Abandoned Engineering (2016–…): Season 3, Episode 2 - The Siege Of Sarajevo - full transcript

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The remains of a
sinister walled complex,

lost to the freezing waters.

Why was this area flooded?

What did it use to be?

A forgotten passageway that
leads into the depths of a mountain.

This gaping hole
in the rock face

that looks like some kind of
entrance into the underworld.

Strange military structures
hidden in a snow covered forest.

There's something not
quite right about this structure.

At first sight you think
you know what it is,

then when you get closer,
it doesn't quite add up.



And a huge industrial relic near
the coast, in mainland Europe.

This elevated rail
line just terminates

in this massive
monolithic contraption.

Once they were some of the most

advanced structures
and facilities on the planet,

at the cutting edge of
design and construction.

Today, they stand abandoned,
contaminated and sometimes deadly.

But who built them and how?

And why were they abandoned?

In Estonia,

the eastern European country
formerly occupied by the Soviet union,

is a complex with
a troubled past.

A sprawling guarded compound,

partly immersed in a
nearby freezing lake.



This is
such a curious site.

There's this lovely
lake, only one problem,

there's been concrete
structures in the middle of the lake.

What you see is
this weird landscape,

nature's essentially taken over.

The way they sit there,

there's almost something
apocalyptic about them.

In the depths of the
lake is a bizarre sight...

Forgotten machinery,
lengths of barbed wire,

and walls topped
with floodlights.

The building's
scrawled in graffiti,

juts imposingly out of the lake.

And a hill that looks
strangely out of place,

in what is otherwise
very flat terrain.

Sharp veins carved
out of the steep slope

lead up to a tree covered
Ridge, high above.

Could they give a clue

as to why these structures have
been left to just crumble away?

It was not a place
anybody wanted to be.

The clues are linked to
the decades that followed

the 1940 occupation of
Estonia and other baltic states

by communist Russia.

Some 500,000 Soviet troops
took part in the invasion,

which saw the presidents of Estonia
and Latvia arrested and imprisoned.

Rigged elections were organised,

that resulted in new Soviet
puppet governments being installed,

that immediately requested
admission into the Soviet union.

They were graciously accepted.

Soon there were mass
deportations of enemies of the people.

It was just the beginning of the
sovietization of the baltic states.

The Soviets began to implement
huge infrastructure projects

across their new empire,

which created a desperate
need for construction materials.

And this partly submerged site
was all part of the Soviet plan.

This is rummu prison,

but how was it linked to the Soviet
search for construction materials?

When the Soviet union begins
to occupy the baltic regions

and Estonia in particular, it
gets really ugly very quickly.

Anyone who voices
opposition to the Soviets,

more often than not,
they're put into a prison.

This was one of the most
oppressive prisons in all of Europe.

It was not a place
anybody wanted to be.

The prisoners lived and
worked, in inhumane conditions

and were treated harshly.

It was a place
you were put as punishment,

and the punishment
was very severe.

But in the Soviet union,

prisons weren't just
used to lock up inmates,

they were brutal
places for hard labour.

So, what did they need an army of
workers for here at rummu prison?

This part of Estonia is really
famous for its limestone quarries

that produce this material
that was really easy to process.

Pure ones, have
this kind of marble-like quality.

They're very light in colour,
they don't have many impurities

and it means when you want to
use them for things like cement

and when you want to use them
in the paper industry and so on,

they are the ideal
type of limestone.

It may not look like it now,

but in 1938, a quarry was
built here at rummu prison.

It's aim was simple,

to excavate vast
amounts of limestone.

And the size of this
strange hill is a clear sign

of the extent of the operation.

In terms of mining,

a slag heap is essentially,
the rocks that you don't want,

and so as you process
the rocks and mine them,

if you've got an area,
which you're collecting

and say 50% of the rocks are
good and the stuff that you want,

and the rest is really rubbish,

if the mine has
a long life to it,

these slag piles could be
almost like small mountains.

But without giving the
inmates heavy machinery,

how was the limestone removed?

They'd actually just blast
the areas with dynamite

and collect the
limestone accordingly.

The reason why the Soviets
built a prison next to this quarry

is that really you just
need sort of brute force

to get the rocks into smaller pieces
so you can transport them away.

So, if you can have
a large labour force

they don't have to be
particularly that skilled,

that can attack the rock mass
in terms of breaking it down

into smaller pieces so
you can take it away,

then that's ideal for you.

To prevent escape
the site was surrounded

by heavily guarded security fences,
which were lined with barbed wire.

But as demand increased, a new
unexpected complication arose.

Could the over-use
of manual labour

have contributed to
the flooding of the site.

As you go further and as
you potentially go deeper,

then you might
encounter some problems.

For example, you might
start to get into ground water

and this is clearly an issue
that happened at rummu.

As they dug deeper,
water began to pour in,

creating dangerous conditions
and bringing work to a grinding halt.

To clear it out, pumps were
installed in a central building.

Working the mines here would
have been a very physical challenge

and clearly if you're
in an environment

where it can go
below zero in winter.

They're constantly
pumping ground water up,

you're not being fed very much.

This would have been very
harsh conditions for anyone to work.

The sheer amount of ground water
that's flooded back into the mine

shows you just how far they
were going to extract the resource.

The site was originally constructed
to house just 400 inmates.

But when they struggled
to fulfil their quotas,

the police came up
with the simple solution,

to increase the
number of workers.

The way the Soviet's coped
with the acute labour shortage

was by forced labour in prison.

Forced labour of things
that nobody wanted to do,

even if you paid them,
'cause they're difficult,

they're back-breaking
and they're long, long hours,

no one's going
to sign up for that.

So what do you do?
You make them do it.

You put them in prison
and say, "this is your job."

Whenever they
needed more workers,

there'd be more
arrests for hooliganism.

Many of the prisoners were
sentenced for social crimes,

effectively, public
order offences.

According to a CIA report,

the local area was home to
three forced labour camps.

Together they housed a combined
workforce of 5,200 prisoners.

Many prisoners died
because of cruel treatment,

poor food, and appalling
working conditions.

There were rooms dedicated
to psychic and physical torture.

And if you resisted too much,
they took you into another room,

where they asked you to kneel down
and put your head against the wall

and they shot you in
the back of the head.

But how did this place
end up in a watery grave?

When the cold war ended
and Russia vacated Estonia,

you know, there was no political
appetite of any kind to maintain,

you know, what they had
created and why would there be?

It was a place of oppression,
it was a place of death

and so they just let it go.

As communism retreated, conditions
at the prison began to improve.

Forced labour was ended,
the quarry site was closed,

and the pumps were switched off.

If you're excavating below
the level of ground water

and you're pumping
the ground water out

to suppress that ground
water from flooding the mine,

obviously the minute
you turn the taps off,

it's going to start
flooding again.

The rising waters swallowed
up machinery and buildings

before they could be saved.

But the surviving
section of the prison

remained in use
for another 20 years,

finally being abandoned
for good, in 2012.

Today the prison is a stark reminder
of a cruel and vanished empire

and of a discredited
penal system.

5km south east of
waynesboro, Virginia usa,

in the blue Ridge mountains
there is an ominous site.

In the depths of the
forest is a hidden archway,

cut straight into the
middle of a hillside.

You're faced with this
gaping hole in the rock face,

that looks like some kind of
entrance into the underworld.

Once you get inside,
all you can make out

is this dark passageway
disappearing off into the distance.

1.5km away, buried
far inside the woods

is a second entrance
to this underground lair.

There's something
pretty spooky about it.

You wouldn't want to go
wandering off on your own too far.

But deep inside a
wall blocks the route.

Did the two sides ever connect

and what exactly was this
underground site built for?

The answers are hidden in
the history of the United States,

as it underwent a dramatic
transformation around 200 years ago.

This was the age
of industrialisation,

when the appearance of
steam boats and railroads

and the invention of communication
devices such as the telegraph,

made trade possible throughout
the vast ways of the country.

The market economy
and the factory system,

which were rare
beforehand, began to flourish

along these new
transportation routes.

The east coast
towns were booming,

but the blue Ridge mountains
part of the mighty appellations,

formed a natural barrier
to the heart of the continent,

all but cutting off trade
links to those central areas.

As a mountain range
they're not particularly big

but they're made up
of very, very hard rocks.

There's old metamorphic
rocks, there's granites in there,

and so any topography like
that becomes a big, big problem.

To travel across the
mountains you had two choices,

either along a canal at a
painful four miles an hour

or in a bone-rattling
stage coach.

To speed up the crossing,

plans for a new tunnel
system were quickly drawn up

and in 1850, work started
on this unique design.

It's narrow and high,
16 feet by 21 feet.

That's quite an unusual
shape to have for a tunnel.

We're used to having quite
rounded gradual curves.

Could the unusual shape
be the key to success?

Alan hale, is a local expert
on the history of the structure.

Initially the impetus
was to build canals

but ultimately it was seen that
the best means of transportation

as it came towards the
middle of the 19th century

were railroads.

It was planned as a 1.5km
long underground track,

masterminded by French
engineer, claudius crozet,

it would become known
as the crozet tunnel.

This is a real feat
of engineering.

They did it by hand, by
sweat, blood and tears,

with only essentially gun
powder to help them on the way.

But there are no
rail tracks here, today

and walls inside
block off the tunnel.

So, what happened?

When you want to build a tunnel
from one side of a mountain to another,

you look at the rock types.

Ideally you want a soft enough
rock that you can carve into,

but it has to be hard
enough to maintain a tunnel.

In the blue Ridge mountains
there's a particular problem

because the rocks
are quite hard.

You've got granites on one side

and you've got
greenstones on another,

this kind of metamorphic
volcanic rock, that's very, very hard.

How would they cut through
almost 1.5km of solid rock?

Construction techniques
for tunnels at the time

were a far cry from what
we've got available today.

So much so,

that progress went at about one
foot a day into the mountainside.

This tunnel was drilled by hand,

you can see remnants
of these drill holes.

Here's one up on the wall there.

One man swinging a sledge hammer

and another holding a bit, which
turned and turned and turned.

It would be about
three feet at the most

and then shot with black powder.

Black powder is dangerous
because at best it's unpredictable.

Many deaths, many casualties
would have occurred because of that.

But this was not the only
danger that faced them.

As you tunnel through a rock mass,
the nature of that rock mass changes

and where you get faults
or cracks within the rocks,

or you might get two different
rock types against each other,

you can actually have
water coming into those gaps.

The worry is that these areas
where the water's coming through,

are actually weak.

So, what they had to
do was to shore that up,

so they put in a
thick wall of bricks

to essentially line that
portion of the tunnel,

to ensure that it
remained safe and stable.

The dangers of rock
fall are Paramount.

This is indeed what caused
many of the injuries and fatalities

during the excavation
of the tunnel.

In total, 14 men died
whilst working here

and many more were injured.

So as we are going
into the tunnel here,

you'll see that all of
this is real solid rock

and basically nothing has
changed here from the 1850s,

when this was bored
through the mountain.

As one of the six
competing lines,

racing to cut through
to the central states,

this Virginia route had
to be completed quickly.

To double the speed, they
went at it from both sides at once,

but did the unique slender design
of the tunnel offer another solution?

The idea was,

in these very difficult
conditions with the hard material,

to try and maximise the
amount of area of material

that the men were
working on at any one point.

People really doubted crozet

and whether his design
was actually going to work,

whether he could
really pull this off.

The tall shape meant
that two separate crews

were able to work on the
tunnel at the same time.

First the header crew made
a start on the roof section.

Next the footer
crew followed on,

digging through the lower level
to create the floor of the tunnel.

It would effectively halve
the construction time.

But as they were digging
from both sides at once,

would the two tunnels line
up and meet in the middle?

So, nearly seven
years had gone by.

The workers had been working
in very back-breaking conditions,

there were unstable explosives.

They had one of the
coldest winters on record.

They were hit by cholera.

But one day, they
actually got to the point

where they created
about a two-inch hole

and you could see through from
one side of the tunnel to the other.

They were only a few inches out.

They were almost dead-on-message
in terms of where they were predicting

the one tunnel
meeting the other.

Amazing engineering
feat for that time.

When it opened,

it was the longest mountain
railroad tunnel in the world,

stretching 1,300m.

Slashing the time it took to
send goods across the mountains,

the valuable market in the
west was now open for business.

Despite its great success,

as freight trains and
carriages grew larger,

crozet's ingenious design
became out-dated and too small.

So, if the tunnel was completed,

then why do the two
sides not connect today?

In the 1950s, a gas company

was planning to store gas
in the centre of the tunnel

and what you see here is a
reinforced concrete bulk-head,

which seals off the interior
2,000 feet of the tunnel.

Ultimately,

that project failed but the
walls blocking this tunnel remain.

Today the crumbling tunnel entrances
are reminders of the sacrifices made

and the bold ambition
of the engineers,

who hoped to build a better
future for the United States.

At the end of the day
the structure was used,

and it did help the country and
the economy of the local area.

I have a lot of admiration for
the tenacity of the engineers

to make sure that
this project, got built.

45km from Finland's
capital, Helsinki

stands a pair of
abandoned towers.

Located in a
snow-covered forest,

these identical structures
are hidden amongst the trees..

At first sight you would assume

this is just a standard
European medieval church.

But there's something
not quite right.

Only when you get close

can you see that this
is not made of stone;

it is made of poured concrete.
It's got to be 20th century.

Locked up and
sealed off for decades,

were the locals here
trying to forget past events?

The towers' construction
hint at a sinister purpose,

like they're designed to
withstand an apocalyptic event.

The tower itself is
very massively built,

I mean, it's really solid.

And when you get
to the top of the tower,

instead of coming to a point,
you've got a very obvious platform.

Seen from the top is the
small town of rajamaki,

dominated by a large
industrial looking building.

The tower looks
like a castle tower

but... and it's for
the same purpose.

It gives you a very high elevated
view of the ground around you,

but critically here,

it gives you a very high elevated
view of the air around you.

So, why were these towers built?

And why are they here,
deep in the finish countryside?

To unpick the mystery,

clues can be found in a forgotten
chapter of the second world war.

In November, 1939, three
months into world war ii,

the Soviet union
invaded Finland.

It became known
as the winter war.

It began after the
Soviets demanded

that Finland give up large
areas of border territory

in exchange for land elsewhere.

This was officially for
wider security reasons,

but mainly for the defence
of the vital port of Leningrad,

which was 32km
from the finish border.

Finland refused and
the Soviets invaded.

In temperatures as low as
minus 43 degrees celsius,

the fins, at first, managed
to repel the attacks,

but the Soviets re-organised

and the fins became hopelessly
outnumbered and outgunned.

The Soviets had around
3,000 tanks. The fins just 32.

They were in desperate
need of effective defence.

As far as
Stalin's concerned,

there is no way a
country the size of Finland

with a tiny population

is going to say no to the
might of the Soviet union.

Unfortunately, the
fins had other ideas.

One way of improvising
an anti-tank defence

was the creation of
the molotov cocktail.

Simply a bottle filled with
kerosene, tar, gasoline mixture

and it could be ignited
by a sulphuric acid fuse.

Simpler versions
of molotov cocktails,

made from a bottle of petrol
with a flaming rag in the top,

had been used in
conflicts across the world

ever since the
Spanish civil war.

But it was the fins,

who first realised its full potential
as a weapon in guerrilla warfare.

Desperate times required
desperate measures

and the molotov cocktail ranks there
pretty high as a desperate weapon.

It's a very, very dangerous
way to attack the enemy.

However likely
armoured a tank might be,

if all you've got is a uniform,

a rifle and a bottled
filled with petrol,

it takes a lot of guts to
try and sneak up on it,

to try and get close enough

to plant your petrol bomb
on its vulnerable area,

which is the rear
deck above the engine.

To manufacture
enough molotov cocktails

the finish army go to the
state alcohol plant at rajamaki.

They take bottles of alcohol

and there they are manufactured
into molotov cocktails.

It's fire bombs on
an industrial scale.

Incredibly,

the Soviets suffered five times
as many casualties as the fins.

But with their superior numbers

they stepped up their attack
and the molotov cocktail factory

soon became a key target.

There's a problem though,

because this is a
state alcohol plant,

it's got the name of the
alcohol plant on the cap.

When the Soviets
find these caps,

you might just as well have
held up a big flag saying,

"the enemy is here."

It's now very easy to find
where these are being made,

and thus it's very easy
for the Soviet bombers

to arrive and
target the factory.

Plans were quickly drawn up
to bolster the town's defences.

If you're looking at Finland,

one of the main problems
the landscape offers

to any anti-aircraft gunner,

is that there are an awful
lot of trees in the way.

The only way to
extend your horizon,

to get yourself a clear field
of fire for incoming bombers,

is to lift your anti-aircraft
gun off the ground.

And that's why the only
solution was to build a tower.

Standing just 500m
away from the bottling plant

are the rajamaki towers.

Each was built to hold
an anti-aircraft or flat gun,

capable of unleashing deadly fire
upon approaching enemy aircraft.

A flat gun is simply
an artillery piece,

which is made with a
high elevation on the barrel

to bring aircraft down.

It will shoot a shell
high into the air,

that shell will burst near
the aircraft, hopefully,

and the bursting fragments
will bring an aircraft down.

The towers could
provide the ideal defence

but with the Soviet attack imminent,
would they be ready in time?

The fins were rightly fearful.

The Russians really
didn't have the capability

to drop bombs with precision,

so Finnish towns would
just be carpet bombed.

The war was moving
from the ground to the air

and the fins would have to
scramble a strong defence once again.

In rajamaki two bofors,
40mm anti-aircraft guns,

were brought in to defend the
bottling plant from the ground.

40mm bofors gun
was probably the best,

one of the best anti-aircraft
weapons ever invented.

Very advanced gun for its time,

but not fully automatic
by any means.

It had to be loaded by
the crew, themselves.

In the Finnish winter,

when everything is blanketed by
snow, it must have been freezing.

Any wind blasting
across the landscape

is going to hit
that crew full on.

The gun layers themselves,

who were actually looking
for targets, sighting targets,

the crew, who are
loading ammunition to it,

simply can't be standing there
completely wrapped up in furs.

They've got to be mobile.

It must have been
quite grim for that crew,

waiting hour after hour

to be able to take on a
bomber and keep it away

from that vital bottling plant.

Seppo pietarinen works
for the local municipality

and knows the extraordinary
history of the towers.

We are now on top
of one of the towers

and here is the shaft
where the anti-aircraft,

the gun has been lift up and
placed here on top of this shaft.

The gun can spin
around 360 degrees,

because the bombers can
approach from any direction.

But just three months after it had
begun, the winter war was over.

The area of rajamaki

had been the victim of nine
separate Soviet bombing raids.

But the fins had held firm
and the factory had survived.

The Soviet air force
throughout the winter war,

the three months
of the winter war,

lost hundreds of its aircraft.

Normal estimates were about
300-400 being shot down by the fins,

either by aircraft
or ground defences.

The following year,

with the guns now mounted
on the completed towers,

the war was suddenly back on.

The two towers would have
been linked by telephone lines

and they would have been
linked to commander control centre.

All through Finland you would
have people with binoculars,

with range finders,
on top of buildings

because Finland didn't
have a radar system.

They relied on this fairly
good, observer system

that would spot
Russian aircraft,

give their altitude,
give the position.

The flat guns would be
alerted to Russian aircraft,

what route, what
distance, what speed.

Put yourself in the position

of someone on top of
one of those flat towers.

You're above the tree line

so, there's very little
camouflage and cover for you.

You're in a position
where the Soviet bombers

can see where you are
shooting at them from.

They're going to target
you. You are a sitting target.

It's going to take
guts to be up there.

Although Finnish
defences were very limited

and for example,
here in rajamaki,

a gun or two on towers is not
going to ward off dozens of bombers

if they really want
to get through.

The deterrent factor was such
that really any kind of resistance

would have had a major
effect on an attacking force.

Even one gun could
make all the difference

between protecting a site

and it being pulverised
by incoming bombers.

With the towers
and guns in place,

the Soviets never
targeted rajamaki again.

The only bombers to fly over

kept themselves high
above and out of range.

The towers had done their job.

When the second world war ended,

having sided with the Nazis,
Finland was again on the losing side.

The bottling plant
had reverted back

to producing alcohol
rather than molotov cocktails

and the towers were
locked up for good.

When you look
at the towers today

they're a symbol of Finnish
resistance against the Soviet union.

Everybody played their part and
the towers really stand as testimony

to the efforts made
by the Finnish people,

people who worked in factories,

people who fought
the Soviets at the front.

They really are a testimony to the
resilience of the people of Finland.

On the south coast of
Spain is the city of almeria

and near to its heart,
lies a huge industrial relic.

This rusting rail line
stretches for nearly 600m.

It's a long snake-like structure

that extends out into
the water from the city.

This elevated rail line kind
of winds through the port town

and then just terminates in this
massive monolithic contraption

that just kind of
juts out into the bay.

Here, a giant steel
pier supports the rail line

as it splits into four
separate tracks.

Almost like the Eiffel
Tower lying on its side.

So, clearly it's old,
but what's its purpose?

Where does it go?

Its story is closely tied to the
mass industrialisation of Europe

in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The economies of the
continent were being transformed

from those that
depended on agriculture

to new ones that were based
on the manufacture of goods

of all descriptions.

Mechanised mass
production was the key.

The factory assembly line
replaced the individual worker

and the craftsmen and
lives would change forever.

All of this new machinery
needed material

and it was steel that became
king, in the new industrial age.

Its key ingredient was iron ore,

and that, was one of the most
sought after resources in the world

at the beginning
of the 20th century.

But dark clouds were gathering.

Tensions between
nations were rising

and the first world war was
little more than a decade away.

But the old mines
of southern Spain

just didn't have the infrastructure
to meet the new demand.

The mines are located
somewhere in land,

in a slightly
mountainous terrain.

There's several hundred
feet of topographic variation.

And that poses a problem
because it's somewhat inland,

it might be easy to
locate the iron ore

to essentially mine
it out of the ground,

but you have to move it from there
to somewhere where you can ship it,

so you have to
get it to the coast.

The first part was simple,

to build a railway line between the
mines in southern Spain and almeria,

the nearest port city.

But the real problem
still lay ahead.

It's hard for most
people to imagine today,

how low-tech ports used
to be in their operations.

Everything that went on a
ship had to be handled by hand.

Transportation
of the iron ore

from the end of
the rail to the ships

was an extremely
laborious process.

Because by hand the
iron ore was unloaded,

stored until a ship would come
and then when the ship would come,

by hand, the iron ore was
then loaded onto the ship.

Loading a ship full of
iron ore might take a week.

It was an incredibly
inefficient process.

What's so brilliant
about this project is,

they completely re-imagined
how you could load a ship.

With the new political
instability across Europe,

the old port just
couldn't keep up

with the increased demands
of a rapidly changing world.

So, would this new hulking mass
of steel speed up the process?

Construction began in 1901.

It would become known as El
cable ingles, the English pier.

It was solving a very
fundamental problem,

which was the amount
of time and labour it took

to transport material.

They used engineering

to try and create a much more
efficient and better way to do that.

Well the original design
of the El cable ingles

was to be made out of wood,
but in that particular region

there were storms and other
environmental conditions.

It was decided that metal would be
more appropriate and more suitable.

Southern Spain seems
somewhat idyllic to most of us,

but in the Autumn
and winter months

it can actually have
some quite violent storms.

So, clearly areas where you go
from calm to storm, to calm to storm,

those kind of surges mean that

a structure for example,
made out of wood,

might not be good enough to
sustain for a long period of time.

The obvious choice
of material was steel.

The invention of the
modern steel making process

was kind of like the
invention of silicon chip.

It was one technological change,

that then enabled all
these other changes.

They used the capabilities
of this beautiful material

to help them mine more
iron and make more steel.

But with the future of the
Spanish mining industry

relying on the
success of this project,

why was it called
the English pier?

England had the advanced
steel mills that needed this ore.

They also had all the
money, they had all the capital,

so they could afford to make
these massive investments

in countries like Spain

and then a massive
investment in the infrastructure

to get that ore to the
port and onto the ships.

Designed by leading
British engineers,

the idea was to leave
all the heavy lifting

to the rail cars
and the jetty alone.

Supposedly, the days of
shovelling ore by hand were over.

But was there a new danger?

Instead of having to
load the ships by hand,

they would roll the rail car

right out to the end of
this high, elevated pier.

And they would dump the
contents directly into a big chute

that led straight into
the hull of the ship.

Along the length of each
side of the jetty are 20 hoppers.

Using gravity alone
to move the ore,

it would fall straight in
to those great containers.

Then by selecting
which chutes to use,

it was poured directly
into the ships hold.

Would the modern system
save the local industry?

I think it's such a neat
solution to have the system

where the shoots take this
material from a train to a ship.

In many ways it reflected
the modern more mechanised way

that major ports work, today.

If you go to a container port
like the port of Los Angeles,

you'll see these giant containers
getting loaded on and off boats.

No one needs to
touch the cargo, at all.

It was a problem
that needed to be solved

and the solution to that was
a great increase in efficiency.

It was a process that
used to take ten days,

now it only took ten hours.

It was a quarter
of the original cost,

which was actually
great savings.

This technology helped
Spanish exports of iron ore

grow from just 500,000
metric tons in 1875,

to ten million tons by the Eve
of the first world war, in 1913.

With all that growth,

why does the English
pier lie abandoned

on the edge of the city today?

It has its period when
it's perfectly optimised,

for the needs of the ships
and then technologies move on,

markets move on,

other mines will open in
other parts of the world.

In September 1970,
it ran for the last time.

Originally saved from
demolition by its historical value,

as costs increased,

major plans to convert the
English pier failed to materialise.

So, for now, the old structure

continues to stand
abandoned on the shore.

It's really impressive to
me that the cable ingles lasted

and was used actively
for about 70 years.

If you consider
the rate of change

of technology and
innovation at the time,

it really shows that they
were ahead of their time

in the innovations
that they used

and also it really solved a
problem that needed to be solved.

Now they lie abandoned,

but once they were at the
cutting edge of engineering.

There are echoes from history
in these decaying structures.

They remind us
of terror and war,

but also of great innovation
and human endeavour.