Channel Tunnel Links: UK and France Meet Under Sea

Engineers boring through chalk marl beneath the English Channel punched through the last meters of rock and shook hands 40 meters below the seabed. On December 1, 1990, British and French tunnel crews connected their service tunnel, ending an island's geographic isolation from continental Europe for the first time since the Ice Age. Graham Fagg of the UK and Philippe Cozette of France clasped hands through the breakthrough hole as champagne corks flew on both sides. The dream of a cross-Channel link was centuries old. Napoleon had considered a tunnel for invasion purposes. Victorian engineers had started digging in the 1880s before the British government halted the project over military vulnerability concerns. The modern tunnel project launched in 1987 after Margaret Thatcher and Francois Mitterrand signed the Treaty of Canterbury, insisting the project use entirely private financing. Eleven tunnel boring machines chewed through 150 kilometers of undersea rock. Workers endured constant water seepage, geological surprises, and punishing shifts hundreds of feet underground. The project employed over 13,000 workers at peak construction. Ten workers died during the build. The service tunnel breakthrough in December 1990 preceded the two larger rail tunnels, which connected in mid-1991. The completed Channel Tunnel, or "Chunnel," opened to freight in 1994 and passenger service via Eurostar followed shortly after. At 50 kilometers, it held the record for the longest undersea tunnel for over two decades. Journey time from London to Paris dropped to just over two hours. The tunnel carried over 400 million passengers in its first 25 years, quietly stitching Britain to a continent it had spent centuries keeping at arm's length.