QUEENSWAY TUNNEL

Taranaki Daily News, 6 October 1934, Page 21 (Supplement)

QUEENSWAY TUNNEL

KING AND MEN WHO MADE IT. GREAT THINGS MAN CAN DO. Few events in Liverpool have evoked so much enthusiasm as the opening of the Mersey Tunnel, that great engineering triumph. The King and Queen personified the feeling of all England in greeting and congratulating the people of Liverpool and Birkenhead on the great achievement, which will mean so much to the development of both these towns.

Workers all over England have contributed in some way to this, the largest under-water tunnel in the world, and the King did not forget these workers in the mines, quarries and steel-furnaces when he spoke to the men and women gathered at the opening. There was a fine imagination behind his speech, and this underground tunnel may be said to have emerged for a moment into the light o. day, and stood out before the world as a symbol- of what man can achieve.

Who could reflect without awe, said the King, that the will and power of men, which in our time had created the noble bridges of the Thames, the Forth, the Hudson and Sydney Harbour, could also drive tunnels such as this, wherein many streams of wheeled traffic might run in light and safety below the depths and turbulence of tidal water bearing the ships of the world? He thanked all those whose effort had achieved this miracle. He praised the imaginations that foresaw, the minds that planned, the skill that fashioned, the will that drove, the strong arms that endured, in bringing this work to completion, and he prayed that our peoples might always work together thus for the blessing of this kingdom, by wise and noble uses of the power man has won from Nature, and finally that those who used the tunnel should ever keep grateful thought for the many who struggled for long months against mud and darkness to bring it into being. The King then expressed his wish that the tunnel should be known as the Queensway, and personally thanked Sir Basil Mott and other engineers of all the firms that built it, and six of those who laboured with their hands on this magnificent enterprise.