7,700 soundings and took 3,267 geological samples from the bed of the Strait and concluded from their studies that, except for a couple of localities near each shoreline, which a tunnel could avoid, the Lower Chalk indeed showed every sign of stretching without interruption or fault from shore to shore. However, when these studies were completed, Lord Grosvenor's Channel Tunnel Company did not find itself in a position to do much about them. The company was having trouble raising money, and its temporary power to acquire land at St. Margaret's Bay for experimental workings had lapsed without the promoters ever having used it. William Low, who had left the company in 1873 after disagreements with Hawkshaw on technical matters—Low had come to believe, for one thing, that the terrain around St. Margaret's Bay was unsuitable as a starting place for a channel tunnel—had become the chief engineering consultant of a rival Channel-tunnel outfit that called itself the Anglo-French Submarine Railway Company. But the Anglo-French Submarine Railway Company wasn't getting anywhere, either. It remained for a third English company, headed by a railway magnate named Sir Edward Watkin, to push the Channel-tunnel scheme into its next phase, which turned out to be the most tumultuous one in all its history. [Illustration: A PLEDGED M.P. M.P.'s BRIDE. "_Oh! William dear—if you are—a Liberal—do bring in a Bill—next Session—for that Underground Tunnel!!_" This cartoon depicting the horrors of the Channel crossing originally appeared in _Punch_ in 1869. In 1961, 92 years later, _Punch_ found it as timely as ever.] [Illustration: Aimé Thomé de Gamond THE GREAT TUNNEL SCHEMERS Sir Edward Watkin] [Illustration: THE GREAT ANTI-TUNNELER Lt.-Gen. Sir Garnet Wolseley, 1882] [Illustration: Sir Garnet Wolseley's fears of a French invasion through the tunnel as seen in the United States in 1882 by _Puck_.] [Illustration: Hector Horeau's tunnel scheme of 1851 involved laying down a prefabricated submerged tube on the Channel bottom. The pavilions are ventilating stations.] [Illustration: Thomé de Gamond's plan in 1856 for a Channel tunnel by way of the Varne, which would be built up into an international harbor.] [Illustration: The Channel tunnel workings at Shakespeare Cliff in 1882. The entrance is by the smokestack near the twin portals, which are unconnected with the tunnel workings.] [Illustration: Diagram of the tunnel workings at Shakespeare Cliff in 1882. The Admiralty Pier at Dover is in the distance.] [Illustration: TUNNEL PARTIES IN THE 1880s Everybody who was anybody went down into the tunnel to inspect the new undersea road to France. 1. Guests preparing for the descent. 2. Being lowered 163 feet below the surface to the gallery. 3. Champagne party in the tunnel. 4. Inspecting the Beaumont tunneling machine as it bores toward France. 5. Tunnel oratory at champagne lunch at Dover.]