NEW ATLANTIC ISLAND.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18650, 20 August 1930, Page 12

NEW ATLANTIC ISLAND.

A CITY OF STEEL. FRENCH ENGINEER’S PLANS. A newer Atlantis, a city anchored on the ocean between the Old and the New Worlds—such is the daring proposal of M. Leon Foenquinos, a Marseilles engineer and inventor. He proposes that the city of his dreams should stand on an island of steel, above the northern part of the submarine plateau which runs northwest from the Azores.

There the Atlantic is only about 250 feet deep. It will be “easy,” according to M. Foenquinos, to hitch the island to the sea-bed at that comparatively slight depth. "My island,” says M. Foenquinos, “will be a vast circular basin with a double bottom and a wide rim. It will have a diameter of nearly a mile, and its height will be about 100 feet.lt will sink about half its height into the sea, the displacement being about 22,000,000 tons. The island and the city on it will be protected by a series of floating dikes spread around like a gigantic spiders’ web. Even the biggest Atlantic waves would, I believe, lose all their force long before they reached the island when they strike this encircling barrier.”

M. Foenquinos proposes to place his new Atlantic City on the broad rim of the island. There will be houses of the most modern description, broad streets and boulevards, squares and gardens, shops, theatres and cinemas, together with "plages” where up-to-date hotels and restaurants will be found. Inside the island, and under the city, there will be a circular railway. Four great "Eiffel Towers" will be erected to act as lighthouses and wireless masts. Inside the city will be the island’s great port, the entrances to which will be under the four towers. The biggest Atlantic liner will be able to enter and find a perfectly calm anchorage.” “But," M. Foenquinos goes on, “this harbour will be of greater importance I in the case of hydroplanes crossing ! the Atlantic. They will be able to ! alight on a broad and perfectly smooth I sheet of water. Atlantic flights will ! never be really safe and practicable until there is a port of call about halfway across the ocean.”

M. Foenquinos has not reckoned the cost of the realisation of his tremendous dream, though he knows it will run into many milliards of franc (or tens of millions of pounds sterling). “I know, of course,” he says, “that most people think such a project is either impossible or unnecessary. Flying (they say, for example) will soon be so perfect that ’no calling-place en route between Europe and America will be necessary.’ I am not so sure. What a lot we have done in the past decade to perfect the motor-car, yet trifling defects often leave one stranded halfway on one’s journey. I firmly believe that such an island will eventually prove to be absolutely necessary for air communication between the two continents. “Without it Atlantic flights wall long be adventures attended by serious risks. My Atlantic City would mean practical and safe transatlantic travel by air. It is bound to come, though perhaps not in our lifetime. Then there are the people who say such a project is impossible,” concludes M. j Foenquinos. Well, all I can say in , reply to that is that the word isn’t ’ French, at least.”—Marseilles correspondent of the Daily Chronicle.