Channeling under the Streak

For more than 160 years, French and British engineers have proposed linking their countries with a tunnel under the English Channel. Though the plan appealed to many people--from seasick travelers to "one Europe" visionaries--it never came alive. The reason: Britain's reluctance to violate what Gladstone called "that streak of silver sea" that for centuries protected the island nation from invaders.

Last week, after two years of discussion, an Anglo-French committee of government transport experts endorsed a plan to connect Dover and Calais by means of a 32-mile, $407 million railroad tunnel. The committee found either of two approaches feasible: a brace of segmented "immersed tubes" that would run across the channel floor, or a trio of cross-connected tunnels bored through the soft lower chalk layer 160 feet beneath the bottom.

In plumping for the "chunnel" (for channel tunnel), the committee rejected a proposed 21-mile cross-channel bridge. It would have cost twice as much, placed 164 dangerous steel-and-concrete pillars across the foggy Pas de Calais bottleneck which carries some 500 ships a day.

Despite reservations about financing, the French government was "very positive in favor of a tunnel." But as usual, the British were cool. "We are not committed to any particular course of action," said British Transport Minister Ernest Marples. "The report has been published because people in this democratic country must have their say."

In the past, the say has always been resoundingly negative. Though Queen Victoria liked the notion of a tunnel as a potential cure for her seasickness, she found it "very objectionable" in principle. In the 1880s, when an early tunnel project actually bored two miles into the chalk near Dover, the Sunday Times worried that "We should have an amount of fraternizing between the discontented denizens of the great cities . . . which would yield very unsatisfactory results on this side of the Channel."

Even today, many Britons dislike the notion of a pack of foreigners popping out of the ground. Though the military long ago dropped its objections, the citizenry is still concerned about invaders. "The chunnel would be an entrance for an enemy," worried one Londoner. "It's always been that little bit of water that's kept us safe," said another. Despite the committee's report, Gladstone's silver streak seemed as wide as ever.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.