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The Tunnel Under the Channel
Thomas Whiteside
SIMON AND SCHUSTER · NEW YORK · 1962
INCLUDING THE RIGHT OF REPRODUCTION
IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN ANY FORM
COPYRIGHT © 1961, 1962 BY THOMAS WHITESIDE
PUBLISHED BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER, INC.
ROCKEFELLER CENTER, 630 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK 20, N. Y.
MOST OF THE MATERIAL IN THIS BOOK ORIGINATED IN
The New Yorker AS A SERIES OF ARTICLES,
WHICH HAVE BEEN HERE EXPANDED.
FIRST PRINTING
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 62-9744
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY AMERICAN BOOK-STRATFORD PRESS, INC., NEW YORK
[5]
One
In thesocial history of England, the English Channel,that proud sea passage some three hundred and fifty mileslong, has separated that country from the Continent as bya great gulf or a bottomless chasm. However, at its narrowestpoint, between Dover and Cap Gris-Nez—a distanceof some twenty-one and a half miles—the Channel, despiteany impression that storm-tossed sea travelers across it mayhave of yawning profundities below, is actually a body ofwater shaped less like a marine chasm than like an extremelyshallow puddle. Indeed, the relationship of depth to breadthacross the Strait of Dover is quite extraordinary, being asone to five hundred. This relationship can perhaps be mostgraphically illustrated by drawing a section profile of theChannel to scale. If the drawing were two feet long, thestraight line representing the level of the sea and the linerepresenting the profile of the Channel bottom would be soclose together as to be barely distinguishable from one another.At its narrowest part, the Channel is nowhere morethan two hundred and sixteen feet deep, and for half of thedistance across, it is less than a hundred feet deep. It is justthis extreme shallowness, in combination with strong winds[6]]and tidal currents flowing in the Channel neck between theNorth Sea and the Atlantic, that makes the seas of the Straitof Dover so formidable, especially in the winter months. Theweather is so bad during November and December that theodds of a gale's occurring on any given day are computedby the marine signal station at Dunkirk at one in seven, andduring the whole year there