by another long memorandum on the tunnel question by Sir Garnet
Wolseley. In this document of some twenty thousand words, which
was conveniently furnished with numerous marginal headings like
"Why tunnels through the Alps afford no argument in favor of the
Channel Tunnel," "The Tunnel an acknowledged danger," "What national
advantage then justifies its construction," "Many tunnels will be
constructed," "What we owe to the Channel," and "Danger of surprise
of our fortifications without warning! Fatal result!!," Sir Garnet
recapitulated and elaborated at great length upon his previous
arguments against the tunnel and added several new ones. Sir Garnet
went into fine detail concerning the possibility of a sudden seizure
of the English end of the tunnel and, simultaneously, Dover, by the
French. For example, to his previous description of how hostile
French forces might come by train through the tunnel dressed in
ordinary clothes he added the detail that they might also travel
in the carriages "at express speed, with the blinds down, in their
uniforms and fully armed"—their co-conspirators at the other end
meanwhile having rendered it "not likely that ticket-takers or
telegraph operators on the French side would be allowed any channel
of communicating with us until the operation had been effected." Sir
Garnet was equally explicit about the situation at Dover. Warning that
"the civilian may start in horror at the statement that Dover could
also be taken by surprise," General Wolseley declared that, as things
stood, anybody at all, any night, was free to walk up to any of the
forts at Dover, and, "if he would announce himself to be an officer
returning home to barracks, the wicket would be opened to him, and
if he entered he would see but two men, one the sentry, the other
the noncommissioned officer who had been roused up from sleep by the
sentry to unlock the gate." General Wolseley demonstrated how such a
caller might well be "a dashing partisan leader" of a French raiding
party that had landed in Dover in the dead of night, in calm or foggy
weather, from steamers, and had already quietly knocked down and
silenced any watchman or other witnesses in the dark area. He showed
how such a _soi-disant_ English officer and his accomplices "might thus
easily obtain an entrance into every fort in Dover; the sentry and the
sleepy sergeant might be easily disposed of. The rifles of our sentries
at home are not loaded, and the few men on guard [could be] made
prisoners whilst asleep on their guard bed." Thus, General Wolseley
said, the intruders could quickly effect the seizure of all the forts
in Dover—"In an hour's time from the moment when our end of the tunnel
was taken possession of by the enemy, large reinforcements could reach
Dover through the tunnel, and ... before morning dawned, Dover might
easily be in possession of 20,000 of the enemy, and every succeeding
hour would add to that number." With Dover done in, London would be
next, and the future commander-in-chief of the British Army went on to
show how the enemy force, now swelled to 150,000 men, once it reached
London and occupied the Thames from there to the arsenal at Woolwich,
could dictate its own terms of peace, which he estimated at a rough
guess as the payment of six hundred million pounds and the surrender
of the British Fleet, with the English end of the tunnel remaining
permanently in the hands of the French, so that "the perpetual yoke of
servitude would be ours for ever."
Concerning all the various measures proposed to protect the tunnel,
Sir Garnet had no confidence in them at all. He stressed once more
the unreliability of anything mechanical or electrical, and he added
the new argument that whatever secret devices, such as mines, were
installed in the tunnel for its protection were bound to come to the
knowledge of the enemy sooner or later. Any military secret, General
Wolseley said, was a purchasable secret; he illustrated his argument
with an observation concerning a meeting between Napoleon I and
Alexander I of Russia:
No two men were more loyally followed or had more absolute authority
than Napoleon and Alexander. No two men had a stronger wish or
stronger motive for keeping secret the words which passed between them
personally in a most private conference in a raft in the middle of
a river. Yet, by paying a large sum our Ministry obtained the exact
terms of the secret agreement the two had there arrived at. Moreover,
our Ministry obtained that information so immediately that they were
able to act in anticipation of the designs formed by the two Emperors.
Finally, having discussed, in the most elaborate fashion, all the
measures that his previous opposition to the scheme had caused to be
proposed for the defense of the tunnel, Sir Garnet condemned them
on the ground of their very elaborateness. "If in any one of these
respects our security fails, it fails in all," he wrote of the multiple
precautions recommended by Sir Archibald Alison's scientific committee.
Thus, in General Wolseley's eyes, the defense of the tunnel was
foredoomed as a self-defeating process, and was therefore a practical
impossibility.
The question of the multiplicity of the proposed defenses was handled
in different fashion in a further War Office memorandum on the tunnel,
issued by the Duke of Cambridge, the Army Commander-in-Chief and a
cousin of Queen Victoria. "Nothing has impressed me more with the
magnitude of the danger which the construction of this proposed tunnel
would bring with it," the Duke of Cambridge wrote, "than the amount
of precautions and their elaborateness [proposed by] this Scientific
Committee.... If this danger was small, as some would have the country
believe, why should all these complicated precautions be necessary?"
The Duke of Cambridge fully endorsed the position taken by Sir Garnet
Wolseley. He protested "most emphatically" against the construction
of a Channel tunnel and "would most earnestly beg Her Majesty's
Government" to consider with the utmost gravity the perils of surprise
attack upon the country arising out of even a modified scheme that
would take into account the recommendations of the Alison committee.
To his memorandum His Royal Highness appended a copy of a report
that he had had his intelligence service put together specially in
connection with the tunnel question—a long account purporting to
show some hundred and seven instances occurring in the history of
the previous two hundred years where hostilities between states had
been started without any prior declaration of war, or even any decent
notification.
If anything seemed likely to have been successfully blocked up and
finished off under all this bombardment, it was Sir Edward Watkin's
Channel-tunnel scheme. Curiously enough, the Board of Trade, which
had ordered the tunnel workings stopped back in April and had no
intention of issuing a working permit for them now, was not altogether
convinced of this. In fact, since April the Board had been developing
the suspicion that something peculiar might be going on down under the
sea at Shakespeare Cliff. Back in the early part of April, the Board
of Trade's order to the Submarine Continental Railway Company to stop
its tunneling activities was received, as one might expect, with some
anguish. The first formal reaction was a letter from the permanent
secretary of the company to T. H. Farrer, the secretary of the Board
of Trade, saying that the company would of course acquiesce in the
orders of the board, but begging, at the same time, to be allowed to
continue the present gallery extending from the main, or Number Two,
shaft at Shakespeare Cliff a short distance further, so as to be able
to complete the first stage of the works—the junction of the main
gallery with the new gallery extending from the ventilating, or Number
Three, shaft. This letter was followed on April 9 by another from Sir
Edward Watkin addressed to Joseph Chamberlain, the president of the
Board of Trade, urgently repeating the request, this time on the ground
of safety. Sir Edward wrote Mr. Chamberlain:
The moment the Board of the Tunnel Company decided to obey you, I
peremptorily ordered the works to be stopped. The [boring] machine has
been silent since Thursday evening. But the Engineer sends me a very
startling report and warning.
He fears _defective ventilation_ [owing to stoppage of the air-driven
boring machine] and danger to life—quite apart from depriving a fine
body of skilled workmen of their bread, and general loss and damage
in money. I can only reply to him that I am acting under your order.
Still ... this is the first time the ventilation of a mine has been
so interfered with. Should the engineer's alarm be well founded, and
should men faint from bad air at the end of the gallery, there would
be no means of getting them out alive.
Sir Edward added, without changing his tone of humane agitation,
that only the day before he had received a request from the Duke of
Edinburgh to be allowed to see the tunnel workings, along with the
Duchess, ten days hence, and that the Speaker of the House of Commons
had already arranged to visit the tunnel "on Saturday, the 22nd,
leaving Charing Cross at eleven." "What must be done?" he asked. Mr.
Chamberlain replied promptly by telegraph that if the stopping of
the machinery in the tunnel was constituting a danger to life, he
authorized Sir Edward, pending further investigation of the situation
by the Board of Trade, temporarily to keep the machinery going to the
extent of preventing this danger. However, he followed up this telegram
with a letter to Sir Edward in which he expressed himself as being "not
able to understand the exact nature of the physical danger anticipated"
by Sir Edward in the tunnel if the workings were stopped. "I do not see
the necessity for workmen remaining in the tunnel where the ventilation
is likely to be defective," Mr. Chamberlain observed. He added that he
was making arrangements to have one of the Board of Trade inspectors
visit the tunnel to investigate the situation.
On April 11, the Board of Trade duly telegraphed Sir Edward that its
chief inspector of railways, Colonel Yolland, of the Royal Engineers,
would be at Dover at noon the next day to investigate the ventilation
problem in the tunnel. Sir Edward, however, wired back that he was
unable to meet the Colonel at Dover that day and could not make an
appointment with him "until after the visit to the works of the Duke of
Edinburgh on Tuesday next."
To this the Board of Trade replied, on April 13, that Colonel Yolland
had been instructed to visit the tunnel works "entirely out of regard
to the very urgent and grave question raised in your letter ...
respecting the ventilation of the boring" and that the department was
finding it difficult to understand why Colonel Yolland's visit to
the tunnel should be postponed. Sir Edward's answer to this was to
invite Mr. Chamberlain down into the tunnel personally, so that Sir
Edward could "show and explain everything," since "until you have
seen, and had explained to you, on the spot as Mr. Gladstone did and
had, and as we hope the Duke of Edinburgh will next Tuesday, the
nature and condition of our works, it is, in my humble judgement,
impossible to discuss the question with exactitude." He said nothing
about the possibility of Mr. Chamberlain's or the Duke and Duchess of
Edinburgh's being asphyxiated in the tunnel. Mr. Chamberlain declined
the invitation; he said he had ordered Colonel Yolland down to Dover
immediately to report on the tunnel. But Colonel Yolland didn't get
down into the tunnel to make an inspection that month. Some impediment,
some unanticipated difficulty always seemed to arise when things
appeared to be about to straighten themselves out. By the beginning
of May, the Board of Trade, still trying, flatly informed Sir Edward
that Colonel Yolland and Walter Murton, its solicitor, would inspect
the tunnel workings on May 6. But on May 4 the general manager of the
South-Eastern Railway replied that "Sir Edward Watkin wishes me to say
that he regrets very much that it will be quite impossible to arrange
for such inspection to take place on that date." He suggested that Sir
Edward could arrange it for the 13th. The Board of Trade, replying
immediately, insisted on its taking place "not later than Wednesday
next." That letter was met with the answer that "Sir Edward Watkin
is at present out of town, and is not expected to return until early
next week." He must have stayed out of town quite a while, because the
Board of Trade heard nothing from the company until May 18, when the
directors of the company, writing jointly, told the department that
while they acquiesced in the request of Colonel Yolland and Mr. Murton
to visit the tunnel, unfortunately "the machinery is under repair,"
and as a consequence "it would not be ... safe for those gentlemen
to go down the shaft." However, the directors added, hopefully, they
felt sure that "by working the machinery, air compressors, and pumping
engines for a few days and nights" their engineers could get everything
in order for a proper tour of inspection. On May 24 Mr. Murton tried
again. He wrote the tunnel proprietors, notifying them that "Colonel
Yolland and myself propose to inspect the tunnel works on Saturday next
the 27th instant." But the company's reply to the letter was regretful.
It said that "the repairs to the winding engine cannot be completed
until after Whitsuntide."
Meanwhile, Mr. Murton was having his difficulties with the solicitor
of the South-Eastern over the legal question of the company's claims
to ancient manorial rights to the use of the foreshore at Shakespeare
Cliff, as the tone of various letters he was obliged to write
indicates. For example:
DEAR SIR,
May I remind you that I have not yet received the abstract of title; I
beg that you will at once send it to me....
I am, & c.,
WALTER MURTON
Or again:
DEAR SIR,
I am without answer to my letter of the 31st ultimo. I beg you will
let me know without further delay whether you do or do not propose to
send me abstract of title.
I am, & c.,
WALTER MURTON
Or yet again:
DEAR SIR,
Will you kindly write me a reply to my letters which I can send on to
the Board of Trade.
Yours, & c.,
WALTER MURTON
By June 9, the Board of Trade became quite out of patience over the
matter of inspecting the tunnel. Introducing an ominous note, it
informed Sir Edward that Mr. Chamberlain "feels that he must insist
upon this visit of inspection, and if he understands that permission
is refused, will be compelled to place the matter in the hands of his
legal advisers, with the view of determining and enforcing the rights
of the Crown." Sir Edward was indignant. In reply, he declared that
he was being subjected to an "undeserved threat." Mr. Chamberlain,
responding, denied that the threat was undeserved. He wrote firmly:
Hitherto, on one ground or another, this inspection has been again and
again postponed.
I am bound to guard the rights of the Crown in this matter, and I
desire to ascertain whether those rights have up to the present time
been in any way invaded.
This is the object of the inspection, and as it will not brook delay
... I have only now to ask an immediate answer stating definitely when
it can take place.
Sir Edward's answer was once more to beg Mr. Chamberlain himself to
join a party of prominent visitors going down to see the tunnel; he
added that "Colonel Yolland shall be at once communicated with."
But by various intervening circumstances—joint letters got up by the
tunnel promoters to the Prime Minister and to the Board of Trade
protesting hard treatment, and so on—the Board of Trade found itself
brooking delays all through the month of June. On June 26, the Board
of Trade wrote in stern fashion to Sir Edward that the demands of the
Board of Trade to inspect the tunnel workings "have been repeatedly
formulated and persistently evaded on behalf of the Submarine
Continental Railway Company," and that the only way the company could
avoid legal action by the Crown was "to consent _at once_ to the
proposed inspection." There was no satisfactory reply from the tunnel
proprietors, and on July 5 the Board of Trade, after due notification
to the Submarine Continental Railway Company, obtained an order from
Mr. Justice Kay, in the High Court of Justice, restraining the tunnel
promoters and their employees from "further working or excavating,
or taking or interfering with any chalk, soil, or other substance"
in the Channel tunnel without the consent of the Board of Trade, and
ordering them to give the department access to the tunnel to inspect
the workings. In the course of these judicial proceedings, a number of
affidavits presented to Mr. Justice Kay by the Government revealed the
interesting information that the Board of Trade, finding itself unable
to obtain access for its inspectors into the tunnel, for some time
past had felt itself obliged to station watchers on top of Shakespeare
Cliff and on the sea regularly to spy upon the tunnel workings and
to count the number of bucketfuls of soil it maintained had been
removed from the workings. And, according to all its calculations, the
Board of Trade had little doubt that the proprietors of the Submarine
Continental Railway Company were deliberately and surreptitiously
tunneling under the sea below low-water mark, on Crown property, and
burrowing into and removing chalk of the realm.
Intimation of what was in store for him in the High Court of Justice
reached Sir Edward Watkin at the very time that he was showing a party
of distinguished people, including Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of
the Suez Canal, around the tunnel. A glimpse of that interesting visit
is contained in a report in the London _Times_:
M. de Lesseps, while down in the tunnel and under the sea, proposed
the health of the Queen, remarking that the completion of the work was
required in the interest of mankind.
When all the visitors were again above ground, luncheon was served in
a marquee.
Sir E. Watkin, in proposing the health of M. de Lesseps, remarked
that there were those in our country who seemed to consider that the
work of the company they had just inspected was a crime. He had just
received a telegram informing him that he would have to answer on
Wednesday next at the instigation of the President of the Board of
Trade before a court of law for having committed the crime of carrying
on these experiments. (Hisses and groans.)
Somewhat revealingly, Sir Edward added, when the signs of indignation
subsided, that
For his own part, if he was to be committed by a court of law for
contempt, he should have this consolation—that the proceedings
which had been taken against him had been delayed sufficiently long
to enable him with his colleagues to have the honor of entertaining
M. de Lesseps, in whom he should have a witness, if he had to call
one, to prove that they had been engaged in a work which had been as
successful as he believed it would be ultimately useful.
At long last, supported by all the might of the Crown, Colonel Yolland
got to the tunnel on July 8 to make his inspection of the workings.
But upon his arrival there he found, to his chagrin, that "I was not
provided, at the time ... with all the necessary means for making the
measurements, and taking the requisite bearings" in the tunnel, and he
was obliged to put his inspection off once more. Properly equipped,
he descended into the tunnel a week later, on Saturday, July 15, and
inspected everything, including the boring apparatus that Sir Edward
had insisted had to be used to ventilate the gallery and prevent
loss of life. What Colonel Yolland found there caused the Board of
Trade, five days later, to send a most severe letter to the tunnel
proprietors. In it, the Board declared:
1. That the means of ventilating the tunnel could have been and be so
readily disconnected from the boring machine (i.e., by the movement
of a single lever that would pour a stream of compressed air coming
from the supply pipe directly into the tunnel) that it has never been
necessary that a single inch of cutting should have taken place in
order to protect life or to secure ventilation, nor can such necessity
arise in the future.
2. That in spite of the repeated orders of the Board of Trade, and
the assurances of the Secretary of the Submarine Railway Company and
Sir Edward Watkin himself that those orders were acquiesced in and
submitted to, the substantial work of boring has nevertheless been
carried to a distance of more than 600 yards from low-water mark (thus
constituting a trespass on the property of the Crown).
Calling these acts "a flagrant breach of faith" on the part of the
tunnel promoters, the Board of Trade wrote that henceforth the order
of the court "must be strictly and literally adhered to," and that
no work of maintenance, ventilation, drainage, or otherwise would be
allowed without the express permission of the board. Sir Edward Watkin
and his fellow directors, after some days, replied in hurt fashion to
what they termed "the unjustified accusations directed against them."
They reiterated their concern for the health of their employees in
the tunnel, and in connection with their tunneling activities below
low-water mark they came up with the ingenious explanation that "many
visits of Royal and other personages have been, by request, made to the
tunnel for purposes of inspection, and it was essential fully to work
the machine from time to time for the purpose of such visits." They
also sent a protest to Mr. Gladstone at 10 Downing Street against their
hard treatment, and asked for the Prime Minister's intercession with
the Board of Trade. But there was nothing doing. Mr. Gladstone politely
refused to act and replied that the actions of the Board of Trade had
the full sanction of the Government.
On August 5, Colonel Yolland descended once more into the tunnel
to make an inspection. He found things there in a rather run-down
condition. "The tunnel is not nearly so dry as it was when I first
saw it," he wrote in his report to the Board of Trade, referring to
the fact that the engineers had ceased work on the drainage of the
gallery. Colonel Yolland also mentioned in his report that during his
previous visit, on July 15, "I had an escape from what might have been
a serious accident. The wet chalk in the bottom of the tunnel, between
and outside the rails of the tramways, is so slippery and greasy that
it is almost impossible to keep on one's feet; and, on one occasion, I
suddenly slipped, and fell at full length on my back, and the back of
my head came against one of the iron rails of the tramway—fortunately
with no great force or my skull might have been seriously bruised or
fractured." The Colonel added, "There is not light enough in the tunnel
from the electric lamps to enable one to see one's way through ... so
that it is necessary to carry a lamp in one hand and a note-book in the
other, to record the different measurements." The Colonel then gave
some startling news. He declared that, according to his measurements,
somebody had advanced the length of the tunnel some seventy yards since
his inspection on July 15.