THE CHANNEL PASSAGE.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVII, Issue 3456, 26 March 1872, Page 3

THE CHANNEL PASSAGE.

The Economist writes :— The project for a Channel steam ferry, stated to bo brought forward by M. Dupuy de Lome, the celebrated French naval constiuctor, acting for himself and also in the name of the Societie des Forges et Chanticrs de la Mediterranee, MM. Drouyn de Lhuys, Scott Russell, and others, appears to be the most promising,- practically, of the numerous schemes which have been invented for facilitating the passage between England and France. The idea is to construct threo large and powcri'ullyengined paddle-wheel steam ships, each capable of receiving a train of thirty carriages, and. that the trains,

on arriving at Dover or Calais, should be shunted into the vessels, so that passengers would be enabled to travel between London and Paris without change of carriages. Of course the steamers must be immensely large, and of peculiar* construction, to be capable of receiving trains of maximum dimensions ; and we observe that the steampower is to be 14<00 horse, capable of working up to 7000 horse, the vessels being 450 feet long and SO feet wide. The estimated rate of speed is eighteen knots an hour, and the passage will be performed in one hour and ten minutes in line weather, and one hour and thirty minutes in bad. It is clear that by means of vessels of this sort, and without change of carriage, passengers will be enabled to effect the Channel passage with some degree of comfort, and tlie construction of the vessels cannot present such novel difficulties as that of a. bridge across, or a tunnel under, the Channel. The greatest novelty about the new scheme will be the construction of special harbors or docks to accommodate the mammoth steamers, and it is proposed on the French side to • construct a dock in the form of a quadrant a mile and a quarter north-east of Calais pier head, and at a distance of three-quarters of a mile from the shore, with which the communication could be effected by a bridge having a single line of rails. The French Government, with whom the promoters are negotiating, will be asked to use its good offices with the English Government to supply sufficient accommodation at Dover. The most minute arrangements are made in the project for transferring the trains from the shore to the steamers, and vice versa, and the engineering authority of the promoters is such that the execution of the scheme may be considered easy — the practical point of course being the cost, which for the three steamers will be £400,000. Among the conditions required of the French Government is a mail contract for twenty years, with an annual subsidy of £20,000, and the projectors, if successful, hope to obtain a similar contract and a subsidy from the English Government.