ENGLISH CHANNEL TUNNEL PANIC. 



285 



tests were signed by people who had acquired 

 distinction in every walk of life poets and 

 soldiers, clergymen, statesmen, judges, mer- 

 chants, noblemen and trades-union officials. 

 The people were exhorted to shut their ears 

 against ridicule and close their minds to argu- 

 ment in a matter on which the fate of England 

 depended. Peers and members of Parliament 

 who visited the works at Dover were warned 

 against the conversational wiles of Sir Edward 

 Watkin and the bribery of his " champagne 

 lunches." 



The danger apprehended by the panic-mon- 

 gers was that by a stealthy and treacherous 

 stroke executed in the midst of profound peace 

 the French might seize the English end of the 

 tunnel and forward by train through the sub- 

 marine passage a force which exceeds the ex- 

 isting military strength of England. An army 

 of one hundred and fifty thousand men would 

 be able to sweep everything before it. It 

 could be transported through the tunnel in a 

 day or two, and march into London in four or 

 five days. An expedition of two thousand 

 men could capture Dover and hold it while the 

 troops were coming by the railroad. It would 

 require no stronger force to overpower the 

 garrison after effecting an entrance into the 

 fortress by surprise or by escalade. A body of 

 two thousand could either come by trains after 

 taking possession of the telegraph and using 

 artifices which could not be detected, or they 

 could be disembarked in the harbor on any 

 dark night, or they could come in disguise and 

 collect on the British shore, arming themselves 

 from secret stores of weapons. The British 

 navy would be powerless while the French 

 were pouring their battalions into the heart of 

 England. The temptation to an unscrupulous 

 military adventurer, whose dire ambition might 

 never be suspected under his perhaps " lawyer- 

 like exterior," would be the richest and the 

 easiest conquest which the world offers. In 

 possession of the capital and of the arsenal at 

 Woolwich, from which alone a fresh army 

 could be equipped, the French might exact 

 any terms, perhaps fifteen milliards of francs, 

 the surrender of the British fleet, and probably 

 the British end of the tunnel. The last loss 

 would be irreparable. If Britain could ever 

 hold up her head again among nations, it 

 would only be by adopting the system of uni- 

 versal military service. France with her whole 

 population under arms need fear nothing from 

 England, but bridging the " wet ditch " would 

 destroy the independent position of the " tight 

 little island," and entail the military system 

 upon Great Britain under which the Conti- 

 nental nations groan. 



These fears, springing rather from sentiment 

 than reason, could not be understood by Moltke 

 and other European strategists, but they pre- 

 vailed among the soldiers and sailors of Great 

 Britain. On the Continent, railroads cross 

 every frontier in all directions. The nations are 

 glad to have their mountain barriers pierced by 



tunnels, and do not even fortify the entrances. 

 The Germans, when invading France, left the 

 railway cars and marched around tunnels for 

 fear of arrangements for their destruction. 

 The French Government has favored every 

 project for bridging the channel.* They have 

 never felt any tremors. 



The English advocates of the tunnel have 

 met the anxieties of the military alarmists by 

 proposing plans for rendering the tunnel-mouth 

 secure from the imaginary treachery and sur- 

 prise. As long as the British ironclads hold 

 the sea, a few well-directed shells from a frigate 

 could close the mouth of the tunnel at any 

 time. The Castle of Dover is considered a 

 first-class fortress, and safe from capture by a 

 coup de main. A strong outwork, or casemated 

 batteries excavated in the cliffs, with guns con- 

 stantly trained upon the entrance to the tun- 

 nel, could be built and connected with the fort 

 by a subterranean passage. A narrow gallery 

 could be dug from the fort down to the tun- 

 nel, and arrangements made by which the tun- 

 nel could be flooded by having iron pipes pass- 

 ing from the sea into the tunnel, closed by 

 stop-cocks, which could be turned at any time 

 by the officer of the guard. The ventilating 

 engines could pump their smoke into the -tun- 

 nel instead of air, and it would at once become 

 impassable. Reservoirs could be opened, let- 

 ting carbonic-acid gas flow into the tunnel. 

 Colonel Frederick Beaumont suggested that 

 trains should emerge from the tunnel by being 

 lifted through a vertical shaft by hydraulic 

 elevators, and that the inclined gallery con- 

 necting the tunnel with the land lines should be 

 blocked by a time mechanism, in such a way 

 that it would require some definite time to 

 open it to traffic, and that its entrance should 

 be directly under fire from the batteries. The 

 arrangement of a hydraulic lift was deemed a 

 sufficient safeguard by Lord Dunsany and Gen- 

 eral Wolseley, the leading opponents of the tun- 

 nel, but one which would deprive the passage 

 of its value for speedy transit. 



Two projects for a channel tunnel were sub- 

 mitted to Parliament, and referred to a com- 



* Napoleon Bonaparte, when First Consul, took an inter- 

 est in the plans of Matthieu for a tunnel. Thome de Gomond 

 elaborated a scheme in 1856 which the third Napoleon pro- 

 posed to put to the test. It was for a tunnel with ventilating 

 shafts rising through thirteen artificial islands. Several en- 

 gineers, fearing the danger of a tunnel's crossing fissures or 

 quicksands, have proposed submerged tubes. Bateman, an 

 English engineer, planned a cast-iron tube built out in sep- 

 arate lengths, within a sliding cylinder. Zerah Colburn, the 

 American engineer, suggested constructing one eighteen feet 

 in diameter on a dry-dock, and hauling it out as each section 

 was added, until the floating tube reached the opposite coast. 

 Bradford Leslie, an engineer from India, worked out a plan 

 for a tubular floating tunnel held down to a certain depth 

 under the water by anchors. A visionary project for a bridge 

 over the strait was considered by Louis Napoleon. Low's 

 plans for a tunnel, approved by Sir John Hawkshaw, which 

 were the basis of the present enterprise, were propounded 

 about 186T. John Fowler has taken advantage of the recent 

 controversy to revive his scheme for conveying railroad trains 

 across on ferry-boats. Sir Henry Bessemer's ingenious ship 

 with a swinging saloon, which knocked away a portion of the 

 Calais pier, failed because its shallow draught rendered it un- 

 steady. Captain Dicey's double-hulled steamers proved too 

 slow. 



