The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-06-25 00:00:00

THE CHANNEL TUNNEL.

At a meeting of th.e South-Eastern Railway Com-
pany, held in London last week, Sir E. W. Watkin,
M.P., said that helhould like to take the opportunity
to say a few,wordenn the very greaelnd interesting
question orthe Channel Tunnel, as he had received a
great number of letters on the subject. The share-
holders had permitted them to embark on some experi-
ments, with the view to see Whether the making of the
tunnel in a reasonable space of time was feasible and
practicable. The whole question divided itself into
two parts—first, whether they *could pass under the
Channel through a stratum which was impervious to
water; and, secondly, whether by the aid of
machinery they could shorten very considerably the
probable time of construction. They had sunk two
shafts— one at the Abbot's Cliff tunnel, and the
other on this side of the Shakespeare Cliff tunnel.
From the first shaft they had driven a gallery of
800 or 900 yards' of a diameter of ift., which had all
been excavated by machinery. The machinery was
not perfect, but last week they excavated 67 yards of
lineal distance in the extension of that gallery. If that
were the maximum, rate of speed it meant about two
miles of progress in a year, and as they were working
from both ends, and as it was only 20 miles, practically
speaking, it meant five years to complete a galery
7ft. in diameter as an experiment, under the whole
width of the Channel. With regard to the second
shaft, at the Shakespeare Cliff, they had sunk that
down to a depth of 155 ft. They had also bored from
the bottom of that shaft to a further depth of 106 ft.
They had gone right through the old gray chalk
and right into the gait clay, and he was happy to
say that they had found no trace whatever of water,
though nearer the surface, as they always expected,
they had found a small quantity of water. They had,
therefore, he thought, solved the great questions of
the speed at which they would go and of the imper-
meability of the strata to leakages of water. On the
other side of the Channel the French had sunk two very
important shafts, and they had found exactly the
same result as on this side. With regard to the
macliinery, they were on the eve of concluding a
second arrangem4nt with Captain English, Colonel
Beaumont, and Mr. Pigou, the inventors and pro-
prietors of the machine, under which they would
pay them merely for the use of it, and carry on the
experiments to a considerable further extent. The
understanding arrived at between himself and M.
Raoul Duval, the very able mining engineer and
member of the French Channel Tunnel Committee,
was that they should on both sides of the Channel
drive through a heading of a further length of one mile
each. When those two miles were finished—and they
certainly ought to be finished within six months—one-
tenth of the question would have been dealt with. If
successful, he should, he thought, propose a further
treaty with the French gentlemen, under which each
party would do the remaining nine miles on each side of
the Channel. They would then meet in the middle of the
Channel, and if that were done successfully the whole
question was settled. Till the matter was "proved,"
neither the French nor British investor would
be asked to embark any capital in such a great ven-
ture. The South-Eastern shareholders had taken all
the risk, having authorized an expenditure altogether
of £20,000. He intended to call the attention of his
colleagues gravely to the present position of things—
in fact, that a great deal of what they wanted to
prove had been proved, the desirability of extending
the works to make the proof more positive, and then
to consider whether, on the whole, it would not be
better to form a small company to take the matter in
hand, without in any way interfering with the
finances of the South-Eastern Company. They must,
however, never forget that it was absolutely essential
that this tunnel should remain under South-Eastern
control and supervision. He did not think there could
be a better property anywhere than the South-Eastern
Railway would be if part of a direct link extending
from the north of England and Scotland to the ex-
treme south of Europe and beyond.

The Times has a leader on the above, from which
we make the following extracts:—

The improvement of the South-Eastern Railway dividends
is a matter of very proper concern to the chairman of the
company. To be able to get from London to Paris and back
again without danger of sea sickness by the way is an agree-
able prospect for a good many travellers on both sides of the
Channel. But there are other interests to be considered.
The advantages Sir Edward Watkin offers have an obvious
and essential drawback. His now high road from England
to France will admit of being traversed in both directions
and for purposes of which he tells us nothing. Ms
new path for commerce and for peaceful travellers
will be open in the event of war. The contingency
may be likely or unlikely, but it is not 0110 which
we can disregard. Let us make every concession
which Sir Edward Watkin asks. Let us suppose the thing
done which he contemplates as possible to be done. Let
the passage between England and France be made and so
ventilated—a point, bythe-by, on which he is silent—that it
can t e used without suffocation by the way. Shall we be
as well off end as safe with it as we now are without it,?
Will it be possible for us so to guard the English end of the
' passage that it can never fall into any other bands than our
own? This is an important question The first thing
that will occur to any military man is that a force of
some thousands of men secretly concentrated in a
Channel port asal suddenly landed on the coast of
Kent might seize the English end of the tunnel, might
entrench itself there, and might hold possession of it for
a time. At few boors might be enough ; a few days cer-
tainly would. The tunnel, with both ends in hostile hands,
would be a safe postage ready made for the invader. Men
and material could be sent over by it. The force which had
possession of our end might be joined speedily enough by
the whole disposable army from the opposite shore. In
four.and-twenty hours it might be very largely reinforced.
In three days' time it would have swelled to numbers very
far in excess of our own. We should then find to our cost
what was meant by getting rid of the narrow seas
and joining England on to the Continent. As an im-
provement in locomotion, and as a relief to the tender
stomachs of passengers who dread sea-sickness, the
design is excellent ; but from a national point of view
it must not the less be received with caution. We
hope that we shall maintain relations of amity with our
• Continental neighbours, and especially with our nearest
neighbour. But it would be absurd to assume that these
relations must always remain unruffled. From the hour of
the complAien of such a work, there would he a continual
: talk about invasion. At present our maritime supremacy
allows us, on the whole, to feel safe 'against attack.
There have been occasional panics even so. in 1853 the
Emperor Napoleon was said to be the only man in France
who was opposed to an invasion of England. The thing was
freely talked about on both sides of the Channel, and for
some time numbers of people fancied that it would be under-
taken. It would have been no easy task to bring over the
necessary number of troops, with cavalry and a-tillery, and
with the heavy furniture of war. But, easy or difficult, the
prospect that it might be tried was felt not to he a pleasant
one. How would it have been if the main difficulty had been
removed if there had been then in existence the short easy
cut which Sir Edward Watkin is proposing to make? English-
men would certainly have slept none the more quietly for a
knowledge of the submarine road, and of- the visitors who
might at any moment be expected by it. It is more than
questionable whether we ought now to put ourselves into a
position of disadvantage from which we have happily been
exempt. Nature is on our side at present, and she will c,n-
tinue so if we will only suffer her. The silver streak is our
safety To get rid of it and thereby to link England on as part of
the system of Continental nations would be to confer a
benefit, perhaps, but at a cost infinitely greater than it can
be worth. If Sir Edward Watkin's tunnel is ever finished,
and long before the South Eastern shareholders have begun
to reap the golden harvest it is to IA big them, we shall hear
from more quarters than one of the uses to which the tunnel
can be put. A design for the invasion of England and a
general plan of the campaign will he subjects on which every
cadet in a German military school will be invited to
display his powers. We shall learn the ease with
which possession Can be obtained of the English end
of the tunnel ; the exact number of hours for which
over in sufficient numbers to effect a permanent lodgment ;
it must be .held before reinforcements can be sent
the direction which the Invading army is then to take; the
further obstacles it will have to encotrnter, and how they
are severally to be overcome. All this will be no pleasant
hearing for any of us. If we dislike the idea of it, we had
better think twice before we offer ourselves as the subject
for it. Certain it is that if we are ever engaged in a Conti-
nental war the Channel Tunnel will be the weak point in
our defences. Mille most distant prospect of a war, the
first thing proposed as a precautionary measure will he to
,
block the tunnel, and to render it useless at least for the
time. Many will declare, with some plausibility
that this
precaution is not enough, and that it is absolutely necessary
to flood it.

After all, what is to be set off for the alarms the tunnel
must bring upon us? The journey from London to Paris is
to be shortened and made more comfortable. We admit the
advantage, but it can be obtained at much less cost. If the
French would do as much for Calais as we have done for
Dover, if they would make a proper port of it,
accessible at all tides to large Vessels, the means
of communication between the two countries would
be quite as easy as we wish them to be. A
steamer of the class which runs between Dublin
and Holyhead would make the passage from Dover to Calais
In little more than an hour: she would be steady in all
weather, and regular to her time at all states of the tide.
If persons are not contented with this, if they must have the
tunnel, and nothing but the tunnel, we must bear in mind
the price at which the whim can be gratified. Jr is not Sir
Edward Watkin and the South-Eastern shareholders who
have the only right to a voice here.

Sir E. W. 'Watkins has sent the following letter to
The Times in reply to the preceding :

Sir,—As you have introduced my name in connexion with
the proposed tunnel of 20 miles under the Channel in your
leading article of to-day, probably you will allow me the
justice of a short comment and reply.
To begin with, I must repudiate the notion that this work
is promoted merely to obtain a "golden harvest" for the
South-Eastern proprietors, who are paying the cost of the
experimental works. For myself and for others I may say,
without chance of contradiction, that the public works we
have originated and carried through by the capital of the
British shareholder in the past 40 years have given to the
general public, who have contributed nothing, a hundred,
probably a thousand, times the moderate return gained on
that capital; and I venture to think that the same result
will follow this the great work of these times. Such a work
certainly, I beg to plead, is too great to deserve the title of a
"whim."

-----
No one that I know of ever supposed that a tunnel would
supersede the sea. And as respects your demand that the
French "should do as much at Calais as we have done at
Dover and that we should have Channel boats as big as
the Holyhead packets," I may be allowed to state. first, 'this
both at Calais and at Boulogne, and, in fact, all the way
from Cherbourg to Dunkirk inclusive, the Frongh are doing
far more than we have done by merely putting out at Dover
a deep-water pier at a cost of over a million ; and, secondly,
that in consequence within two years we hope to run boats
of that very type.
In a very short space of time the French will have many
capacious deep-water harbours, to which we have now
nothing to echo on our side of the Channel. And if we are
in any danger, in case of war, of landings on our coast, the
clanger will come from these very harbours, each end of
which is or will be big enough to hold a fleet of ironclads.
But, taking your own view, much as I presume to disagree
with it, the opportunity of attack acts in both directions,
and surely the English fleet is as likely to take the French
end of the tunnel as the French fleet the English end. But
there are two answers to this, as the late Mr. Cobden, who;
was a strong advocate for the tunnel, would have called it,
"hobgoblin argument."
The one is the moral, the other the material answer. As
respects the latter, a pound of dynamite, or the opening of
a weHdevised sluice, would render the tunnel impassable.
And I assume that neither the French nor the Germans
would invade us without the preliminary of a declaration of
war. I assume, also, that Germany would not invade Eng-
land and France at the same time. The second, if not urged,
would involve an imputation upon every European Gov, rn-
seent ; fur is it possible to conceive that such a highway
would nut be neutralized by common consent, and that every
civilized country, knowing that the means of attack, if any,
would be mutual, if not equal, would be ready, on the
demand of England, to snake the tunnel sacred ground in
time of war? I believe, however, that the fears of The Times
have been anticipated, and that a conventien, still subsisting
and covering the whole question, was made some years ago
between France and England; and certainly the Parliament
of England has, without, so far as know, any warning frora
The Times, inserted powers to authorize the needful works
In formal Acts of Parliament?

I have always believed that all that promoted the great
interests of the world was for the good of our empire. And
if no great work of peace must be prosecuted for fear of
some chance of war, then certainly we should stop the supply

of arms and ships of war from our workshops to the world
at large. The Mont 'Cenis tunnel of eight miles has been
opened for some years, yet no one has been " suffocat,ed."
The St. Gothard tunnel of nine miles is about to be °pawl,
Between Aberdeen and London there is a greater total length
of tunnel traversed by night and b than the length cf
the proposed bore under the Ch e .
The numerous means of ventilation known to practical
science are as easily applied to twenty Miles of double
tunnels side by side as to the thousands of miles of under-
ground railways in the bowels of the earth and under the sea
in our coal and other mines. These ngues are in several
edges 2,0 Oft. from the surface, whereas C Channel tunnel
in its lowest part will be little over 2001 t., for the Channel
at its greatest depth is only 18011.
I may add that all the details of the proposed work have
been thoroughly thought out ; that men of science on both
sides of the Channel are c mcurrent in opinion ; and that the
experiments will proceed in full belief that within a very
brief period of years l'he Times, taken through the tunnel,
will be placed on the breakfast tables of the people of Paris
on the morning, of publication.—l have the honour to be very
faithfully yours, El. W. WATKIN.
Emma-room, London-bridge Station, S.E., June 18.