Horse-drawn Chunnel vision
QUESTION My Dad told me work to build a Channel Tunnel started in England in the Seventies, but was then cancelled. Was this true?
As EARLY as 1802, Albert Mathieu-Favier, a French mining professor, put forward a plan for a Channel tunnel, through which horse- drawn carriages would trundle, with oil lamps lighting the way.
He conceived giant chimneys to ventilate his tunnel. However, concerns over national security stalled the plans.
By the latter half of the century, interest was re-kindled. soil surveys discovered that the chalk under the Channel would be relatively easy to tunnel through.
Confidence in such projects was high following Marc Isambard Brunel’s 1,300ft Thames tunnel (1843); the 100-mile suez Canal (1869); and the eight-mile railway tunnel that had been cut through the Alps in 1871.
In 1875 an Act of Parliament authorised the Channel Tunnel Company Ltd to start preliminary trials. This was an AngloFrench project.
By 1877 several shafts had been sunk to a depth of 330ft at sangatte in France, but initial work carried out at st Margaret’s Bay, to the east of Dover, had to be abandoned due to flooding.
In 1880, south Eastern Railway chairman sir Edward Watkin and French suez Canal contractor Alexandre Lavalley conducted exploratory works on either side of the Channel, coming together in 1882 under the umbrella of the submarine Railway Company.
In 1880, No. 1 shaft was sunk and a 7ft diameter pilot tunnel begun below Abbot’s Cliff, between Dover and Folkestone, 10ft above high water level.
Initially a boring machine invented by Colonel Frederick Beaumont MP was used for the work, but this was supplanted by the superior rotary boring machine invented by Captain Thomas English. This machine was 33ft long, powered by compressed air and capable of cutting half a mile per month.
However, the project was again to be stymied by military concerns. Top brass, led by General sir Garnet Wolseley, petitioned Parliament that French legions could invade through the Channel. MPs caved in and the Board of Trade cancelled the project in July 1883. The entrance to Watkin’s tunnel works in the cliff face contains hundreds of yards of supported tunnels, though it is closed for safety reasons. Michael P. Smith, Margate, Kent.
QUESTION Who coined the word Brexit?
THE term Brexit wasn’t original. It was adapted from ‘Grexit’, which was used to describe the possibility of a Greek exit from the eurozone as a consequence of that country’s financial turmoil in the early part of this decade.
Citigroup economist Ebrahim Rahbari is the earliest known source for the term Grexit and it was used by him and Citigroup’s Global chief economist William H. Butler on February 6, 2012.
It may have first appeared on social media, probably Twitter, where contractions are used to reduce character count.
The term Brexit first appears in May 2012 by economics blogger Peter Wilding in a post entitled stumbling Towards The Brexit. It was used on Twitter later that day by journalist David Gow.
The words Grexit and Brexit have coined similar terms to describe the potential exit of countries from the EU, among them swexit (sweden) and Frexit (France). More imaginative are the words humourists have coined for the Czech Republic, Portugal and Finland — Czechout, Departugal and Finish.
Bob Dillon, Edinburgh.
QUESTION What were the worst warships of the 20th century?
FURTHER to an earlier answer, my grandfather’s ship, HMs Marshal Ney, would be in the running for this title. she was a monitor — a seagoing artillery platform in World War I, used to bombard enemy positions onshore but never intended to take on other enemy vessels.
A shallow draft barge with a battleship turret, she had two 15 in guns and was powered by German diesel engines. It was these engines that put paid to her brief career as a fighting ship. My grandfather, H. J. Tweedie, took command of her while she was still on
the stocks at Palmers in Jar
row in 1915. she was slightly damaged in a Zeppelin raid just before she was launched by the captain’s wife, my grandmother. During commissioning it was found to be impossible to keep both engines running at once. Tweedie recalled optimistically that only on two occasions did both engines fail altogether. He described her seagoing qualities as that of a washtub. If she was given too much helm, it was better to let her go in a complete circle. But the Army in Flanders was desperate for Ney’s services, so many of her failings were overlooked.
The Ney was stationed at Dunkirk and would move up the coast to engage shore targets around Ostend. It was here the Germans had established the Tirpitz artillery battery. There ensued a number of artillery duels between this battery and the British monitors.
During one such operation, both of Ney’s engines failed and she had to be towed out of range by the destroyer Viking. Eventually the engines were got going, but on entering port the steering gear gave up. The Ney put a 90ft dent in the wooden pier.
After being ordered back to Cowes and southampton for repairs, the Ney moved to Dover, where one of her engines exploded and the cylinder head punched a hole through the armoured deck above it. No one was hurt, but it signalled the end of her fighting career.
Admiral Bacon wrote in his book The Dover Patrol, 1915 To 1917: ‘These monitors did useful work with their guns, but they also, especially the Marshal Ney, provided the patrol with excitement and amusement. Good old Ney, with her cheery Captain, Captain Tweedie! How we missed them both afterwards!’
Simon Tweedie, Moffat, Dumfries & Galloway.