Engineering and Politics: The Channel Tunnel in the 1880s

Abstract

Engineering and Politics: The Channel Tunnel in the 1880s ANTHONY S. TRAVIS Despite their impact on transport communication, lengthy tunnels tend to arouse forbidding Dantesque visions. Moreover, as less visible expressions of human enterprise, tunnels possess none of the dra­ matic images associated with bridge design and construction or, for that matter, Gothic cathedrals, and they have, in turn, received less attention in terms of their relationships to scientific and technological development. Nevertheless, at the end of the 19th century, the ability to pierce hard-rock mountain ranges represented the greatest cele­ bration of modernization in Europe, bringing hope that new railway tunnels would facilitate movement of goods in such a way that trade wars would soon replace military wars.1 Although this was the feeling on much of mainland Europe (see fig. 1), it was not always the case in Britain, where the Establishment, Dr. Travis is deputy director of the Sidney M. Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine at the Hebrew University ofJerusa­ lem. He wishes to thank Kenneth Knoespel, John Law, Seymour Mauskopf, and the Technology and Culture referees for many helpful comments. The late Egon Larsen provided several rare documents for the research that led to this article. 'In the two decades after 1860, many formidable natural barriers were overcome in order to bring about improved railway connections, culminating in the joining of the two sections of the Saint Gotthard tunnel in 1880: “The news that the two advance borings had met in the middle of the mountain traversed by the Saint Gothard tunnel resounded like ajoyful echo in every civilized country. It announced the success of the greatest work hitherto attempted by man” (Adolphe Gautier, “The St. Gothard Tunnel,” Nature 21 [1880]: 581). At 14.9 km, it was 2,667 meters longer than the earlier Mont Cenis tunnel. The project received considerable financial assistance from the German, Italian, and Swiss governments, and was, for Germany, “for communication with Italy, what Mont Cenis is to France” (quoted from “The St. Gothard Railway Tunnel,” Illustrated London News 80 [May 13, 1882]: 466). The construction of major international railway tunnels continued to capture public interest, especially the 19.8-kilometer Simplon tunnel linking Switzerland and Italy, started in 1898 and opened to traffic in May 1906. It was the longest tunnel on earth. The impact of the Mont Cenis tunnel in a cultural setting is described in Bruce Sinclair, “Technology on Its Toes: Late Victorian Ballets, Pageants, and Industrial Exhibitions,” in Stephen H. Cutcliffe and Robert C. Post, eds., In Context: History and the History ofTechnology—Essays in Honor ofMelvin Kranzberg (Bethlehem, Pa., 1988), pp. 71—87.© 1991 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/91/3203-0001$01.00 461 LIGUE DE LA PAIX EUROPEENNE . ; i.r,s,Ô noble* soeurs ’un merveilleux clîenun i b Paix conduisant 1 Que de Loundre a Madrid. 0 de RoumoenRussie, voire lac d ’zur aux bords de la Tamise 1 le train des nations I Sevague plus qu uno memo familho ! L'ARRIVÉE A PARIS, PAR LE TUNNEL DE LA MANCHE, DU PREMIER TRAIN DIRECT DE LONDRES A MARSEILLE. Fig. 1.—Peace follows the train ofnations. The European Peace League, at least, was excited at the prospect that, by 1884, trade agreements and major engineering projects would cause the surrender of military competition to peaceful competition. This is the message of an artist’s impression, dated 1875, anticipating the arrival of the first direct train from London to Marseilles via a Channel tunnel. (Sidney M. Edelstein Library, Hebrew University ofJerusalem.) Engineering and Politics: The Channel Tunnel in the 1880s 463 especially the military, stood firmly against any kind of fixed link with the Continent. It was not enough that Victorian Britons had devel­ oped the only viable machinery for tunnel boring, machinery that was ideally suited to a stratum of soft, almost watertight rock that was believed to continue below the seabed from Dover to the French coast. Nor was it enough that they had also developed novel and devastating explosives that might be used to mine the tunnel and destroy it completely in time of...