3-077-776 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Prince of Wales driving in the last rivet of the Forth Bridge, 1890. 'In the middle of the north connecting-girder the train stopped to allow the Prince to perform the ceremony of driving the last rivet. A temporary wooden staging had been erected there, and upon it his Royal Highness stepped, along with Lord Tweeddale, Lord Rosebery, and Mr. Arrol [engineer, and inventor of the hydraulic riveting-machine]. The riveter was swung from one of the booms, the pressure being supplied from an accumulator at Inchgarvie. Two men were placed on the boom below to manipulate the machine. The gilded rivet having been placed in the bolthole, and the silver key having been handed to his Royal Highness by Lord Tweeddale, the Prince, with Mr. Arrol's assistance, finished the work in a few seconds, amid cheers. The rivet is in the outside of the railing, and holds together three plates. Around its gilded top there is an inscription stating that it is the "last rivet, driven in by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, 4th March, 1890." As the wind was blowing so violently that his Royal Highness had difficulty in retaining a steady foothold, it was impossible to make a speech. He simply said: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I now declare the Forth Bridge open".' From "Illustrated London News", 1890.