
A plan to build a ship tunnel - omnibrain
http://newatlas.com/stad-ship-tunnel-interview-terje-andreassen/48480/
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205guy
Site working again, but headline still false:

Built in 1679, 165m long:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malpas_Tunnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malpas_Tunnel)

Built in 1832, 3333m long:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_de_Bourgogne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_de_Bourgogne)

Built in 1927, 7120m long:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rove_Tunnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rove_Tunnel)

The first two are canal tunnels not at sea level, but the last one is
connected to the Mediterranean at sea level.

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
Absolutely. In Britain the trailblazer was the 2633m Harecastle Tunnel, built
by James Brindley in the 1770s:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harecastle_Tunnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harecastle_Tunnel)
.

TFA describes the Norwegian tunnel as "the world's first ship tunnel of any
significant size", but "significant" changes as engineering advances, and
Harecastle was certainly significant at the time - contemporaries thought it
an unearthly achievement. Scepticism was such that it was nicknamed an "air
castle" (after "castles in the air"). It was the absolute limit of what was
believed possible with tunnelling technology through such rock: the 7ft width
defined the size of locks and bridges for the rest of the Grand Trunk, or
Trent & Mersey, Canal. In turn, this defined the size of the English
"narrowboat", the dominant inland craft for cargo carrying and, since the
1960s, pleasure boating. (In modern terms this would be called "boat" rather
than "ship", but in contemporary documents it was less clear, and it seems
likely that the size was chosen as a half-ship - half the width of the Mersey
Flat sailing vessels, on the river with which the canal connected.)

The original Harecastle Tunnel is now closed due to subsidence, but the 1820s
replacement is still operational, and the rest of the Trent & Mersey Canal is
fully navigable and very enjoyable: I moored a boat on it for six years.

(For anyone interested in finding out about Britain's 2,500-mile network of
historic canals, here's the charity that runs them:
[https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/](https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/) )

~~~
Retric
87 ft is vastly wider than any of those examples. It's the difference between
a boat and a Ship.

The general definition is a boat is small enough for a ship to carry it.
Narrowboat even uses the term boat.

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
Sure. The point is that this isn't a particularly significant "first" (as the
original headline claimed), it's an incremental advance in tunnelling
technology. If James Brindley had been able to build Harecastle to Mersey Flat
dimensions, he would have done. But tunnels have steadily got broader, deeper,
longer and air-draft-ier since Harecastle and Malpas. There was no sudden
moment when someone invented and built the ship tunnel.

(Incidentally, the "general definition" you cite is one used by the US Naval
Institute, but not universally recognised. As the former editor of a monthly
news-stand boating magazine it's certainly not one I've ever used. In the UK,
for example, you can legally define your small boat as a ship by signing up to
the Small Ships Register.)

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arethuza
The Soviets had a neat submarine base that was a curving tunnel through a hill
open to sea at both ends - now a museum. Designed to take a 100kt direct hit:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_museum_complex_Balaklava](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_museum_complex_Balaklava)

~~~
Jaruzel
That's very James-Bondy :)

~~~
arethuza
Actually, the UK did consider an underground base for its Polaris subs
(probably around Lochalsh) but that got ruled out pretty quickly due to the
enormous costs. The base also got relocated because the US wanted its UK
submarine base to be close to an airport and the UK base ended up being close
to the US base at Holy Loch.

Which is why the UK has its missile subs based so close to a major city!

See: The Silent Deep by James Jinks and Peter Hennessy

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shaftway
Site down: cached at
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YX9ObTm...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YX9ObTmWy2EJ:newatlas.com/stad-
ship-tunnel-interview-terje-andreassen/48480/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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tomohawk
If you get a chance, the Paw Paw Tunnel is a great hiking opportunity on the
old C&O canal. At 950m, it's pretty impressive.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paw_Paw_Tunnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paw_Paw_Tunnel)

They actually built this during the days of black powder.

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richlj
The volume of solid rock removed must be approximately 3 million cubic metres
(1700 × 37 × 26.5 x ~2) rather than the 3 billion cubic metres described in
the article.

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mikejmoffitt
Asking because I really don't know: How are fluctuations in water level dealt
with safely with this sort of thing?

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Gate off the water for the canal separate from the sea, so that it doesn't
fluctuate. Usually this involves building a set of locks so that ships can
traverse between the different levels - basically, a pair of floodgates with
mechanisms to drain water into and out of the pound between them. Push ship
in, lock the near gate, drain or fill the pound, unlock other end.

~~~
avar
No, that's not how it's going to work. This proposed tunnel has no locks, the
tunnel is open to the ocean on both ends.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
You sure? 100 ships a day means 14 minutes per ship, and a lock cycle takes
10-20 minutes, so that's awfully suggestive to me. OTOH, I'm not sure of the
relative difficulty and expense of adding height to a tunnel vs creating and
operating a lock - I'd assume at some length it makes more sense to use a
lock, since tunnel cost scales with length and lock cost doesn't.

~~~
avar
I don't know why the limit is 100 per day, I'm just going by the article & the
pictures in it which very clearly show a tunnel open to the ocean with no lock
system.

The photos also show a mountain going straight into the ocean, which means
raising the ship with a lock wouldn't save you any money, since you'd need an
unbroken sequence of locks going all the way to the top of the mountain.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
It'd save money by reducing the height of the tunnel you need to bore.

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matheweis
This reminds me of the Magdeburg Water Bridge, which is exactly what it sounds
like - a bridge where a canal (big enough for large ships) crosses over a
river.

