Proposed Tunnel Under Dover Straits
The project of tunnelling a passage from England to France under Dover Straits is still talked of in England. The London Daily News of December 25 says of it:
“The plan of tunnelling beneath the Straits is not altogether a new one. Probably the success with which the Mont Cenis tunnel has been worked through the solid backbone of the Alpine range has attracted new attention to a scheme which on the face of it seems far from being impracticable. It must be remembered, however, that the difficulties to be encountered in tunnelling beneath the Straits of Dover are of a totally different character from those which the French engineers have had to meet with in tunnelling through the Alps. The soil to be traversed in the former instance would probably be the ‘second chalk formation,’ which may be assumed to extend in an unbroken course from the place of its uprising in England to the place in which it makes its appearance in France. It need hardly be said that the difficulty of perforating this soil would be very much less than that of perforating the hard and complicated material which has been encountered by the French engineers. On the other hand, however, there are dangers and difficulties in tunnelling under the Straits which more than make up for the comparative ease with which the mere process of perforation could be pursued. It needs but a slight acquaintance with the history of the construction of the Thames Tunnel to enable one to recognize the fact that the workers in the suggested tunnel beneath the Straits would be exposed to enormous risks from the effect of the pressure of the sea upon the stratum through which they would have to work. Again and again the water burst into the Thames Tunnel, and drove the workmen out. Brunel himself nearly lost his life during one of these irruptions. Now, if this happened beneath the Thames, what might be looked for from the effects of the enormous pressure of the sea to say nothing of the increased danger during heavy storms? And then the workmen in the Thames Tunnel had but a comparatively short distance to run, when they were threatened with an irruption of water, if such an event threatened workmen engaged nine or ten miles from either outlet of the suggested tunnel, escape would be hopeless. In a short time the whole length of the tunnel would be filled with the waters of the sea, and the labors of years would be rendered useless.
