The Tunnel Under the Channel

by Thomas Whiteside

Calling these acts "a flagrant breach of faith" on the part of the tunnel promoters, the Board of Trade wrote that henceforth the order of the court "must be strictly and literally adhered to," and that no work of maintenance, ventilation, drainage, or otherwise would be allowed without the express permission of the board. Sir Edward Watkin and his fellow directors, after some days, replied in hurt fashion to what they termed "the unjustified accusations directed against them." They reiterated their concern for the health of their employees in the tunnel, and in connection with their tunneling activities below low-water mark they came up with the ingenious explanation that "many visits of Royal and other personages have been, by request, made to the tunnel for purposes of inspection, and it was essential fully to work the machine from time to time for the purpose of such visits." They also sent a protest to Mr. Gladstone at 10 Downing Street against their hard treatment, and asked for the Prime Minister's intercession with the Board of Trade. But there was nothing doing. Mr. Gladstone politely refused to act and replied that the actions of the Board of Trade had the full sanction of the Government.

On August 5, Colonel Yolland descended once more into the tunnel to make an inspection. He found things there in a rather run-down condition. "The tunnel is not nearly so dry as it was when I first saw it," he wrote in his report to the Board of Trade, referring to the fact that the engineers had ceased work on the drainage of the gallery. Colonel Yolland also mentioned in his report that during his previous visit, on July 15, "I had an escape from what might have been a serious accident. The wet chalk in the bottom of the tunnel, between and outside the rails of the tramways, is so slippery and greasy that it is almost impossible to keep on one's feet; and, on one occasion, I suddenly slipped, and fell at full length on my back, and the back of my head came against one of the iron rails of the tramway—fortunately with no great force or my skull might have been seriously bruised or fractured." The Colonel added, "There is not light enough in the tunnel from the electric lamps to enable one to see one's way through ... so that it is necessary to carry a lamp in one hand and a note-book in the other, to record the different measurements." The Colonel then gave some startling news. He declared that, according to his measurements, somebody had advanced the length of the tunnel some seventy yards since his inspection on July 15.

When this report reached the Board of Trade, the department, outraged, made a motion before the High Court of Justice to cite the tunnel promoters for contempt. However, a cloud of doubt descended on the issue when the tunnel promoters claimed in court that Colonel Yolland's calculations were in error. The motion was put off with the promoters' promising to obey to the letter the demands of the Board of Trade. Later on in the month, Colonel Yolland, after making a further inspection, conceded that, owing to the difficulties of working in the tunnel, he had made some error of calculation. The true advance made in the tunnel since July 15, he said, was thirty-six yards—a figure he said was confirmed by the tunnel company's engineer. Colonel Yolland reported that the company engineers had installed a pump at the eastern end of the tunnel to force out the water accumulating there. He added, somewhat testily, "Of course men had to be employed in erecting this pump in the tunnel and in working it when it was ready, and as the boring machine has not been made use of for the purpose of cutting chalk, this ... conclusively proves what I had stated in my former reports, that it was not necessary to cut an inch of chalk for the purpose of ventilating and draining the tunnel."

Altogether, and with all the difficulties they had encountered, the tunnel promoters had succeeded in boring the tunnel for a distance of 2,100 yards, or a little less than a mile and a quarter, toward France. The operations at the French end, which came to a stop in March of 1883, completed 2,009 yards of pilot tunnel from the bottom of the shaft by the cliffs at Sangatte.

In the middle of August, the Government, having received all the reports from the War Office and the Board of Trade on the subject of the tunnel, caused the rival Channel-tunnel bills that had been brought before it to be set aside, and at the same time Mr. Chamberlain announced in the House of Commons that the Government had decided to propose, early the following year, the appointment of a Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons to dispose of the whole tunnel question as conclusively as possible. In the meantime, he announced the Government's intention of publishing a Blue Book containing all the principal documents and correspondence concerning the tunnel. The Blue Book was issued in October, and once again the wrath of the English press fell upon the tunnel project and its promoters. The tone of the press comment was most majestically represented by an editorial in the London Times, which had started off the press campaign against the project the year before. The Times wrote that, unless it was much mistaken, "the publication of the Blue Book will be found to have closed the whole question of the Channel Tunnel for a long time to come."

Undermined by land, overmined at sea, sluice-ridden at its entrance, and liable to asphyxiating vapors at intervals, the Tunnel will hardly be regarded by nervous travellers as a very pleasant alternative even to the horrors of seasickness....

The whole system of defense must forever be at the mercy of blunderers, criminals, and madmen. It is true that we take somewhat similar risks in ordinary railway travelling, but imagination counts for a good deal in such matters, and the terrors of the Channel Tunnel under an adequate system of defense might easily affect the imagination so strongly as to render the terrors of seasickness insignificant by comparison.

Caught between the forces of claustrophobia and xenophobia, Sir Edward Watkin's great tunnel project was just about done for. In Westminster, angry citizens exhibited their feelings by smashing all the windows of the Channel Tunnel Company offices there. In the following year, the promised new investigation into the tunnel question was undertaken by a joint Parliamentary committee presided over by Lord Landsdowne. The committee met fourteen times, examined forty witnesses, and asked them fifty-three hundred and ninety-six questions. Not unexpectedly, the witnesses included Sir Garnet Wolseley, now Lord Wolseley. That Lord Wolseley in the interim had not changed his opinions on the perilous consequences of a tunnel is evident from his response to just five of the hundreds of questions put to him by the committee members.

5233: ... I think you said that supposing anyone in this room were to go to the barrack gates [at any of the forts at Dover at night] and to knock at the door, the door would at once be opened?—The wicket would be opened to you.

5234: Would it be the case if the person who went there had a hundred men in his company?—The man inside would not know that he had them, he would never suspect a hundred men being outside; but I would go further and say, even supposing that he would not open the barrack gates, the barrack gates are very easily knocked in.

5235: Are there any drawbridges there?—There are, but they are very seldom, if ever, drawn up in Dover.

5236: You said that if the tunnel were in existence, it would be necessary that the conditions of life in Dover should be altered; would that be one of the conditions which would be altered?—Yes.

5237: And the drawbridges would be up at night?—The drawbridges would be up at night, and nobody would be allowed to go in or out after a certain hour.

When all the evidence was in, a majority of the joint Parliamentary committee sided with the views of Lord Wolseley and voted against any Parliamentary sanction's being given to a Channel tunnel.

Sir Edward Watkin kept right on promoting his tunnel project for quite a while. By 1884—a year, incidentally, when Lord Wolseley was called away from the country to command the British expeditionary force that arrived too late at Khartoum to relieve General Gordon—Sir Edward was still doing his best to bring the British Army around to his viewpoint on the tunnel. A series of contemporary illustrations in the London illustrated weekly publication The Graphic records some views of a tunnel party held during that year for a group of British Army officers. One of the engravings shows a number of officers preparing to descend into the tunnel; the caption reads, "I say, Dear Chappie, if we invade France through the Tunnel, I hope I shan't be told off to lead the Advanced Guard." The visit was further reported on in an accompanying article by one of a few journalists accompanying the party. From this, it appears that the condition of the tunnel hadn't improved since the time that Colonel Yolland nearly split his head open in it. "Under foot for a great portion of the way," the author said, in describing how the visitors were drawn along the long gallery on canvas-hooded trolleys, "was ankle deep in slush," and he went on to quote from the report of one of his colleagues: