eventually commissioned and the Boom Defence Depot revamped.

Maritime pilots and tugmen successfully honed their skills to con very large commercial vessels and cruise liners through the entrance.

Despite a marked reduction in its fury, the Gregale is still a force to be reckoned with.

Testing time

In 1939, booms were installed from Ricasoli bullnose to the hawser room on St Elmo breakwater and from the hawser anchorage at St Lazarus Bastion to Ricasoli bullnose. The boom was opened as required by the gate vessel Westgate. A drop net closed the gap under the bridge.

Impregnability was not assured: the buoy tender Moor and HMS Jersey were sunk by floating mines at the entrance within a month of each other in 1941, and the Italians had even considered closing the entrance with a blockship.

In July, they launched an audacious attack with Maiale (human torpedoes) and Barchine (explosive motorboats). They had successfully carried out similar attacks at Gibraltar, Souda Bay and Alexandria. The Malta operation was thwarted by the gunners at Fort St Elmo and early warning by radar.

Col H. Ferro recalled walking the length of St Elmo breakwater to the bullnose to interview sotto tenente (second lieutenant) Roberto Frassetta on the steps under the lighthouse; he survived the attack, which brought down the outer span of the bridge. Frassetta revealed that they had trained for the operation (including a daily three-kilometre swim) since January.

Restoring the bridge, repairs and surveys

The boom was dismantled in November 1944. The netting was separated from buoys at Shipwrights Wharf and the scrap exported.

Powerful Gregales, notably in 1949, 1954 and 1966, exacerbated war damage. The breakwater was surveyed and repaired in 1948 and 1972, working from Pearson’s original plans. Wave dissipating blocks were placed outside Ricasoli breakwater and below St Lazarus Bastion to replace others washed away by the Gregale.

Regarding the remaining span of the bridge that was left, people ignored the danger and continued to climb onto it, with occasional fatal outcomes.

Since the breakwater and contiguous foreshores were jointly managed, George Borg Olivier and Dom Mintoff pressed the Admiralty for renewed public access between 1951 and 1955.

Belt-tightening became the norm in the sunset years of the Empire but Admiralty updates on the bridge verged on the banal and insulting: “the matter was being considered in the light of availability of funds; the bridge not an urgent defence matter; money that could be spent on worthier projects”.

The remaining span was removed in 1955.

A new bridge

In 2009, it was announced that a new bridge would be rebuilt as part of the harbour regeneration project. The €2.8 million, Spanish-made bridge was erected on October 5, 2011, and opened to the public in 2012. Working replicas of the original lanterns were installed on the lighthouses.

The new  bridge soon suffered from heavy weather damage and was closed off. Infrastructure Malta intends to make the bridge accessible again.

Other surveys in 2016 and ongoing repairs to the deck, lighthouses, the tunnel and under­water contract blocks ensure a stable future for the structure.

The Boom Defence restored

In 2008, MEPA declared the Boom Defence a Grade I national monument owing to its rarity as a unique structure. It was later restored and the public can view the hardstone jetty with its steel bollards, the winch house, crew billets including a room with a small exhibition, and a turret with metal shutters that used to serve as a lookout, searchlight and machine gun post.

Enter the giants

While the China-Malta Friendship Dock (No. 6) was nearing completion in 1981, the Malta Maritime Authority, harbour pilots and Tug Malta conducted studies on how to safely con 360-metre by 62-metre ships into harbour.

It was feared that conning such ships would be challenging in winds above Force 5. A reduction in the length of one of the arms was even mooted. The way forward was to train pilots on simulators and purchase more powerful tugs.

Another scenario arose with giant cruise ships of similar size that employ high manoeuvrability and only hire tugboats as a last resort. Additional pilot training on simulators ensures that these ships are not turned away and are able to enter harbour safely, albeit with a modified steaming course.

Pre-war access to St Elmo breakwater could be dangerous; except for moderately calm seas, sudden swells strike the outer wall over the unprotected deck and carry into the harbour, unlike Ricasoli breakwater which has a sheltered parapet. Danger flags used to be flown from flagpoles on the old bridge.

Many recall the pleasure of promenading and shipspotting before the war, the occasional incident and, more recently, several events such as when a US naval helicopter made an emergency landing on the deck, royal visits, Independence, HMS London, HMS Brazen and when Copper Mountain blocked the entrance.

Promenading was briefly restored in 2012, then disallowed and the clock turned back 90 years. Studies on the way forward are being carried out. Till then!

 

Author’s note

In 2024, the present author published the book The Grand Harbour Breakwater (BDL Books). For further reading, see William Soler’s three-part article in The Sunday Times of Malta (June 26, July 3, July 10, 1994) at the following links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.