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The Delgado Brackenbury Plan Project The
Delgado Brackenbury plan was approved with an estimated cost of over 42 million
pesetas and was charged to the extraordinary budget of 600 million pesetas provided
for these purposes by the General Port Board.
A brief description of the
project would be the following: "A channel would be opened which, starting opposite
the Cartuja, upriver from Seville, would join up with the San Juan branch-off
at the town of the same name. This channel, the axis of the whole lot and, actually,
another cutoff, would divert the river as it flowed through Seville shifting it
towards the Vega de Triana where the new river channel opened up.
To
separate the Port from the river and free it of its influence, three enclosure
embankments would be established: one in Chapina, another at the southern end
of the Alfonso XIII canal and a third on a part of the former river bed at Punta
de Tablada.
In this way the whole port area would become a closed harbour
and to enter it a lock was constructed sideways to the canal enclosure.
However, before giving his approval, the Minister of Development imposed some
corrections. Firstly, that the harbour for petrol tankers was still too far into
the Port so it was transferred to the Alfonso XIII Canal just before the place
where the lock was situated and in a similar position to what would later be the
Centenario Harbour.
As for the enclosure at Chapina, it was not to be
completely closed off. It was to remain open by means of a small lock to communicate
the Port with the top part of the river with a view to smaller craft being able
to sail along the river from Seville to Cordoba in the future, an idea that was
being studied. Neither this lock nor other objectives of the plan (the construction
of the Hipódromo Harbour and the Petrol Tanker Harbour) ever came about. Although
valid at the time, as it took so long for works to be completed, plans and concepts
changed.
The port planned by Delgado Brackenbury was a more urban port,
overlapping the city and living alongside it; if this plan had been carried out,
its progressive isolation would not have been as marked as it is today.
The axis of the whole work was the opening up of the new channel. It would be
3.200 metres long and 150 metres wide with a four metre depth. Starting out at
the Cartuja, it had three wide bends followed by the same number of straight stretches
the last of which was a prolongation of the Pitas at the San Juan branch-off.
These works were awarded to the company "Vías y Riegos", and the part
of the contract dealing with metalwork was given to " Maquinista Terrestre Marítima".
As regards the lock gate system, preference was given to the rubbing faces kind
rather than to sliding gates as in Seville the waters which are loaded with silt
most of the year would leave a thick deposit of mud on the runners. On July 26,
1929, the contract was signed with the responsible society and work commenced
on December 2 of the same year.
The work had to be completed by December
1933. The delays in making the new channel, strikes, problems with materials etc.
made the development of the project slower than scheduled, to such an extent that
war broke out before it was finished. From then on events obliged prolongations
to be granted to contractors one after the other up to eleven times. The final
one, granted on January 26, 1948 was completed in 1951.
Developing the
whole plan meant carrying out a series of complementary works. The first of these
was to move the loading dock for minerals from the Compañía Gaditana de Minas
de Aznalcóllar to the Guadalquivir and, where shallow water depths raised serious
berthing problems, to San Juan building it next to the Minas de Cala Docks. It
was completed in 1933.
The Delgado Brackenbury Plan laid the basic lines
of today's port structure. Later urban pressure - which immobilised the San Telmo
bridge first and then ran another bridge next to the New York dock -the larger
size of merchant ships and their progressive specialisation which required suitable
equipment gradually took space away from the area that had originally belonged
to the Port. Development Plans -
Opening a new channel (Cartuja-an Juan de Aznalfarache) and closing the tip of
Alfonso XIII Channel with a lock, turning the river into a basin.
- Construction
of a defensive wall along the channel to avoid floods.
- Construction of
new bridges (railroad and road) and another for joining Seville with San Juan
de Aznalfarache.
- Closure of Chapina (1948)
- Spreading of a
railroad line.
- Construction of a new sewage-system for the Ccity.
-
Construction of a lock in 1957
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