In an undated article in “KNOW,” an official publication of the Norfolk Advertising Board, Incorporated, Frank M. Cortelyou, of Harrington & Cortelyou, Consulting Engineers of Kansas City, Missouri, has this to say about the draw mechanism:

The lift span is suspended at each of its four corners with eight steel cables which pass over a sheave [pulley] on top of the adjacent towers and to a counterweight in each tower, these two counterweights having a total weight equal to the dead weight of the lift span. Thus the dead weight of the lift span and counterweights is always carried on the towers. The two towers are 172 feet high from top of piers to the center line of the sheaves over which the suspending cables pass. The lift span may be raised vertically 130 feet to provide a vertical clearance of 145 feet under it at mean high tide.

The black steel bridge is one of two lift span bridges in the immediate area (the James River Bridge, which uses a different lift mechanism, is the other). The Jordan Bridge, a Waddell and Harrington vertical lift drawbridge, was designed by Harrington, Howard, & Ash, Engineers of Kansas City, now known as Harrington & Cortelyou, Inc. The Hawthorn Bridge in Portland, Oregon, built in 1910, is the oldest bridge of this type, designed by Harrington & Cortelyou’s predecessor, Waddell and Harrington.

“The accident was remarkable in that so great a damage could be done without complete failure.”— Frank M. Cortelyou

June 13, 1943—Like countless other ships before it, the freighter John M. Morehead navigated through the Belt Line Railroad channel and headed for the Jordan. There is a turn in the channel between the Belt Line and Jordan Bridges — like the Rhode Island, the Morehead missed it. The Morehead was unloaded and the tide was high when it dropped anchor and slid into the top of the East Tower truss, a strong point in the bridge. Had the tide been low or there had been cargo in the freighter, the collision “would unquestionably have caused the complete failure of this span and of the east tower and of the lift span,” said Cortelyou. Another difference between this accident and the Rhode Island’s is that if the East Tower fell, it would have fallen onto the ship.

This couldn’t have happened at a worse time: World War Two was in full swing and the Jordan was a vital link for the war effort, being the most direct route for people in Norfolk City and County and what would become Virginia Beach to reach the Norfolk Naval Yard in Portsmouth. The bridge needed to be repaired and needed to be repaired fast … the problem was, according to Cortelyou, the damage was “difficult to describe … [it was] badly distorted and buckled.”

Reopening September 12, 1943, the bridge pulled through although it originally looked as if its days were over. During the reconstruction, whatever could be pulled back into place was and what couldn’t was repaired. Near the end of the delicate process, the bridge sustained winds of 50 miles per hour from a thunderstorm. When it ended, the draw span and the East Tower were still there.