CHAPTER XII.
THE MEN BY WHOM THE WORK WAS DONE.
Progress of the work—1886.At the head of these must be placed, of course, the chief engineer, Sir John Hawkshaw.
It would be presumptuous of me to say much about Sir John himself, or to speak of his vast experience, and the name he had made in connection with the great works he had carried out.
I had the honour of working under him on the East London Railway, continuing Brunel’s original Thames Tunnel under the London Docks, through Wapping, Shadwell, Whitechapel, to join the Great Eastern Railway—a work where the difficulties met with were second only to those encountered in the Severn Tunnel.
I also carried out for Sir John and Mr. J. Wolfe Barry, in 1883 and 1884, the completion of the inner circle of the metropolitan railways in London, by the construction of the City lines from the Mansion House Station to the Tower.
Born in 1810, Sir John was seventy-six years of age when the tunnel was completed.
