1/8/2024 0 Comments Channel tunnelIn 1881‑2 an inter-departmental committee (Board of Trade, War Office, Admiralty) examined the threat to Britain’s security, but also heard evidence emphasising the commercial advantages that a tunnel would bring. The threat to Britain from a continental invasion was an old anxiety, but its resurgence lay behind the Government’s decision to halt the tunnelling work. Then the window of opportunity closed when military opposition surfaced. Watkin’s abrasive approach also alienated the other promoters and the merchant bankers, and prevented an agreement with other parties, notably the other interested railway company, the London Chatham & Dover Railway. 4 Wolseley, 10 December 1881, in Correspondence with reference to the Proposed Construction of a Chan (.)ģ In 1882 the Board of Trade discovered that the South Eastern had exceeded its powers in tunnelling beyond the low-water mark without permission, and work was halted pending a decision by the High Court.Watkin’s entrepreneurial style embraced corner-cutting, which irritated both government ministers and civil servants. 3 Personal and political considerations worked against the tunnel. However, the British government revealed that it was unwilling either to take the project on or to underwrite it financially. By the time tunnelling was under way in the early 1880s his view had hardened, and in 1881 he tried to persuade Joseph Chamberlain, the President of the Board of Trade, that the tunnel should be a public investment. But, anticipating discussions which were repeated in relation to the 1960s tunnel promotion and then Eurotunnel 20 years later, he asserted that the tunnel could not be built by the private sector unless the governments provided some kind of financial guarantee. With his dreams for a Manchester-Paris Railroad, had he been born in the Brexit era he would certainly have been a Remainer. Like many buccaneering capitalists, Sir Edward Watkin was no philanthropist when it came to bearing financial risk. In both cases financing was affected by the reluctance of the private sector to commit to a large project with a long gestation period and uncertain outcomes. 5-6, 388.Ģ The opportunity thus presents itself to look at the financing and governance of major infrastructure projects through the experience of these two tunnels, a hundred years apart. 3 Ibid., Gourvish, The Official History, p.There was a further connection between the two projects, because a small portion of Watkin’s tunnel was incorporated into the service tunnel that exists today. These problems were also present a century later when the successful Tunnel, which will soon celebrate 25 years of operation, was promoted. 2 All this effort, came to nothing however, and it is clear that financing and governance difficulties lay at the heart of the matter. By 1883 it had driven three tunnels through the chalk, including a 7-foot tunnel some 2,026 yards (1,852 metres) in length. The works were then handed over to a separate concern, the Submarine Continental Railway Company. In 1880 the South Eastern obtained powers to bore pilot tunnels at a site favourable to the railway, and construction work began in the following year. It was at this stage that the Liberal politician Sir Edward Watkin, Chairman of the South Eastern Railway and other companies, entered the fray. Further progress depended on the French company reaching an agreement with a British counterpart, and although a Channel Tunnel Co had been created in 1872, this failed to attract support from either the British railway companies or the Rothschilds in England. 1 Not for the last time, the British were more cautious, however. Supported by the Rothschilds in France and the Nord railway, it was granted a concession for construction and began work on a pilot tunnel which extended to about 1,840 metres by 1883. On the French side a tunnel company, the Société du chemin de fer sous-marin entre la France et l’Angleterre, was established in 1875. In 1872 the British and French governments confirmed that they had no objection in principle to the building of a tunnel, and by 1876 a joint commission had set out the basic ground-rules for a treaty. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century a spirit of free trade had emerged, and in 1868 Napoleon III had lent his support to an Anglo-French consortium led by Michel Chevalier and Lord Richard Grosvenor. The Life and Times of Sir Edward Wat (.)ġ In Britain and France, 125 years ago, a number of promoters were still touting their ‘grand projet’, a tunnel under the sea between Britain and France.
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