Brunel's Tunnel, Rotherhithe to Wapping

The Thames at London was extremely congested. Up until the beginning of the nineteenth century, merchant ships coming into London could only be unloaded between the Tower of London and London Bridge. Sometimes ships were moored for three months on the river waiting for their cargoes to be unloaded. They were easy prey for gangs who cut them adrift and looted them when they ran aground.

Enclosed docks were needed. The first was opened in 1802 by the West India merchants at the northern end of the Isle of Dogs. Other enclosed docks soon followed: the London Docks at Wapping, the East India Docks at Blackwall and the Surrey Docks, all built in the first years of the nineteenth century.

But the nearest river crossing was London Bridge, by now very old and a few miles away from the new docks. An estimated 4,000 vehicles crossed the bridge every day, and 350 Thames watermen also took passengers across the river. Building a bridge this far to the East presented problems - the height of ships' masts meant that the bridge would have had to be very high and the approach roads very long.

The alternative was a tunnel, but the ground under the Thames was soft - gravel, sand and mud. It would not support a tunnel, especially with the weight of the water above. Robert Vazie first tried to build a tunnel in 1807, and the work was carried on by Richard Trevithick, a very capable engineer from Cornish tin mines, but it was flooded just less that 200 foot short of completion. Trevithick proposed a new method: putting cast iron sections into the tunnel excavated from above. This would have worked but it did not attract financial support. The tunnel was abandoned.

A new method was proposed by Brunel pere. His name was Marc Brunel, originally a French naval officer, he came to England to escape the French Revolution.  He went to America where he built a very impressive canal linking the Hudson River with Lake Champlain, so linking New York with the St. Lawrence River.

But in 1818 Marc Brunel patented a device for "forming drifts and tunnels underground". His inspiration was the shipworm, Teredo navalis, which bores into ships' timbers. Digging with the shell-like protrusions on either side of its head, the shipworm excretes the excavated wood out of its body, using it to line and reinforce the tunnel as it moves along.

 

 

 

They started with a shaft at the Rotherhithe end. Marc's new method was to build a brick tower and then simply allow it to sink into the soft riverbank through the downward force of its own weight. At first it appeared to be a tower - an inner and an outer surface of bricks a yard apart, the cavity between them filled with cement and rubble. A superstructure was then set on top of the tower on which a steam engine was assembled to pump away the water which the shaft encountered as it sank and to bring up buckets of earth from the bottom.

The structure weighed nearly 1,000 tons and sank into the ground at a rate of a few inches per day. The downwards progress of the shaft at Rotherhithe became one of the most popular and fashionable sights of London. After it was fully sunk diggers had to go down and give it a foundation and leave an opening for the tunnelling shield, and also dig a reservoir for water drained from the tunnel workings. Marc designed his own steam engine, installed above the shaft to drive the tunnel pumps and bring up the earth in buckets.

 

The shield was an iron frame facing the direction of the tunnel, rectangular. The miners worked in independent cells digging out a small patch at a time, while the frame was braced against the bricks the bricklayers had just finished laying, 6 deep lining the tunnel. Below you can see the miners working in the frame on the right and spoil being removed and bricks brought.

Finally the great shield was lowered into place 63 feet below the ground and the boring of the tunnel began. When fully manned, thirty six miners excavated a tunnel face of approx. 800 square foot. There were two eight hour shifts.

Marc had been taken ill even before the tunnelling got under way, and in 1826 the resident engineer also became ill and resigned. Isambard, Marc's son, had been involved in the work from the beginning. He often stayed below ground supervising the progress of the great shields for up to 36 hours at a time. In January 1827 his appointment as resident engineer was made official. He was only twenty years old.

Isambard was given three assistants, but all were prey to diseases because the river bed was composed of toxic substances, methane gas and foul water. One of the assistants died almost immediately. Workmen and overseers also fell ill. In February 1827, with 300 feet of the archway completed, the directors of the tunnel decided to allow the public to visit the work. Marc protested as the earth was inconsistent and gravel layers threatened the works with flooding. At the end of April up to 700 visitors were coming each day, for the charge of one shilling. The directors cut the workmen's wages which resulted in a strike.

Then there was a flood...
Marc had a stroke...
Another flood...
The tunnel was bricked up...

Today you can see the tunnel at Wapping station on the East London Railway, part of the Overground. You can't see any more of it because it is in use by trains. It is an International Landmark Site, one of only four in the country (and only 250 in the world). Here the Brunels pioneered a method of tunnelling used in every tube system all over the world ever since.

The museum at Rotherhithe tells all the story and you can go into the shaft, but they haven't much money with which to buy exhibits and they need funds to buy items like Brunel's drawings. Please visit and buy books and souvenirs.