The Severn Tunnel/Preface
PREFACE.
I was engaged for seven years on the construction of the Severn Tunnel, and during this period many visitors inspected the works. Mr. Bentley happened on one occasion to come down from London, and, after spending the best part of a day on the works, appeared to be much interested by what he saw. Indeed, very shortly after his return he wrote to me to ask that I would place upon record some account of the construction of the Tunnel.
I was particularly occupied at the time I unwisely acceded to this request. Writing a book proved to me a more arduous task than a year’s superintendence of the Tunnel itself.
I am reluctant to say anything about myself, but I am told it is desirable to give some brief account of my career. Not being one of those fortunate individuals who are said to be born with a silver spoon in their mouth, I was forced to undertake responsible work in the year of the Railway Mania (1845), before I reached the age of seventeen, after a very brief course of instruction at King’s College. Both in that year and 1846 I did considerable work on Parliamentary Surveys. In 1847, Mr. Brassey was good enough to give me a position on the North Staffordshire Railway, and I remained upon his staff for seven years; the last two being spent upon his great contract for the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada. For a further seven years I remained in Canada, constructing railways for the Governments of the Lower Provinces, and I returned home, after an absence of nine years, in 1861.
In 1863 I made some extensive surveys for railways in Russia. In 1864 and 1865, further surveys and explorations in Egypt and the Soudan, passing as far south as Metammeh, 100 miles north of Khartoum. On my return to England in the spring of 1865, I was offered and accepted the management of the construction of the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways for the three firms who had jointly undertaken the contract, namely, Messrs. Peto and Betts, John Kelk, and Waring Brothers. The construction of these lines from Edgware Road to the Mansion House I carried out successfully, and they were completed on the 1st of July, 1871. Shortly after this, I, in partnership with my brother, the late Mr. Charles Walker, undertook the contract for the extension of the East London Railway from the end of Brunel’s Thames Tunnel, under the London Docks, through Wapping, Shadwell, and Whitechapel. Sir John Hawkshaw was the engineer-in-chief of this work, and I was fortunate in gaining his good opinion, and carried out the works, I believe, to his complete satisfaction; and it was owing to the confidence he reposed in me that he afterwards intrusted to me the still more difficult work of constructing the Severn Tunnel.
Sub-aqueous tunnels have recently become quite the fashion. One such experience as the Severn Tunnel, with its ever-varying and strangely contorted strata, and the dangers from floods above and floods below, has been sufficient for me. One sub-aqueous tunnel is quite enough for a lifetime.
Since these pages were commenced, I have had a great pressure of work upon me. Not only have I had to carry on such large works as the Barry Dock and Railways, and the Preston Dock, but I have also been called upon to visit South America to start the work of the Government Docks at Buenos Ayres, and at home to begin the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal. Any oversight or clerical error which may have escaped notice during the revision of the proofs will under these circumstances, I trust, receive the indulgence of the reader.
T. A. W.