The moment the Board of the Tunnel Company decided to obey you, I peremptorily ordered the works to be stopped. The [boring] machine has been silent since Thursday evening. But the Engineer sends me a very startling report and warning.
He fears defective ventilation [owing to stoppage of the air-driven boring machine] and danger to life—quite apart from depriving a fine body of skilled workmen of their bread, and general loss and damage in money. I can only reply to him that I am acting under your order. Still ... this is the first time the ventilation of a mine has been so interfered with. Should the engineer's alarm be well founded, and should men faint from bad air at the end of the gallery, there would be no means of getting them out alive.
Sir Edward added, without changing his tone of humane agitation, that only the day before he had received a request from the Duke of Edinburgh to be allowed to see the tunnel workings, along with the Duchess, ten days hence, and that the Speaker of the House of Commons had already arranged to visit the tunnel "on Saturday, the 22nd, leaving Charing Cross at eleven." "What must be done?" he asked. Mr. Chamberlain replied promptly by telegraph that if the stopping of the machinery in the tunnel was constituting a danger to life, he authorized Sir Edward, pending further investigation of the situation by the Board of Trade, temporarily to keep the machinery going to the extent of preventing this danger. However, he followed up this telegram with a letter to Sir Edward in which he expressed himself as being "not able to understand the exact nature of the physical danger anticipated" by Sir Edward in the tunnel if the workings were stopped. "I do not see the necessity for workmen remaining in the tunnel where the ventilation is likely to be defective," Mr. Chamberlain observed. He added that he was making arrangements to have one of the Board of Trade inspectors visit the tunnel to investigate the situation.
On April 11, the Board of Trade duly telegraphed Sir Edward that its chief inspector of railways, Colonel Yolland, of the Royal Engineers, would be at Dover at noon the next day to investigate the ventilation problem in the tunnel. Sir Edward, however, wired back that he was unable to meet the Colonel at Dover that day and could not make an appointment with him "until after the visit to the works of the Duke of Edinburgh on Tuesday next."
To this the Board of Trade replied, on April 13, that Colonel Yolland had been instructed to visit the tunnel works "entirely out of regard to the very urgent and grave question raised in your letter ... respecting the ventilation of the boring" and that the department was finding it difficult to understand why Colonel Yolland's visit to the tunnel should be postponed. Sir Edward's answer to this was to invite Mr. Chamberlain down into the tunnel personally, so that Sir Edward could "show and explain everything," since "until you have seen, and had explained to you, on the spot as Mr. Gladstone did and had, and as we hope the Duke of Edinburgh will next Tuesday, the nature and condition of our works, it is, in my humble judgement, impossible to discuss the question with exactitude." He said nothing about the possibility of Mr. Chamberlain's or the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh's being asphyxiated in the tunnel. Mr. Chamberlain declined the invitation; he said he had ordered Colonel Yolland down to Dover immediately to report on the tunnel. But Colonel Yolland didn't get down into the tunnel to make an inspection that month. Some impediment, some unanticipated difficulty always seemed to arise when things appeared to be about to straighten themselves out. By the beginning of May, the Board of Trade, still trying, flatly informed Sir Edward that Colonel Yolland and Walter Murton, its solicitor, would inspect the tunnel workings on May 6. But on May 4 the general manager of the South-Eastern Railway replied that "Sir Edward Watkin wishes me to say that he regrets very much that it will be quite impossible to arrange for such inspection to take place on that date." He suggested that Sir Edward could arrange it for the 13th. The Board of Trade, replying immediately, insisted on its taking place "not later than Wednesday next." That letter was met with the answer that "Sir Edward Watkin is at present out of town, and is not expected to return until early next week." He must have stayed out of town quite a while, because the Board of Trade heard nothing from the company until May 18, when the directors of the company, writing jointly, told the department that while they acquiesced in the request of Colonel Yolland and Mr. Murton to visit the tunnel, unfortunately "the machinery is under repair," and as a consequence "it would not be ... safe for those gentlemen to go down the shaft." However, the directors added, hopefully, they felt sure that "by working the machinery, air compressors, and pumping engines for a few days and nights" their engineers could get everything in order for a proper tour of inspection. On May 24 Mr. Murton tried again. He wrote the tunnel proprietors, notifying them that "Colonel Yolland and myself propose to inspect the tunnel works on Saturday next the 27th instant." But the company's reply to the letter was regretful. It said that "the repairs to the winding engine cannot be completed until after Whitsuntide."
Meanwhile, Mr. Murton was having his difficulties with the solicitor of the South-Eastern over the legal question of the company's claims to ancient manorial rights to the use of the foreshore at Shakespeare Cliff, as the tone of various letters he was obliged to write indicates. For example:
Dear Sir,
May I remind you that I have not yet received
the abstract of title; I beg that you will at once
send it to me...."I am, & c.,
Walter Murton."
Or again:
Dear Sir,
I am without answer to my letter of the 31st
ultimo. I beg you will let me know without further
delay whether you do or do not propose to
send me abstract of title."I am, & c.,
Walter Murton."
Or yet again:
Dear Sir,
Will you kindly write me a reply to my letters
which I can send on to the Board of Trade."Yours, & c.,
Walter Murton."