CABLE NEW. [BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.-COPYRIGHT.] THE CHANNEL TUNNEL.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIII, Issue 26, 31 January 1907, Page 7

CABLE NEW. [BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.-COPYRIGHT.]

THE CHANNEL TUNNEL.

PROTESTS AGAINST THE SCHEME. [PUESS ASSOCIATION.] (Received January 31, 8.12 a.m.) LONDON, 30th January. The Nineteenth Century has issued an extra supplement, which includes many opinions and protests against tho Channel tunnel scheme for connecting England j with France. HISTORY OF THE SCHEME. FORMER BORINGS STILL INTACT. Tho present Channel Tunnel scheme first took shape in 1875 with the formation of the "iSociete Francaise dv Tunnel Sous-Marin," and the ac^ptance by the French and English Governments of tho principle. Three years earlier the Channel Tunnel Company had been incorporated in England, but had not got further than a lengthy correspondence with the^ Foreign Office and the Board of Trade. In 1875, Bills promoted in France and England received the assent of President MacMahon and Queen Victoria, and experimental works began on both sides. On the English side a spot under the South Foreland, St. Margaret's Bay, was chosen for the first essay in Channel tunnelling. The Frenchmen chose the quiet little village of Sangatte, about six miles from Calais. There was considerable difference in the amount of work done. Hampered by parliamentary restrictions, the English company did very little. The French company, on the other hand, paving a capital of £80,000, subscribed I "by the Chemin de Fer dv Nerd and Messrs. Rothschild, went ahead rapidly. Mine-sinking machinery was erected, a vertical shaft sunk to the depth of sixty yards, and the tunnel was commenced. WAR OFFICE ALARMED. On the English side matters remained in abeyance until 1880, when the SouthEastern Railway, then under the vigorous managemsnt of the late Sir Edward Watkin, began operations at ShakespeaTo's Ch2, Dover. The French and English companies were then working with success, each having found a stratum of grey chalk, impermeable to water, which seemed to offer an easy pathway to a meeting-place under the Channel. In 1881 the French engineers had bored seaward a considerable distance, and the English had gone a mile. Unless unexpected difficulties were met, a fault in the grey chalk or a cleft in the bed of the Channel, ten years would have seen the completion of the work, v, Unfortunately unexpected opposition arose from the military authorities. Lord Wolseiey, up to that time a friendly critic, began to talk of the dangers of invasion. The War Office next took alarm, and appointed a committee to examine the scheme from this point of view. Means of speedily destroying the tunnel weie suggested, but the majority of the committee were adverse. . In the following year — 1882 — a joint committee of the Houses of Parliament again considered it, calling civil and military witnesses. Again lUe fear of invasion was brought prominently forward. Two notable authorities were almost alone in ridiculing the danger. The late Sir Andrew Clarke, Inspector-General of Fortifications, thought that a system of radiating galleries from a land shaft would enable the tunnel to be blown up at the first alarm. Sir John Adye held that "a narrow boring twenty miles long under the sea, and tseiminating in asmall hole m England, did not appear to bo very difficult of defence or destruction," and, if ever aiiy enemy attempted an invasion, he was ready to take down some of tho Kentish volunteers "an<l frighten them away." FORMER WORKS INTACT. Actual work on the English side of the Channel ceased in July, 1882, a year before the presentation of the coinmibuce v adverse report, the Board of Trade ha\mg obtained an injunction '•est/'aining the company from proceeding without further powers. At that time tho English borings consisted of a shaft near the west end of Shakespeare's Cliff, 160 ft deeg, with a 7ft tunnel extending seaward for 2015 yards, another shaft at Abbots Cliff with 880 yards of submarine tunnel, and a third on the DoVer side of Shakespetvre's Cliff. These tunnels and shafts still remain in a state of complete repair. When work stopped, tho principal gallery from Sangatte on the French side extended into the grey chalk a distance of upwards of one mile, and was proceeding at the rate of twenty-seven yards a day. As on the English side, everything has been kept in rep&n. Both the engineers who began the tunnel on either side of the Channel are alive to-day. Mr. Francis Brady, who plepured the first plans in 1875, is still in charge ot the English end ; M. Ludovic Breton, whet has been studying the question at Sangatto for the last twenty years, is superintending experiments there.