In a hotel lobby in Sandgate, England, not two miles from the soon-to-be-opened English Channel Tunnel, stiff upper lips trembled. For the first time since the last ice age, England was about to be linked to France.
"I'd rather England become the 51st state of the U.S.A. than get tied up to there," said a retired civil servant with a complexion the color of ruby port. He nodded toward the steel gray Channel out the window, his pale blue eyes filled with foreboding.
"Awful place," added his wife, lifting a teacup to her lips. "They drink all the time, and the food is terrible. When I go to the Continent, I take my own bottle of English sauce."
"We don't care much for the French," her husband concluded. "But the French...." Here a pause, a shudder, as the gull-wing eyebrows shot upward. "The French don't care for anybody."
On the other side of the Channel, the entente was scarcely more cordiale. In Vieux Coquelles, a village a beet field away from the French terminal near Calais, Clotaire Fournier walked into his farmhouse.
"I went to England once," he said, sinking into a chair in the dining room. "Never again! All they eat is ketchup." A tiny explosion of air from pursed lips, then the coup de grace. "You can't even get a decent glass of red wine!"
Well, by grace of one of the engineering feats of the century, for richer or poorer, better or worse, England and France are getting hitched. On May 6, Queen Elizabeth of Britain and President Francois Mitterrand of France are scheduled to inaugurate the English Channel Tunnel ("Chunnel" for short), sweeping aside 200 years of failed cross-Channel-link schemes, 1,000 years of historical rift, and 8,000 years of geographic divide.
The 31-mile-long Chunnel is really three parallel tunnels: two for trains and a service tunnel. It snakes from Folkestone, England, to Coquelles, France, an average of 150 feet below the seabed. Drive onto a train at one end; stay in your car and drive off Le Shuttle at the other 35 minutes later. Later this year Eurostar passenger trains will provide through service: London to Paris in three hours; London to Brussels in three hours, ten minutes.
The Chunnel rewrites geography, at least in the English psyche. The moat has been breached. Britain no longer is an island.
On a clear day, which is not very often, from the top of Cap Blanc-Nez on the north coast of France, you can look across the Channel and see the faint shimmer of chalk cliffs on the English coast.
It is 22 miles to Dover, as the bluebird flies. Ninety minutes by ferry, 40 minutes by hovercraft. An average 12 hours if you swim.
But to a 19th-century writer called Valbert, the trip was "two centuries...of agony." On the 350-mile-long English Channel (La Manche, or "the sleeve," to the French), which separates the North Sea from the Atlantic, odds of a gale on any day in winter are one in seven. Now neither freight nor passengers need be held hostage by a heaving sea.
Queen Victoria, herself a victim of seaboard queasiness, would have approved. If it can be accomplished, I will give it my blessing, she said of a proposal that foundered.
Dreams of a cross-Channel connection have materialized, only to evaporate, 26 times before. Albert Mathieu, a French engineer, proposed the first plan in 1802: two tunnels linked to a mid-Channel island where stagecoaches could get fresh horses. Napoleon, Britain's archenemy, approved, and there's the curse. Whenever the idea of a link emerged in Parliament, so did apocalyptic visions of invasion.
"Those poor creatures who have no stomach for an hour's sea passage obviously think the retention of their dinners is more important than the safety of their country," thundered a British admiral in scuttling a 1914 proposal.
Why, after two centuries, did the two ancient foes take the plunge? A congruence of stars and planets, I suggest to Sir Alastair Morton, the British chairman of Eurotunnel--the Anglo-French company that owns and operates the tunnel.
"More likely a congruence of political tides and currents," he replies. On his wall is a copy of the legendary London newspaper headline: "Fog in Channel. Continent Cut Off."
You had two leaders with private agendas, he says, referring to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Francois Mitterrand.
"Thatcher saw the tunnel as a monument to private enterprise. A willing Mitterrand, happy to go along with the way she thought it ought to be done, was determined to expand France's high-speed rail network."
Other converging currents: a tidal wave of 220 banks from 26 nations to finance the project. British and French industries desperate for work (the tunnel employed as many as 15,000 workers). "The tunnel's come about because Britain finally feels secure," adds Sir Christopher Mallaby, Britain's ambassador to France. Still, the country just can't go it alone. Britain, which snubbed the rest of Europe for years, has joined the European Union in its drive toward economic integration. The island mentality has eased, but angst remains.
Some symptoms:
* In 1986 Thatcher and Mitterrand met in Canterbury, England, to seal the treaty allowing tunnel legislation to proceed. Demonstrators pelted Mitterrand's limo with eggs and shouts of "Froggy, go home."
* When interviewed by French television, Prince Charles reportedly sputtered over the defiling of Britain by the tunnel.
* Prompt and unanimous passage of tunnel legislation in the French parliament. Tortured debate in the British.
Professor Roger Vickerman of the University of Kent at Canterbury, who has studied the Chunnel with colleagues at the University of Lille II in France, calls it the "garlic fog effect." "Had the tunnel linked us to the Netherlands," he says, only half kiddingly, "we'd have built it long ago."
It's June 28, 1991, and I'm packed into a construction workers' train along with several dozen other journalists. We're headed out from the English side to the breakthrough ceremony for the south running tunnel--the last to be completed.
The Chunnel is a work in progress. The concrete walls await final installation of the power, water, and communication lines that will turn it into a transport system. White dust fills the air. The train screeches painfully. "Makes you appreciate British Rail," someone jokes.
Finally we reach the breakthrough site. The two machines that dug this tunnel started from opposite sides of the Channel and worked toward the middle. Now we're staring at the 30-foot-diameter face of the French tunnel boring machine (TBM), "Catherine."
In one of those vive la difference quirks that color the project, the French gave women's names to their machines. On the British side, it's by the numbers--like TBM No. 6. Another difference: French workers wear chic, well-cut, taupe jumpsuits with red and blue racing stripes down the sleeves. The British uniform is pure grunge: baggy, bright orange.
Looking up, I imagine 180 feet of Channel above my head--ferries, tankers, a Dover sole or two....
The grating of the TBM interrupts my reverie. Its cutterhead--a huge wheel with tungsten-tipped teeth--chews into the last trace of rock separating England from France.
Music blares, and lights glare. Several Frenchmen scramble through. Thunderous applause erupts as dozens more follow. Strangely moving, this connecting of countries. Champagne corks pop, and French workers hug British counterparts.
"I might have opposed it 30 years ago, but now it's my tunnel," an Englishman says.
French tunnelers are still climbing through. "So many," I say, turning to a French official.
"And there are 56 million more behind them," he replies.
Apres le tunnel, le deluge? Eurotunnel hopes so. It predicts eight million passengers a year by 1996. The flow will be lopsided. Only 30 percent of the traffic will be headed to Britain. "The French don't take holidays in England," explains Jeanne Labrousse, a Eurotunnel executive.
Hmmmm. Why do the French visit Britain? For the food? The weather? Fashion?
Mme Labrousse seemed thoughtful.
"Of course," she brightened, "we will work on selling the idea."
Selling the tunnel as an investment to the French was a piece of cake. French holders of Eurotunnel stock outnumber the British four to one. Did they know something the British did not? No, in part it's the French love affair with high technology and public projects.
"The French man in the street believes les grands projets will make life better for his grandchildren," a British executive with Eurotunnel says. "He believes in Ariane rockets, nuclear power, and the Channel Tunnel."
In France, support for such projects is considered downright patriotic. At a Eurotunnel stockholders meeting in Paris, a woman asked when the first dividend would be paid. Not till century's end, she was told. A man jumped up. "How can you ask such a thing?" he demanded. "Better you should ask if they need more money."
Talk about pouring money down a hole. At the height of construction, Eurotunnel forked out 4.5 million dollars a day. The bill at opening day will ring up to 13.5 billion dollars--nearly twice the original estimate.
Was someone's math a little shaky?
"The nature of the beast," explains Professor Vickerman. "Large construction projects have large cost overruns."
The out-of-control tab turned into a bitter dispute between the Eurotunnel owners and Transmanche Link (TML), the consortium of ten British and French contractors that built it. "Despite the overruns," says Vickerman, "they were amazingly close to schedule."
Well, sort of. When work kicked off in December 1987, Eurotunnel trumpeted that service would begin May 1993. Sorry, make that August...well, perhaps December....
Finally, Eurotunnel refused to name an opening date at all. As rancor between Eurotunnel and TML shifted to high gear, work shifted to low gear. Bankruptcy rumors wafted over the tunnel like a whiff of ripe Stilton.
Last July the Bank of England played headmaster and prodded both sides to get on with it. The money dispute went to arbitration. Civility and work resumed.
"The tunnel crystallizes a moment in history," Andre Benard, Eurotunnel's French chairman, mused in his Paris town house. "We've brought Britain closer to Europe. There's no turning back."
In Le Transmanche, a bar down the road from the Coquelles Terminal, owner Nadine Cottie-Bourbiaux dusts off the welcome mat for travelers who'll stop in for a pastis or two. "Once it bothered me," she says, indicating the tangle of highways leading toward the sleek, white terminal buildings. "Now, it's our landscape."
In London, property agent Miles Maskell, who specializes in French real estate, rubs hands in hopes of more and more British bargain seekers who'll snap up French chateaus and farmhouses, "at one-third the cost of here," he enthuses, flipping through a photo album of listings. "The tunnel brings France closer!"
On both sides, blueprints for freight terminals, shopping complexes, and offices await an upturn in the economy to be transformed into concrete and steel.
Chunnelphobia subsides. The prognosis improves. Best to follow Voltaire's prescription: "Let us forgive one another's follies."
A highly improbable, if totally logical, connection has been forged. What God put asunder, man hath joined together. A tide of passengers, freight, and commerce will follow. In time, perhaps, a wisp of tolerance as well.
There's supposed to be light at the end of every tunnel. If this one brings a little understanding, what's 13.5 billion dollars between friends?
Copyright 1994 National Geographic Society. All Rights Reserved.
