THISTUNNELWASBUGNIN1880WILLIAM SHARP
However, this was not exactly how the inscription went, for its author, after finishing it, obviously had decided that "BUGN" didn't look right, and, being unable to erase the incision, he had had another go at it, inscribing the second try to one side and partly over the first, so that the intended "begun" now came out like "BEGUBNUGN." But with all the crudeness of the inscription, the author had been careful withthe lettering, even to point of conscientiously incising serifs on the "T"s and "E"s.
While the light played about the inscription, I could see clearly, on the tunnel face, the ringlike marks left by individual revolutions of the cutting head of the Beaumont boring machine. After a few moments we moved on again, and eventually, after trudging over ground that became increasingly slippery, we came to a point where some of the chalk had given way, filling the tunnel about a quarter of the way up with debris. Adams said that the going got a bit better later on but that we were likely to find ourselves in water over our knee boots if we went any farther. At that point, impressed with the sight of all the fallen rock about and by the realization that we were in a seven-foot hole at least a quarter of a mile inside a huge cliff on a deserted stretch of coast, I felt as though I had seen enough. I suddenly realized what a smart idea Sir Edward Watkin had had in providing visitors with that champagne lift while they were well under the sea. So we turned back again and slowly, in silence, made our way out of Sir Edward's first tunnel.
When I stepped through the tunnel entrance into the light, it seemed very noisy outside. Sea gulls were shrieking overhead, and the Channel waves were roaring and heaving insistently. I had a slight headache, and I mentioned this to Adams. "Oh, yes, I have the same thing," he said. "Although the air in the tunnel is remarkably fresh, considering the length of time it's been locked up and the fact that there's only one entrance, there isn't quite as much oxygen in it as one might want." Jim began to lock up the entrance again, and while he was doing so, Adams suggested that we might see if we could spot the entrance shaft on the plateau above us. We climbed up the cliffside, and after a while we located it, a filled-in depression resting in a mass of bramble bushes. We waded through the bushes and stood over the remains ofNumber One shaft, still feeling a bit headachy. As we stood there, we picked and ate a few blackberries still left on the bushes from summer. "They're quite good," Adams said.
After we had had some lunch in Folkestone, Adams suggested that before I went back to London I might want to take a look at the site of the old Number Two shaft and the main tunnel at Shakespeare Cliff, even though the Number Two shaft and the Number Three ventilating shaft had been long ago closed up. I was agreeable to that, and Burgess drove us, by way of Dover, to a point along a back road, from which we could walk to the top of Shakespeare Cliff from the land side. While Burgess stayed in the little car, Adams and I set off up a long slope to the cliff head, walking along the edge of a harrowed field, the soil of which seemed to be riddled with the kind of large flints typical of the Upper Chalk layer.
On the way up, Adams told me what had happened to the main tunnel and shaft after the workings were finally stopped by the Board of Trade. "Everything stopped dead at the tunnel workings until 1892," Adams said. "By then, Sir Edward Watkin knew he was beaten on the Channel tunnel, so he tried a different kind of tunneling, and the South-Eastern Railway engineers began boring for coal a matter of a few yards away from the tunnel shaft. They went down to 2,222 feet with their boring, at which level they met a four-foot seam of good-quality coal, and the company obtained authority by an act of Parliament to mine for coal under the foreshore. As for the Channel-tunnel shaft itself, it was abandoned in 1902 and filled up with breeze—ashes and slag—from the colliery, and the Number Three ventilation shaft at the eastern end of Shakespeare Cliff was also filled with breeze in the same year. But the colliery never paid off any better than the tunnel project. It ran into trouble around 1907 or 1908, and then the owners decided they'd have a tryat getting iron ore out of the workings, and so all the mineral mining rights were bought by the Channel Steel Company, but the iron mining didn't prosper any more than the coal mining. The Channel Steel Company went into voluntary liquidation in 1952, and all the mining rights passed to the original freeholders, who are now the British Government."
Adams and I climbed over a wooden fence stile, and after a couple of more minutes of uphill walking we arrived at the top of Shakespeare Cliff. We approached to a point near the edge and kneeled in the tall grass, buffeted by a strong afternoon wind that struck us squarely in the face. It was a magnificent view. The Channel lay very far below us, and although I could not see the coast of France because of the haze—Adams said that on a fine day anybody could see clearly the clock tower outside Boulogne—I could see shipping scudding along in whitecaps in the middle of the Strait. To the left of us, not far away, lay the Admiralty Pier at Dover, the one that once had the great gun which theIllustrated London Newshad imaginatively depicted in the act of blowing the tunnel entrance to pieces at the first sign of a French invasion of England through the tunnel.
Then, on hands and knees, we crawled against the pommeling wind to the very edge of the cliff, and lying on our stomachs peered straight down upon the site of the Shakespeare Cliff tunnel. I still had traces of the headache I had picked up while creeping around in the depths of the Abbots Cliff tunnel and it was a dizzying change for me now to peer three hundred feet down a sheer cliff face, but it was worth it, even though there was nothing so startling to see. Far below us lay a plateau with a couple of railway sidings on it. There were no buildings about, and certainly nothing that resembled any trace of a mine entrance. "British Railways had to build a sea wall around the whole Shakespeare Cliff area a few years ago because of the erosion from the Channel, andwhen we were doing that we cleaned out all the old mine workings," Adams said. "One of the last buildings to go was a shed that the old custodian of the works used to live in. His name was Charlie Gatehouse. He died about ten years ago at the age of ninety. He had worked as a timberman on both the Abbots Cliff and Shakespeare Cliff tunnels, and he took up the first sod when they dug the shaft down here. He used to tell about how one day Mr. Gladstone came down into the tunnel."
Then Adams pointed out to me exactly where the entrance to Number Two shaft had been. It lay by the third rain puddle to the left near one of the sidings. I enjoyed the thought of having its location fixed in my mind, and I believe Mr. Adams did, too. We gazed down silently. "Just imagine, if the Board of Trade hadn't stopped the works, a man might have been able to go right on to Vladivostock without getting out of his train," Adams said after a while. And he added earnestly, "But I think they'll build the tunnel yet."
Since my visit to the tunnel, the tendency of events has been to reinforce the brave hopes of Adams and his fellow pro-tunnelers. To be sure, while even the most dedicated of tunnel promoters may be prone to his black moments while pondering the nature and the effects of traditional British insularity—one of the most distinguished, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, the president of the Tunnel Study Group, a while ago observed with some touch of bitterness that it seemed as though "men may be flying to the moon before Britons can make a reasonable surface journey to Paris"—Britain's decision to seek full membership in the European Common Market, and the agreement of the French and British Governments to hold official talks on the construction of either a tunnel or a bridge across the Channel, have given the pro-tunnelers more solid reason for hope than perhaps has ever existed in the ranks of these visionaries in a century and ahalf. In the past, it was never possible for proponents of the tunnel to advance their cause with any success so long as their advocacy was not based on the prior existence of any profound change in Britain's traditional economic and strategic special and separate place in Europe, or of any change in the peculiar British sense of being an island people apart. But now such changes have taken place, or are in the process of taking place. Britain's strategic position has been profoundly altered by the advent of nuclear and rocket armaments. Her political and economic position has been as profoundly altered by the withering away of the British Empire and by the successful emergence of a new European commonwealth in the form of the Common Market. And the ancient British sense of being an island race apart seems to have been steadily eroded by a strange kind of rootlessness, partly arising out of Britain's altered place in the world, and as a general accompaniment of the intrusion of such uninsular influences as the jet airplane, commercial television, high-powered advertising, expense-account living, and the spread of installment buying. Notwithstanding all her misgivings on the subject of committing herself to abandonment of her ancient aloofness from the Continent, Britain can hardly ignore the implications of the relentless march of that process once described by the Duke of Wellington over a century ago in the heyday of the sailing ship, when he observed that Britain and the Continent were rapidly becoming joined by an "isthmus of steam."
Now that so many of the conditions that have made for England's traditional economic, military, and cultural insularity have gradually subsided, like the ancient Wealden Island that once lay in what is now the Strait of Dover, the question of connecting Britain physically to the Continent is at last in the realm of practical political possibility. In spite of all her misgivings about the abandonment of her privilegedrelationships with the countries of the British Commonwealth, it seems as though Britain has no choice ahead but to throw in her lot with the Common Market, which has proved itself to be such an astonishing success in its four years of existence.
Since 1958, when the special trade arrangements between the countries of the European Economic Community went into effect, up to 1960, their industrial production increased by 22 per cent, while Britain's industrial production increased only 11 per cent. And it has been estimated that by 1970 the Gross National Product of the Common Market countries will double that of 1961. This estimate does not take into account Britain's joining the Common Market, either; when she does so, as it seems she must, the Common Market boom will be a spectacular one; the member countries will then be serving a market of more than 200 million people. Precisely what Britain's entry into the Common Market would mean in terms of increased commercial intercourse between Britain and the Continent no one knows, but the increase plainly would be enormous, and considering this potentiality, proponents of the Channel tunnel are not backward in claiming that Britain's present cross-Channel transportation facilities are grossly inadequate to meet the demands ahead. They are even inadequate, the pro-tunnelers claim, for coping with Britain's present needs.
As things stand, some 8 million passengers and about 400,000 vehicles cross the Channel in a year. Of these, 3.3 million passengers and about 100,000 vehicles go by air. Most of this traffic crisscrosses the Channel in the four peak summer months and results in severe bottlenecks in the existing means of communication. (A motorist who wishes to take his car abroad either by air or sea-ferry during the peak season must book a passage some months ahead of time, and if he can't make it on the assigned date "he runs the risk," as oneof the tunnel promoters has put it, "of being marooned on this island for several more months.") Even without taking into account Britain's probable entry into the Common Market, the number of vehicles crossing Britain and the Continent probably will double itself by 1965.
The Channel Tunnel Study Group people claim that neither the existing air nor sea-ferry services are equipped to handle anything like this potential load. They estimate that without construction of a tunnel, the British and French Governments, through their nationalized rail and air lines, will be obliged to spend some $90,000,000 in the next five years to replace or expand existing transport facilities if they are to keep up with the increase in cross-Channel traffic expected in that time without Britain's participation in the Common Market. As for the capacity of the tunnel, the promoters claim that all the road vehicles that crossed the Channel in 1960 could easily be carried through the tunnel in three or four days. As for the transporting of merchandise, 11,000,000 tons of it are now being moved across the Channel in a year, most of this in bulk form—coal, for example—which it would not be practical to send through a tunnel. But of this freight, well over a million tons of nonbulk goods could, the Study Group declares, be sent by tunnel, and at about half the rates now prevailing.
Taking into account such economic advantages, the great boon to tourism that they believe a tunnel would represent, and the intangible psychological impetus that they claim a fixed link between France and Britain would give to the dream of a politically as well as economically united Europe, the pro-tunnelers believe that the construction of their railway under the Channel would be just about the greatest thing to happen to Britain in this century.
The Channel Tunnel Study Group people, as it turned out late last year, are not alone in their ambitions for a physicalconnection between France and Britain. Last fall, when the French and British Governments decided—on British initiative—to negotiate with each other on a fixed connection between the two countries, it became clear that a dark horse had been entered in the Channel sweepstakes with the publicizing of the new proposal for a cross-Channel bridge made by a new French company that is headed by Jules Moch, a former French Minister of Interior. The bridge proposed by the new French company would be a multipurpose affair of steel capable of carrying not only two railroad lines but five lanes of motor traffic and even two bicycle tracks. It would extend between Dover and a point near Calais. Its width would be 115 feet and its height 230 feet, allowing (as the Tunnel Study Group's proposed bridge scheme would) ample clearance for the largest ocean liners afloat. Its length would be 21 miles; it would rest on 164 concrete piles 65 feet in diameter and sunk 660 feet apart. Motorists would travel along it, without any speed limit, at a peak rate of 5,000 vehicles an hour, and an average toll of about $22.50 per car. The bridge would take between four and six years to construct, and as for the cost, that would run to about $630,000,000—or $266,000,000 more than the estimated cost of a rail tunnel. Despite some backing that the new French bridge group appears to have established for its scheme among French commercial circles, the chances are that the British Government, as representatives of a maritime nation, will have a number of objections to this plan for spanning the Channel. A principal objection—a technical one that has confounded all the Channel bridge planners from Thomé de Gamond's day onward—is the hazard to navigation within the Strait of Dover that a bridge would create. The English Channel is one of the most heavily trafficked sea lanes in the world, and considering the violent state of wind and sea within the Strait of Dover for much of the year—as well asthe heavy Channel fogs—insuring safe passage between the piers of such a bridge for all the thousands of ships that pass through the Strait every year, in all weathers, would pose formidable problems even in the era of radar. Also, the Channel-tunnel advocates, who already have considered a bridge and pretty much rejected the idea because of its high cost, point to other difficulties standing in the way of the bridge idea—for example, the requirements of international law, which would make necessary a special treaty signed by all countries (including Russia) presently sending ships through the Channel before such an obstruction to navigation could be constructed; the difficulties, with all the bad weather, of keeping such an enormous structure in good repair; and the dangers of Channel gales to light European cars traversing the bridge. (The French bridge advocates claim that they could reduce the winds buffeting traffic to a quarter of their intensity by installing deflectors on the sides of the traffic lanes; to this the tunnel advocates counter that boxing cars in traffic lanes for some twenty-one miles would create a psychological sense of confinement that drivers would find far more intimidating than riding on a train under the sea.) But the main objection to the bridge is its cost. It could only be built with the help of substantial government subsidies, and the experience of the pro-tunnelers is that such subsidies are almost impossible to obtain.
Whatever the merits of the two schemes, they are certain to be considered in quite a different atmosphere now than they were back in the seventies, when, according to the observations that Sir Garnet Wolseley subsequently made to Sir Archibald Alison's scientific committee that investigated the tunnel question, "the tunnel scheme was ... looked upon as fanciful and unfeasible. It was not then regarded as having entered within the zone or scope of practical undertakings. No one believed that it would ever be made and, ifmentioned, it always raised a smile, as does now any reference to flying machines as substitutes for railways." On August 28, 1961, things somehow seemed to come full circle when the LondonTimes, which had started all the opposition in the press to the tunnel eighty years earlier, devoted a leading editorial to discussion of the subject of a fixed connection between France and Britain. TheTimesstarted out in familiar fashion for a tunnel editorial by quoting from Shakespeare's "This royal throne" speech, but then it went on to concede in stately fashion that times had changed and that "Britain must soon decide whether to leap over the wall, to become a part of Europe." TheTimesdiscussed the merits of the latest tunnel and bridge schemes in tones of expository reasonableness, without committing itself to either one scheme or the other, and without accusing the would-be moat-crossers, as of old, of flaunting the will of Providence. And theTimeswound up its editorial on a meaningful note by observing, in reference to the quotations with which the editorial had been prefaced, that while Shakespeare had the first words, John Donne deserved the last:
"No man is an island, entire of itself."
To which all the tunnel dreamers, after all their years of adversity in the face of the insular British character, reasonably can say Amen.