On September 18, 1994, when the Minister of Culture at the time, Jacques Toubon, inaugurated with great fanfare the gondola of the Martrou metal bridge which connects the two banks of the Charente, between Rochefort and Échillais, without hindering the navigation of cargo ships serving the commercial port of Rochefort and that of Tonnay-Charente, one name was conspicuous by its absence in the official speeches: that of Jacques Lamare (1925-2000).
The fabulous story of the Rochefort transporter bridge in pictures
PORTFOLIO – 30 years ago, on September 18, 1994, the former Minister of Culture Jacques Toublon inaugurated the gondola of the Martrou transporter bridge, reopened to the public after an initial renovation. The opportunity to (re)discover this work of art in Charente-Maritime inaugurated on July 29, 1900 and classified as a historical monument on April 30, 1976
However, as our journalist David Briand recalled in an article published on our site on July 27, 2019, without the commitment of this journalist and writer, the fate of this ingenious work of art, the work of the engineer and builder Ferdinand Arnodin, inaugurated in 1900 to replace the ferry made insufficient by the increase in traffic, would have joined that of its counterparts in Nantes, Rouen, Brest and Marseille, all demolished in the middle of the 20th century.
Departmental archives of Charente-Maritime
Inauguration of the Martrou transporter bridge in Rochefort, July 20, 1900.
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The great battle of the Martrou bridge
Following the construction of a new lifting deck bridge downstream in 1967, a budget of 1.4 million francs was allocated in 1975 for its demolition. In the article published in March 1976, “The transporter bridge is to the Charente region what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris”, the writer who campaigns for its preservation, questions the State about its future. Two months later, the regional director of cultural affairs responds to him in “Sud Ouest”: its classification as a historic monument, on April 30, 1976, protects it from destruction.
South West Archives / Tadeusz Kluba
Aerial view from 1991 of the three bridges spanning the Charente at Rochefort, including the transporter bridge on the right, the lifting bridge destroyed in 2004 (in the center) and the Martrou viaduct (on the left).
But the bridge, dilapidated, was not yet out of the woods. On January 26, 1977, a newspaper article lit the fuse: the new Secretary of State for Culture, Françoise Giroud (1016-2003), had ordered its demolition! Charente-Maritime mobilized, a petition was launched. Finally, between 1980 and 1994, the bridge was rehabilitated, thanks to funding from Europe.
Pascal Couillaud / South West Archives
Aerial view of the Martrou transporter bridge in Rochefort on the Charente, July 12, 2014.
Its second restoration, begun in 1996, was completed in 2020: the most beautiful birthday present to celebrate the 120th anniversary of the work of art and its reopening to the public, after five years of closure.
The lifting bridge was replaced in 1991 by a third bridge, the Martrou road viaduct (or Charente estuary viaduct), before being destroyed in 2004. Today, only the base of the four reinforced concrete piers remains.
South West Archives
Jacques Lamare (1925 – 2000), a name that has remained forgotten.
To learn more about Jacques Lamare
A notice published on the website of the Departmental Archives of Charente-Maritime tells us that Jacques Lamare, born in Pont-l’Abbé-d’Arnoult in 1925 to a father of Breton origin and a pharmacist, died in Royan in 2000. He began his studies at the Saint-Louis boarding school in his town and continued them at the Notre-Dame de Recouvrance institution in Saintes in 1934, the year he was orphaned. After the Second World War, he worked as an electronics engineer for 25 years. Attracted to the arts, Jacques Lamare then chose to embark on a literary career oriented towards regionalism. In 1975, he founded the “Saintonge littéraire”. He wrote around fifteen works including “Sites monumentaux des Charentes et de Gironde” which was awarded a prize by the Académie française. He was behind the classification of the Rochefort ferry as a historic monument and worked to save the Tonnay-Charente suspension bridge.
