But the fears of the War Office were not stilled by such observations as these. On February 23, the War Office announced that it was appointing a Channel Tunnel Defense Committee, headed by Major-General Sir Archibald Alison, the chief of British Army Intelligence, to collect and examine in detail scientific evidence on "the practicability of closing effectually a submarine railway tunnel" in case of actual or apprehended war. The Board of Trade, in the meantime, did its best to hold Sir Edward Watkin and his project off at arm's length. On March 6, 1882, the secretary of the Board of Trade, which had been keeping an eye on newspaper accounts of the progress of the tunnel, wrote to remind Sir Edward of the vital fact that all the foreshore of the United Kingdom below high-water mark at Dover was "_prima facie_ the property of the Crown and under the management of the Board of Trade," and that while the department did not wish to impede progress it distinctly wished to give notice that the Government "hold themselves free to use any powers at their disposal in such a matter as Parliament may decide, or as the general interest of the country may seem to them to require." In other words, the Board told the Submarine Continental Railway Company that it could not drive its tunnel toward France without trespassing on Crown property extending all the way from high-water mark to the three-mile limit of British jurisdiction—the traditionally accepted limit of the carrying power of cannon. The claim of the Crown to the foreshore in this case was, however, one that Sir Edward Watkin disputed. He claimed that through an arrangement with a landowner near Shakespeare Cliff, and by certain purchases of land from the Archbishop of Canterbury as head of the Church of England, the tunnel proprietors had come into possession of ancient manorial rights, originally granted by the Crown itself, that permitted them to exploit the foreshore at Shakespeare Cliff as they saw fit, including the right to tunnel under it. Sir Edward had claimed that he was having made an extensive legal search of the title in question, which would take a little while.