PORTSMOUTH — When the new south span of the Memorial Bridge was maneuvered into position on Jan. 15, Portsmouth Pilot Chris Holt just happened to be lead tug pilot that day continuing a legacy dating back to at least the mid-1700s in his family.



Holt became part of a historic moment in the Memorial Bridge project just as his great-grandfather, Shirley Holt Sr., had been during the original construction of the bridge in the early 1920s.



Chris is a fourth generation pilot, hailing from a family of seafarers on the Piscataqua River.



“It was an honor to do something that my great-grandfather did 90 years ago,” he said.



Standing on the Ceres Street deck where the tugs are hitched in the water, his father, Shirley Holt Jr., can see clear across the river to the three homes where he spent time growing up as a child, recalling the days he spent with his father, Henry B. Holt, also a pilot, and his grandfather watching as they mastered the river.



“That’s our business, knowing the river,” he said.



Now, the three Portsmouth Pilots manning the boats today are all Holts as well. With Chris is his brother Stephen Holt and cousin Richard C. Holt Jr.



“We had a law here,” Shirley Holt Jr. joked of their business. “Your last name had to have four letters.”



Genealogy records before the mid 1700s were lost in a fire, he said, but their family history of piloting traces back even further than that.



Holt Sr., born in 1883 and who worked on the water between 40 to 50 years, ran away from home, Chris explained, when he was 15 years old and began working on the ferry that connected Kittery and Portsmouth. That is where his career on the river would start. He died in 1959 after retiring to Maine.



Back then, Chris said, there were no steamships to get the work done and complete knowledge and confidence was required to run the schooners and row boats used.



Just as crews working on the reconstruction project now must track the tide schedule to conduct their float-outs and float-ins, the workers in his great-grandfathers’ time had to do the same.



“A lot of the time they were at the mercy of the current,” he said.



Compared to what’s done now, the strategy is very similar, he explained, but today’s tugs have 3,300 horsepower behind them.



“They had a hard time that way. They had to use their brain to figure things out,” he said.



When Shirley Holt Jr. began his career as a pilot, there was no night work completed on the river, projects were done during the day.



He said he could remember going back and forth with his father on the river before his father was called to service in World War II.



At that time, his father was sent to Pearl Harbor to assist with the salvage efforts following the Dec. 7 attack.



He also recalled his fascination with the Sarah Long Bridge, which opened to motorists in 1940, as it was being constructed. The Sarah Long Bridge is the middle of the three bridges spanning the river.



“I can remember sneaking up on what they had completed. Anything that they didn’t have nailed down was a big splash in the water,” he said with a friendly grin from inside the Portsmouth Pilots office.



Chris, a graduate of Maine Maritime Academy, said falling into the industry was “kind of just natural.”



Though he earned an education with formal schooling, he credits his predecessors with learning everything they did for the job on their own.



“The biggest thing I think I learned from him is keeping your cool under pressure. There was never any fluctuation in his voice,” Chris said. “He made it look so easy, but it really isn’t.”



The new South span of the Memorial Bridge was constructed in sections and floated into place on one barge Jan. 15. When Holt Sr. was a pilot, there were two barges to position with two tugs pushing each barge and two tugs pulling from the front.



“It was probably a lot more challenging for them to place it,” he said.



Back then they worked without the use of radios for communication, relying instead on whistles and blow horns. Each whistle or patterned sound of a horn meant something specific, a sort of language crafted by pilots on the river.



“It’s probably a little easier for us but we still don’t want to damage anything,” Holt said about the waterfront that lines the river today.



Unlike the float-out of the old bridge conducted last February that Chris Holt said was done during the biggest tide of the month, and included unforgiving cold and winter conditions that hindered immediate progress, this recent float-in of the new bridge went off without a hitch.



“Putting this span in probably went as well as it could have gone,” he said.



The toughest part of this project, he suspects, will be placing the center lift span with both the north and south spans secured by that time.



“It’s going to be a slow and arduous project,” he said. “You can’t damage it putting it in.”



When Memorial Bridge was first constructed, it was the first without a toll for motorists spanning the river. It was also dedicated as a memorial to the Sailors and Soldiers of New Hampshire who participated in the World War of 1917-1919. For the bridge’s life span, a plaque hung above the first truss span on the Portsmouth side of the structure.



It has been the only bridge of the three in the harbor that allow access for both pedestrians and bicycles. When the new Memorial bridge reopens this summer, that access will again be part of the design.



Chris said his participation in the float-in was somewhat luck-of-the-draw, though with just the three pilots, it was a good bet that a Holt would be at the helm of the tug operation navigating the barge to the bridge.



Whether he’ll have the same luck in March when the North span is expected to be floated into place, remains unknown.



“It was an honor to put that first span into place and be part of the legacy carried on here at the river,” Chris said.



