“Like Painting the Forth Bridge…” Or: The Greatest Victorian Bridge, Finished at Last…For Now:

Recently, on the 9^th December 2011, the perpetual painting job on the magnificent Forth Railway Bridge in Scotland was at last completed. here is an article from BBC News heralding the end of this task

Originally, a bridge designed by Sir Thomas Bouch was going to cross the Firth of Forth and connect Edinburgh to Fife, but the tragic disaster that befell one of Bouch’s earlier bridges, the Tay (read about that disaster here) meant that the project was suspended, and eventually taken away from him altogether after a public enquiry found that he had utterly mis-designed the tragic Tay Bridge.

The Forth Bridge project was given instead to civil engineers Sir John Fowler (who had worked on the metropolitan underground line in London) and Sir Benjamin Baker (who had transported Cleopatra’s Needle from Egypt to London), who designed the fantastic bridge that stands to this day.

The building and construction was carried out by Glasgow engineering company ‘Sir William Arrol & Co.’ and this project was groundbreaking in a number of ways;

Firstly, it was the first bridge in Britain to be made entirely of nothing but steel – a relatively unknown quantity when it came to bridges – If the Forth Bridge is compared to another bridge designed in the same decade – Tower Bridge in London, the immediate thing that is noted is that the Forth is a fairly sparse looking structure; there is nothing showy to it, is not dressed up with cladding, it is 100% function, 0% aesthetic, and in being so (in my opinion) becomes 100% both, and I can think of no Bridge in the country as industrially picturesque.

The Forth Under Construction

Secondly, when the bridge opened in March 1890, it was the longest single cantilever bridge in the world (though it was overtaken in 1917 by the Quebec Bridge) and was Britain’s first cantilever bridge, but these records were not made simply for the sake of it; as with the appearance of the bridge, they were purely functional.

Following the Tay disaster, public confidence in railway bridges was significantly damaged. The under-engineering of the Tay had given such structures a fearsome reputation, and to remedy this, Fowler and Baker knew that the Forth had to be the biggest and strongest bridge ever seen to restore confidence in railway bridges. The design they came up with was that of a cantilever. The strength of this design was demonstrated by co-designer Benjamin Baker at a lecture. The demonstration is shown in the picture below:

Behind the people is a photograph of the bridge, and in front of that, people act as a human version of the structure, to the same scale as the photograph of the bridge, so the men in the chairs on either side represent the vertical piers directly above them on the photograph, and the bricks next to them assume the role of the anchor piers at each end of the bridge.

The arms of the men in the chairs are supported by wooden beams held in their hands and butted against their chairs, and the tops of the two outermost ends of the beams are steadied by ropes attached to the anchor piers (or bricks) A little platform in the centre of the picture is suspended between the top ends of the wooden beams held by the inner hands of the two men.

This cantilever arrangement provided the perfect balance of forces, and supported the weight of the man sat upon the centre platform with ease. This human version of the bridge perfectly demonstrated that the bridge was well supported enough, and strong enough top cope with rail traffic.

During the building, which lasted from 1883 to 1890, five thousand men worked on the project (most of whom were foreigners) and during the seven-year build, fifty seven men died, the youngest being just sixteen years of age.

The Bridge, which was opened by the Prince of Wales upon its completion, was one of the great Victorian achievements. It was, however, quite high maintenance, and needed constant painting. In those days, and right up until forty or fifty years ago men without harnesses or safety equipment and with nothing but a flat cap on their heads climbed the steel structure with a tin of paint and a brush, coating the bridge with paint from one end to the other, and then turning around and going back again. As the article states, this task will not need to be done now for another twenty or so years due to the paint used, which sounds the death knell on the metaophor ‘like painting the Forth Bridge’ to describe a never-ending or thankless task…

“Here at our Sea-Washed, Sunset Gates Shall Stand a Mighty Woman with a Torch…” Or: The Birth of the Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty in New York is something that I’m certain almost everyone reading this will have seen in pictures, films and books, and some of you will have seen it with your very eyes in ‘real life’ too. I’ve never seen it with my very eyes, but was thinking about the statue the other day and wondering when it was built. It wasn’t something I’d ever considered, the thought had never crossed my mind, and before I checked, I made an educated(?) guess as to when it appeared in New York, and my guess was between 1905 and 1910.

I was wrong.

If she were a real woman, I’m sure she would have been flattered at my guess, because I misjudged her age in her favour by around a quarter of a century. I’m not sure why, but I still struggle to see America in the context of the nineteenth century, I have some kind of mental block that tells me nothing happened there other than prospectors and the wild west, they didn’t do anything, Victorian means Europe. Although I know that is far from the case and I continue to try and change my blinkered perspective.

To remedy my bizarre blindness to America in the nineteenth century I have written a few posts related to the USA, or American people, which, if you wish, you can see by clicking on the ‘label’ marked ‘America’ in the right hand column of this blog, toward the bottom. (or, click here)

Anyway, I was delighted to note that the great Statue of Liberty IS a Victorian, and so I set my fingers about finding out more.

Frederic Bartholdi

Her origins go even further back that the 1880’s, with the first idea for her creation thought to have been mooted by liberal French politician Edouard Laboulaye in 1865 during an after-dinner conversation at his home. Laboulaye supposedly said; "If a monument should rise in the United States, as a memorial to their independence, I should think it only natural if it were built by united effort – a common work of both our nations."

This comment did not fall upon stony ground, but rather the fertile imagination of young sculptor Frederic Bartholdi, who was within earshot of the remark made by his host. 

The young sculptor discussed the possibility of building a monument for America, but the somewhat stifling regime of Napoleon III made things difficult, and Bartholdi soon realized that building any such memorial for America would not be possible.

Instead, with the kernel of an idea in his mind that he was desperate to cultivate, he presented an idea to the Egyptians, in which he proposed to build a large lighthouse at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal, which had opened in 1869.

Bartholdi did not intend this to be any ordinary lighthouse, but rather, it was to be shaped like a female Egyptian peasant holding up a torch, based loosely on the statue ancient Greek statue ‘The Colossus of Rhodes’ which was built in around 290 – 280 B.C, and stood at the entrance to a harbour holding aloft a light to guide boats. The Colossus of Rhodes was destroyed by an earthquake in 226 B.C, but the picture on the left gives an impression of what it looked like.

Although Bartholdi made sketches and models for his Egyptian peasant lighthouse, it was never built.

In 1870, the economically disastrous Franco-Prussian war broke out, during which Napoleon III was captured in the Battle of Sedan, surrendered and was duly removed from power. France also lost its place as the major power in continental Europe to Germany, but on the positive side for the French, a more liberal republic (The French Third Republic, which lasted until the start of World War 2) was installed. Bartholdi and Laboulaye resumed discussions regarding a statue in America, and, in June 1871, Bartholdi, with letters of introduction from Laboulaye in his pocket, set sail for New York in order to discuss his proposals with the United States.

When he arrived in New York, Bartholdi noted that he sailed past an island in the harbour. All boats arriving in New York had to pass it, and he decided that this would be the perfect place for the American ‘Colossus of Rhodes’, holding its light aloft for travelers arriving in New York and coming into the harbour. Bartholdi asked to whom the island belonged. The island in question was Bedloe Island, named after Issack Bedloo, a Dutch businessman who claimed the island as his after the struggle for American land between England and the Netherlands in the 1660’s. The Dutchman’s name stuck to the island, 9although he himself named it ‘Love Island’) and Americans referred to it as Bedloe Island. (It did not become Liberty Island until very recently in this context – 1960)

After being informed that Bedloe was American soil, belonging to the United States Government, Bartholdi declared it the perfect home for his statue.U.S President Ulysses S. Grant gave the all-clear for the island to be declared the site of the structure, and Bartholdi returned to France to begin work on ideas and sketches for the statue.

In 1875, with France recovering well economically after the Franco-Prussian war, Laboulaye decided that the forthcoming Centennial Exhibition, which was to be held in America to celebrate one hundred years since the declaration of their independence, would be the ideal reason to present the United States with the gift of a statue, and informed Bartholdi that he may begin construction.

Prior to its manufacture, the project needed funding, and so when the project was announced, Laboulaye declared that the Franco-American Union would act as a fundraising organization to gather money for the project. It was decided between the two countries that France would pay for the statue, and America would pay for, and build, the pedestal upon which it would stand. The announcement also gave the name of the statue for the first time. Laboulaye declared that the monument would be named;

Liberty Enlightening the World.

With the project in motion, Laboulaye set about raising money. He organized a series of events that would attract rich and influential people from all over France, including a special Opera by Charles Gounod entitled ‘La Liberté éclairant le monde’, or, in English; ‘Liberty Enlightening the World.’ This was, of course, named after the statue in a bid to drum up interest.

Laboulaye’s fundraising schemes were extremely successful, not only with the rich, but all manner of people from all aspects of society came together to donate the money needed. Even the copper required to manufacture the skin of the statue was donated by copper merchants Japy Frères, saving huge costs, with the copper thought to be worth 64,000 Francs. (Over £200,000 or $300,000 in today’s money)

At the workshops of Gaget, Gauthier & Co, Bartholdi began work on the head of the statue, and also the right arm that would bear the torch, hoping to have the latter ready to exhibit at the Centennial Exhibition.

In 1876, when the American Centennial Exhibition opened in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, a French Delegation which included Bartholdi visited. Once there, they planned to exhibit a huge painting of what the finished statue would look like, with the actual finished right arm to follow them to and be displayed at the exhibition.

The Arm on Display at the Centennial Exhibition

The arm was a popular exhibit with Americans after it arrived, and upon the closing of the exhibition, was transported to Madison Square Gardens, where it was put on display for a few years before returning to Paris to be added to the rest of the statue.

In 1877, Bartholdi returned to France to complete the head of the statue, which was to be displayed at the Paris World’s Fair of 1878, whilst in America, the Franco-American Union was forming committees in New York, Boston and Philadelphia to begin raising money to fund the building of the statue’s pedestal. Donations were initially slow and reluctant, but enthusiasm picked up after the exhibiting of the arm. Journalist Joseph Pulitzer was doing all he could to raise more interest in the project. Pulitzer, of the New York committee of the Franco-American Union, was helped in his cash raising efforts by a young man only nineteen years of age named Theodore Roosevelt, who would go on to become president of the United States in 1901.

With one arm built and the head underway in France, President Grant ensured the statue would come to America by signing an agreement on his last day in office with the incoming president, Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes agreed to accept the statue from France, to continue building the pedestal, and to agree to the use of Bedloe Island as its home.

In France, further funds were being raised by selling tickets to the workshops of Gaget, Gauthier & Co to the public so that they could watch the statue being built. Models of the statue were also sold, and silver plate and terracotta models of the statue were listed as prizes in a government authorized lottery. Ticket sales from this lottery, along with tickets sold to watch the building process and money raised from sales of models raised somewhere in the region of 250,000 Francs, (around £800,000, or £1.3 million in today’s money)

In 1879, with everything going well, the project hit its first snag; Viollet-le-Duc, who had been instrumental in building the head and arm in France, fell ill, and very soon died. With le-Duc gone, nobody knew quite how he had planned to fix all of the parts of the statue together.

This caused chaos and panic until 1880, when Bartholdi turned to the man who had built the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel. Eiffel brought his structural engineer to the project, Maurice Koechlin, and together they decided that the best strategy would be to build an iron frame with the copper skin fixed to the outside, so that the outside of the statue was completely non load-bearing, but all the weight was supported by the iron framing inside – almost the same principal as building a tent.

How the Framework Looks

They also decided to attach each different piece of the statue together using a metal mesh rather than rivet the parts directly together. This would allow some movement in the statue, which would invariably move a little in the winds of the harbour, and also allow for the metal expanding in heat. The mesh would move with the elements, and prevent any part of the statue cracking under stress.

With the problems they faced conquered, the constituent parts of the statue were built, and by 1882 it was completed from the feet up to the waist. This joy, though, was followed by sadness when in 1883, the man who had been so instrumental in the birth of the statue, Edouard Laboulaye, died. He would never see the statue that had been born out of a remark made at his dinner table completed. Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, took Laboulaye’s place as chairman of the French committee, and the project continued.

The statue was finally completed in Paris in 1884, nineteen years after the germ of an idea had been planted in Bartholdi’s head by a comment made by Laboulaye at the latter’s dinner party. It was formally presented to Ambassador Morton at a ceremony in Paris on 4th 1884, and then remained in Paris whilst America completed the pedestal.

Being Built in Paris

In order to ship the statue to America, it had to be completely dismantled into three hundred and fifty separate pieces, packed into two hundred and nineteen large crates and packed onto the French ship, Isere, which carried the disassembled statue to America in 1885.

By that year, the Americans had, after much difficulty, completed the pedestal upon which the statue was to sit. Richard Morris Hunt had designed it after being appointed by the New York Committee as architect. He had originally proposed a pedestal 114 feet tall, but due to financial difficulties caused by the Panic of 1873, which had led to an economic depression in America, the committee was forced to reduce the height (and therefore the cost) to 89 feet. The original plans also stated that it was to be made of granite, but, again, due to cost constraints, these plans were changed and concrete used.

Despite the statue project receiving enthusiasm after the Centennial Exhibition, the Panic of 1873 had dampened the spirits of Americans and caused them to resent the project. They were particularly aggrieved with France for insisting that they build, and pay for, the pedestal. After all, was this not supposed to be a gift from the French? Fund raising for the project was tough, and even when the finished statue arrived in New York Harbour on board the Isere in June 1885, the pedestal still was unfinished due to a lack of funding.

Pulitzer

Pulitzer, still desperately trying to raise money for the pedestal project, came up with an ingenious idea that captured the imagination of the American public; he promised that the name of every person who donated money – no matter how much or how little – would be printed in the newspaper he had purchased two years previously, the ‘New York World’. Some of the contributors, such as "A young girl alone in the world" who donated "60 cents, the result of self denial” and the statement that a group of children sent a dollar, which was "the money we saved to go to the circus with” appear to have made the public take a look at themselves, and dig deep into their pockets. Pulitzer’s scheme worked, and went on to raise $100,000 ($2.3 million in today’s money, or £1.4 million)

As the donations flooded in, the committee resumed work on the pedestal, and when the statue arrived in June 1885, the fresh enthusiasm for the project amongst the American people led two hundred thousand of them to New York Harbour to watch the Isere arrive with the statue.

Re-assembly of the statue could not take place until the pedestal was complete, however, and by April 1886 all work on it had finished and the building could take place. The iron framework was anchored to the concrete pedestal, and the various sections of the skin attached to the iron frame one by one. The pedestal was fairly narrow, and so the workers were unable to put up any scaffolding around the frame, and so had to hang from it by ropes whilst they attached each part. Although this sounds extremely dangerous, nobody died during the re-construction.

The statue was to be officially dedicated to America by France in a special ceremony in Bedloe Park, and Frederick Law Olmstead, who had designed Central Park in New York, was charged with supervising a tidying up operation of Bedloe, which had previously been an all-but-abandoned piece of land, and then become a building site whilst the pedestal and then the statue were being built. Along with Olmstead’s cleanup, a power plant was built on the island to provide light to the torch of the statue.

The dedication ceremony took place on 28th October 1886 with the day beginning with parades in New York, and a marching band that played from Madison Square to Battery Park, with up to a million people in attendance to watch the proceedings.

When the dedication began, the first speech was made by chairman of the French Committee de Lesseps, and his speech was followed by one from his opposite number, chairman of the American Committee, Senator William Evarts. Evarts’s speech, though, was interrupted by an all-too-eager Bartholdi, who, holding a French flag over the face of the statue, mistook a pause in Evart’s speech as the end, and dropped the flag, unveiling the statue whilst Evart was mid-speech. The crowd cheered and only stopped when President Cleveland stood to speak. He said;

“[The statue’s] stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and man's oppression until Liberty enlightens the world”

During the fundraising process, poet Emma Lazarus had been asked to write a poem about the statue so that it could be auctioned off to raise money. She had refused on the grounds that she could not, for some reason, write a poem about a statue. At the time she was working with refugees who had arrived in New York, fleeing Anti-Semitic violence in Europe. After some thought about the statue’s location and what it was to symbolize, she changed her mind, and wrote a poem in sympathy of the refugees entitled ‘The New Colossus’ which she read out at the dedication ceremony. The poem she wrote is as follows;

The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
with conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
with silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Stirring words indeed. The poem is inscribed on a plaque and held in a museum in the base of the statue.

Thus ends my fifth blog post on Victorian America, and I have another in the pipeline soon helping me to dispel the myth in my own mind about nineteenth century America being all Clint Eastwood in a poncho and gold mines. It must be remembered by people like me that Dickens visited America twice and was received as a celebrity – certainly the first time, and from the way he spoke and wrote of the place it sounds not entirely different from Victorian England. 

"So Far as Any Present Use is Concerned, The Tunnel is an Entire Failure.” Or: Marc Brunel's Thames Tunnel:

In the 1800’s, London was the busiest city in the world. Trade brought goods from all over the globe, and they all came by ship down the Thames, to be unloaded in the various docks and wharves that lined the river.

The city itself was becoming busier too, as these newly arrived goods needed to be distributed from wharves to places of business. With London spreading ever outwards, a new crossing was required to the east of the city, but with so many ships with tall masts and sails coming down the Thames from the sea, a bridge would have to be extremely tall and steep, it seemed impossible. Was there any way a river could be crossed by thousands of people, horses and carts, without building a ship-impeding bridge?

In 1808, Richard Trevithick; inventor and mining engineer, attempted to construct a tunnel running underneath the River Thames in London, connecting the south bank to the north. The project was delayed after a sudden inrush of water flooded the tunnel, and a month after this flood, and a more serious inrush occurred. The tunnel was flooded again, and Trevithick was nearly drowned. Clay was dumped on the river bed to seal the hole and the tunnel was drained but mining was now more difficult.

Marc Brunel

The problem that Trevithick had encountered was the soft ground next to the river, which was soft and sandy and had no cohesion. Unlike more solid, clay-like land, this ground could not support itself when tunneled into, and subsequently was hugely prone to collapsing and vulnerable to seepage of water. With a thousand disastrous and potentially dangerous feet of tunnel having been completed, the general consensus was that a tunnel under the Thames was at best, impractical, and at worst impossible. Civil engineer William Jessop was an influential voice expressing this opinion, and the project was abandoned.

Ten years later, in 1818, engineer Marc Isambard Brunel patented a tunneling device, known as a tunneling shield. This shield was a large, rectangular structure, with three horizontal lines of twelve ‘spaces’ across the width of it, making thirty six ‘spaces’ roughly the size of a wardrobe inside each of which a man would stand with a small shovel, a candle and the minimum of elbow room. In front of each worker there were a series of horizontal boards. The worker unscrewed the top board to expose the earth at the face of the shield. He would dig away at this small portion of earth, and then replace the board, screwing it tightly into the empty space he had just dug away. The worker would then repeat the process with the boards below until he reached the bottom board. Once he had got to the bottom board he would start from the top again. The second time he finished at the bottom board his whole digging position would be jacked forward by around two inches using screw jacks. As the shield moved forward, bricklayers followed, lining the walls, and the process would be started again. Written down, this sounds awfully complicated. The picture helps:

The Thames Tunnel was dug using this process, meaning these workers dug a 1,200 ft tunnel two inches at a time for 1,200 feet across the River Thames. It is thought – whether true or not, I don’t think anyone knows – that Brunel modeled his tunneling shield on the shipworm; a creature that eats through the wooden timbers of ships with its head protected by a hard shell.

The prospect of testing his tunneling shield by constructing a tunnel under the Thames led Brunel to write to as many influential people he could think of who may be able to help him.
Subsequently, in February 1824, an impressive 2,128 people bought shares for £50 each in Brunel’s idea. Four months later the Thames Tunnel Company was formed.

The first stage of the build was to create an entrance to the tunnel. There was not enough space to build long, gentle-gradient ramps in and out of the tunnel for horses, so a vertical brick shaft was built on the soft Rotherhithe bank, and as the shaft became taller and heavier, the ground beneath gave way, leading the shaft to sink down to the depth where the tunnel entrance was planned to be built. This vertical shaft was completed in November 1825, and the tunnelling shield, which had been manufactured at Lambeth by Henry Maudslay's company, was then assembled at the bottom. but despite the tunneling shield, the process was still dangerous and difficult due to the soft ground around the Thames. The ground, though, was not the only problem the project would encounter. The sewers of Joseph Bazalgette were still almost forty years away, and so the Thames was a virtual open sewer surrounding the workers. The tunnel, not being particularly water-tight, seeped the sewage and became damp with it. The air quality underground naturally suffered, with workers feinting, coughing, and having to be pulled from their work and up to ground level to recover in fresh air. There was a more menacing danger to the presence of the sewage too; it gave off methane gas, which, in an environment full of men working by candle-light led to the odd fire-based accident.

Brunel Lowering the Diving Bell

These incidents, however, paled in comparison to some of the more serious dangerous occurrences during the construction.

Many workers, including Brunel himself, soon fell ill from the poor air quality. Resident engineer William Armstrong took ill in April 1826, leaving the engineering team a man down. Marc drafted in his twenty year old son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who took Armstrong’s place.

In May 1827 the tunnel suffered a flood when the miners breached the tunnel wall. Isambard lowered a diving bell from a boat to repair the hole at the bottom of the river, throwing bags filled with clay into the hole in the tunnel's roof. Once the tunnel had been repaired and drained, dignitaries were invited to a banquet inside it.

The Banquet in the Tunnel

The tunnel flooded again in January 1828, in a disaster in which six men died and many others, including Isambard, were almost drowned. To recuperate, he was sent to Clifton in Bristol, where he put himself forward to be the engineer to build a bridge there, amidst much competition. He won the contract, and today we have the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

Meanwhile, back in London, the tunnel was facing financial difficulties after the second flood. The resources Marc Brunel had acquired for the Thames Tunnel Company were spent, and despite his efforts to raise more money with tours of the tunnel, but these were fruitless. The tunnel was sealed up just behind the shield in August 1828. Marc Brunel resigned from his position and offered his help to Isambard in designing the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

The tunnel remained abandoned and sealed for seven years until Marc Brunel raised enough money for the work to continue. The project was plagued by the same floods, gas leaks and sick workers as before, which continued to set work back.

Because of the slow process of the build, the tunnel would not be completed until 1842, seven years after the re-start.

The Thames Tunnel, building of which commenced in January 1825, was finally completed in 1842.

The main reason the tunnel had been created was to allow trade vehicles – namely, horses and carts – to cross the river at this hugely busy point, without the need for a bridge. A bridge was completely impractical, as the thousands of ships that sailed in and out of the port of London – the busiest port in the world at the time – all had tall sails, and would be unable to pass a bridge, hence, the reason for crossing beneath the river, and not over it.

The original plan for the tunnel entrances was to use two large shafts with spiraling ramps running at a very gradual gradient that horses could pull carts down into the tunnel, then up to street level again at the other side.

However, because the project had taken so long to complete, and had taken so much money, there were no funds available to build these ramps, and so the only way in and out of the tunnel was via the spiral staircases in the entrance and exit shafts shown in the pencil drawing on the right. This clearly meant that horses and carts – the very passengers the tunnel was designed and created for – could not use the tunnel. Below is a cross sectional cut-away picture of the entrance shaft and part of the tunnel. Definitely not horse and cart friendly:

Despite this, it opened to the public on 25th March 1843. On 7 November 1842 Brunel suffered a stroke that paralysed his right side for a time, but despite ill health he still took part in the opening ceremony.
On the first day of opening fifty thousand people paid a penny each to walk though the new tunnel. Within the first ten weeks a million people had passed under the river via the new tunnel. With tourists coming from Europe it was deemed a worthy enterprise to set up souvenir stalls inside the tunnel. Shops were set up in the arches and entertainment was put on for pedestrians crossing the river. The tunnel was declared ‘The 8th Wonder of the World’. The novelty of the tunnel, though, soon wore off. After a short amount of time it became populated by hawkers of tatty wares who tried to sell to the pedestrians. It also earned a reputation as a place of business for prostitutes seeking work. This was a blow for the tunnel, with American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne writing of it:

“It (the tunnel) consisted of an arched corridor of apparently interminable length, gloomily lighted with jets of gas at regular intervals ... There are people who spend their lives there, seldom or never, I presume, seeing any daylight, except perhaps a little in the morning. All along the extent of this corridor, in little alcoves, there are stalls of shops, kept principally by women, who, as you approach, are seen through the dusk offering for sale ... multifarious trumpery ... So far as any present use is concerned, the tunnel is an entire failure.”

The Shaft Today - Note the Scarring Where the Stairs Once Were

The East London Railway took over the tunnel in 1865. They wanted to dig new tunnels to link the Thames Tunnel to the national railway network. In 1869 trains did start to run through tunnels where horses and carts should originally have traipsed. 

Twenty six years after the tunnel opened, it was finally carrying out the function it was designed for – carrying goods from north to south beneath the river, albeit by train and not horse and cart.

The tunnel remains in use today as part of the London Underground’s East London Line. Occasionally, the Brunel Museum, located in the old engine room to the tunnel, put on a guided walk through the museum. Keep checking their website here for any future walks.

Modern Photo of entrance shaft taken by David Flett, used with permission. See more of David’s work on FlickR here

The Depth is Far Too Great to Admit of the Use of the Diving-Bell’ Or: An 1862 Proposal for a Channel Railway

Although the Channel Tunnel was opened for business in 1994, six years after the first tunnelling begun in France, the idea for a means of transport across the Channel between England and mainland Europe is by no means a modern idea.

As early as 1802 the idea was put to Napoleon, when a French engineer, Albert Mathieu proposed a tunnel under the Channel. His plan, which now seems rather quaint, was for the tunnel to be illuminated by oil lamps and have horse drawn coaches take passengers and goods between England and France. In the middle of the Channel would be an artificial island for the carriage to put down its tired horses and pick up new ones.

Around thirty years later, another Frenchman, Aime Thome de Gamond became the first person to perform hydrographical and geological surveys on the English Channel between Dover and Calais, to asses the practicability of an underwater crossing.

He came up with several ideas, before, in 1856, he presented Napoleon III with a proposal for a mined railway tunnel from Cap Gris-Nez in Calais, to Eastwater Point in England. His proposal for the tunnel was, he estimated, to cost around 170 million francs – less that £7 million.

Six years later, in 1862, an English engineer, Mr. Chambers, put forth a plan to the periodical, The London Journal, and as I thumbed through the said periodical of 1862 earlier this week I came by the article, and, having taken my first trip on the Eurostar late last year, decided to read on.

The article gives a brief introduction, and then reprints Chambers’ idea, including his cost estimates, as he compares his plan to that of Aime Thome de Gamond from six years previous. Here is the article, and the picture that caught my eye:

 The important and interesting discussion of the feasibility of connecting the railways of England and Continental Europe is again occupying public attention.

The question of a Channel Railway which would effect this object is one which involves many considerations of vital importance to us all. Can the natural barrier which the ocean has placed between England and the Continent be removed without obstructing the Channel, and without endangering our national safety in the event of a war, especially a war with France?

It has long been a matter of doubt whether such a connexion was desirable, and whether its influence on trade and traffic, and on the communities interested in it, would be sufficiently beneficial to warrant the expenditure.

The doubts, however, of the expediency of a Channel Railway have already been resolved in its favour, and a competent authority has expressed the opinion, “that such a scheme, if carried out, would be remunerative to shareholders, and highly advantageous to the countries on both sides of the Channel.” As the same periodical gives it as the decision of the leading scientific, literary, and commercial authorities, that the scheme is really feasible, and that it will doubtless be accomplished some day, we will give, in Mr. Chambers’ own words, the plan which he proposes for carrying out this scheme, with the probable cost of the construction, and his estimate of the profit which would accrue from the working of the Channel Railway: -

It is sixty years since a scheme for a roadway under the English Channel was laid before Napoleon. After the introduction of railways, several plans were proposed to connect the roads of England and the Continent. The one that attracted most attention was the plan of a French engineer, in 1857. He proposed to form thirteen islands in the Channel, by carrying material out to sea, dig down through the said islands into terra firma, and tunnel east and west.

The consideration which this plan received in certain influential quarters, and from the scientific men, warrants the belief that any feasible scheme would receive more countenance now, as the removal of the French passport system, and the adoption of the new commercial treaty, will greatly increase the trade and travel between England and the Continent.

The plan I propose will give a double line of rails for two gauges, capable of carrying all ordinary trains at the usual speed on the best roads. The work could be completed in five years in a substantial manner, for £12,000,000, and the statistics of trade and travel between England and the Continent warrant the assumption that the revenue would equal ten per cent per annum on this amount. My scheme consists in submerging tubes of suitable demensions, and loading them down, and makes ample provision for ventilation, light, safety and comfort, while the shore embankments would form magnificent harbours of refuge on each side of the Channel. I will be happy to show plans, sections, elevations and detailed specifications and estimates to parties interested.

The method of joining the tubes under water has been pronounced by competent engineers ingenious, simple and efficient.

(Estimated) Abstract of Cost

1 Deep Sea Tower, or Ventilator,

placed in 27 fathoms……………………………...£485,000

2 ditto, in 11 fathoms……………………………...£475,000

                                                                            --------------------------

                                                                            £960,000

264 Tubes, each 400 ft. long, 25 ft.

diam., @ “23 per ton………………………………£4,199,184

528 Flanges for ditto, @ £125 each……………..£63,360

Laying ditto, @ £4,000 each tube of

400 ft………………………………………………..£1,056,000

                                                                            ---------------------------

                                                                              £5,318,544

1,320 Anchors, or Boxes, for stone-loading,

5 each tube, each 23 tons @ £16………………£485,760

Levelling Bottom, and Covering Tubes with

Broken Stones &c. 7,431,108 yards, @ 5s……£1,857,777

Embankments, Blocks of Stone, Chalk, &c.,

2,900,000 yards, @ 5s…………………………...£725,000

Tunnel Approaches……………………………….£400,000

Roadway, Triple Rails for Two Gauges………...£150,000

Engines and Furnishings for Ventilators………..£30,000

1,000 Lamps and Fittings, @ £20 each………...£20,000

Preliminaries, Tools and Contingencies………..£2,052,919

                                                                             ---------------------------

                                                              Total……£12,000,000

(Estimated) Probable Revenue

1,095,000 Passengers per annum,

@ 8s 9d………………………………………………£479,062

912,500 Tons freight, ditto @ 12s 6d……………...£570,312

Express Mails, Bullion, Extra Baggage,

Per annum (say)…………………………………….£250,000

                                                                              ----------------------------

                                                                                     £1,299,375

(Estimated) Annual Expenditure…………………..£76,187

                                                                              ---------------------------

Nett revenue………………………………………...£1,223,187

The estimates of the French engineer above alluded to, made from data furnished by the railway and steamboat companies in 1856 were –

Freight and passage……………………………….£1,041,666

My estimates, 1861, without data, or any knowledge of his, were –

Freight and passage……………………………….£1,049,375

A scientific contemporary considers the means proposed by Mr. Chambers for guiding the tubes correctly to their position under water as insufficient, but he by no means doubts the practicability of placing the sections of a large tube correctly on the bottom of the Straits of Dover.

As regards the joining of the sections, he sees no insurmountable difficulty, as the immense hydrostatic pressure forcing the flanges together would, in his opinion, right the tube, even if it were somewhat out of line. The arrangements for keeping down the tubes are considered by the same authority sufficient and reliable as far as they go; and, on the whole, there seems to be a general conviction of the feasibility of connecting the railway systems of England and the Continent by means of a roadway with submerged tubes.

The peculiar feature of Mr. Chalmers’ scheme, which should not be lost sight of, is, as our contemporary remarks, the hydrostatic pressure, in enabling him to join his tubes from the inside, as the depth is far too great to admit of the use of the diving-bell for connecting the sections on the outside. The value of this principle can only be tested by experiments, for which the forthcoming summer will be the most convenient time, as the  International Exhibition of 1862 will bring together scientific men from all parts of the globe.
Chambers’ idea is not wholly dissimilar to what we currently have. But, it seems his idea, like many others, would fall by the wayside. Three years later, in 1865, a group led by Conservative MP George Ward Hunt proposed the idea of a channel tunnel to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone. (A year later, When Benjamin Disraeli became Prime Minister, he would appoint Hunt as Chancellor, replacing Gladstone) but, the costs being too high, nothing came of it.

The closest Victorian attempt at a Channel crossing came in 1870, when engineer William Low attempted to construct the crossing. His effort was the first practical attempt after so many proposals and ideas. He bought land near Dover and Calais in order to carry out the scheme, but, as the British government had not funded his plans, Low had to pay for the project himself. 

William Low

The first tunnel chamber was excavated at Shakespeare Cliff near Dover in 1870, but his plans were ended by the Franco-Prussian war and the fact that he ran out of money.

In 1881, however, Low, by now aged 70, recommenced his work and actually managed to complete over 1000 yards of the tunnel at Dover, until fears were raised that the French could use the tunnel to invade Britain and he was stopped.

It was not until 1986 – 184 years after Mathieu’s first proposal and, and 105 years after William Low gave up on his attempt, that the Treaty of Canterbury – a document giving the go ahead for the design and build of the first Channel Tunnel connecting England to mainland Europe – was signed by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President Francois Miterand.

Had the Victorians had the technology that we had in the late 20^th century, the Channel Tunnel could have been a very different piece of engineering.