lately i've become a little bit obsessed with people's efforts over time to cross bodies of
water whether it's unfinished tunnels under the solent or railway bridges across the seven
estuary that really should have been a lot more successful than what they actually were
one thing that has always struck me as odd though is why it took
until as recently as 1994 to cross the body of water between england and france
hi my name is paul just below me at the bottom of this hill is the english portal to the 31 mile
tunnel under the english channel or the channel it was built in 1994 and to this day it remains the
longest underwater tunnel in the world prior to 1994 of course if you wanted to cross the busiest
shipping channel in the world you'd have to take the more traditional ferry or plane of course
but let's take a step back further in time because come the industrial revolution this
country is full of some crazy inventions and ideas if you had the materials and the manpower to build
nothing would stop you from coming up with quite the bizarrest means of crossing this body of water
so here we are by dover the white cliffs of dover and pre-industrial revolution the only
way of getting across that stretch of water there the 21 mile stretch would have been sail
of course perhaps with the aid of an oar or two
and that's true as far back as the last ice age when you could simply walk across here the seabed
at worst just 75 meters deep and 10,000 years ago of course the sea level
was 120 meters lower than it is today
so let's get back to the industrial revolution the year is 1802 and frenchman albert matthieu
favie proposes a tunnel now it's disputed that that might not have been the first proposal
because nicholas desmorest apparently came up with something in 1750 but nothing tangible
remains of that whether it's a newspaper report or of course physical evidence
1802 and albert proposes two tunnels one for horse and cart and one for drainage
now this tunnel would have new features such as ventilation shafts climbing up out of the sea
it would have a halfway point uh an artificial island if you will for travellers to rest up
this tunnel was very much sold around the idea of male box carts the idea of a tunnel that length
is quite scary at the time the longest tunnel in the world was probably below pill in the forest
of dean at a thousand yards long this would need to be 35 000 yards long and under water
but unfortunately all of this failed to materialize because of the Napoleonic walls
so the idea of a tunnel under this vast expanse of water
is quite a scary prospect so let's have a bridge instead
the year is 1850 and perhaps bridge is too strong a word for what missouri ferdinand le mantra
had spent a great deal of time designing for he had designed an aerostatic bridge
yes indeed aerostatic so imagine if you will every 100 yards between dover and Calais across
the ocean you would have had a heavily laden bard which in turn was connected to
double iron chains which were in turn connected to a balloon supporting a bridge
that idea sounds completely crazy it is utterly bonkers
but apparently the time the newspaper reports did suggest that the academy of sciences were
looking into it so imagine elliptical balloons similar to what you see today as hot air balloons
supporting each of these abutments now each of these abutments were said to cost
around 000 francs each which would in turn cost around 84 million for the entire length
so the idea was to run an atmospheric railway across the entirety of this bridge
now that makes sense because it's the 1840s those sort of technologies were being explored
but for reasons i'm sure we could all work out the whole idea was a complete
failure so is it about time the tunnel was back on the cards
let's talk about tom de gammon born in 1807 in protea now he had a mining
engineering and education and he spent most of his adult life obsessing was crossing
the English channel the channel tom came up with numerous ideas including an iron tube submerged
and laid onto a masonry bed and perhaps the more forward-thinking idea was to build a number of
islands each with interconnecting bridges 1856 was tom's big moment and he presented his plans
to emperor napoleon the third for a mined railway tunnel now this was no ordinary tunnel for it had
a station at Vern bank now this was going to have an old whole ecosystem of industry right there
waiting rooms restrooms toilets all sorts of facilities for the for the passenger the
idea being at worst the sea level here was just 39 feet deep so this could easily be
built upon these proposals were accepted by napoleon the third and queen Victoria
at a cost of 170 million francs and it would join England here at eastward across to Calais
however growing uh tensions in the Anglo-French relations unfortunately put pay to this idea
now an assassination attempt on napoleon the third in 1858 pretty much was the final
nail in the coffin because the bombs for that assassination attempt were made here in Birmingham
some move forward 20 years it's 1876 and the uk is now covered in railways the channel tunnel company
has been formed all bit with little success at this point
but it's about time we had that elusive route across the channel
south eastern railway chairman sir Edward Watkin along with a collaboration with Alexandra lavalley
French suez canal engineer teamed up and did some exploratory works either side
now that collaboration was called the submarine railway company 1880 and a shaft had been dug
here at Abbott's cliff between dover and foxton and captain English's rotary boring machine had
started a pilot tunnel February 1881 and they had dug 800 feet under the channel
meanwhile just up the coast towards dover shakespeare cliff the bit from
here that looks like it juts up into the air the compressed air machine
was doing so well they decided to do another pilot shaft and tunnel
things were going extremely well over in france two and they expected within four years
around 1886 to meet in the middle but disaster laid just around the corner
1882 and things are moving forward very well the shakespeare cliff tunnel is 2040 yards out to sea
the abbots cliff tunnel is nearly a thousand yards out to sea and the idea was they were going to use
a similar boring machine to turn these seven foot pilot tunnels into 14 foot wide tunnels but then
disaster did strike and the government called the project even the queen who had previously
endorsed the 1850s product was now against this one lord Wolesley who we know from the promoter
of one of the solent tunnels at the time here said well unfortunately i believe that french
could all dress as civilians the soldiers could dress as civilians
make their way through the tunnel on a train and attack uh england at the time now so watkins
suggested that that was ridiculous and if that was the case well we could just blow up the tunnel
if you have a look at the exact alignment of the current channel tunnel you'll note that it
comes very close to the original shaft and pilot tunnel of the 1880 attempts the new channel tunnel
workings found this old tunnel and needed to put concrete bulkhead in around 890 yards out to sea
so effectively what that concrete bulkhead did was entomb one of the original boring machines
so right now about a thousand to two thousand yards out to sea is a buried boring machine
so after all that we still have no tunnel and we have nothing in the pipeline so perhaps we
should consider another bridge again we should indeed but that would take another century
in fact five years before uh the current building of the channel tunnel took place
this plans were submitted to Margaret thatcher for just that it would have
been a very similar design to what we see now on the seven bridge vast pillars
sticking out of the water all the way across the channel and of course what would that mean
this of course was one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world
so therefore any bridge would need to be able to withstand potential impact it would need to be
210 feet high and of course it brings back memory of some of the earlier tunnel attempts because
it was going to use some of those banks situated between here and Calais
so ralph freeman promoter at the time played on the woes of the railways and
he suggested that the the freedom of the car would give much greater economic
impact than a railway ever could clearly he wasn't too worried about capacity
the bridge ideas were shelved lack of financial viability because of the shipping lane and the
long-term costs the tunnel was the obvious choice and here we are back full circle built in 1994.
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