The Day the Tunnel Under the Thames Finally Opened (1843)
Coming to Wonder History on 30 November 2026.
In the last week of March 1843, the Thames Tunnel — eighteen years of brick, mud and drowned men — is finally fit to open, and the river has one more try at taking it. On the Rotherhithe shore a sounding line shows the bed above the tunnel's crown scoured thin again; over the following days a Cornish shield miner, old Marc Brunel's restless son, a tunnel souvenir-girl and a Thames waterman patch, pump, whitewash and bail their way toward opening day, rowing upriver to Chelsea to fetch the half-paralysed engineer himself from his doorstep so that he can be carried under his own river. Hours before the gates open the Thames finds the weak joint and bursts black through the crown of the east arch; they stop it with clay bags, backs and lamplight. Then the bolts are drawn, fifty thousand Londoners pour down the Wapping spiral, and the old man is carried out into the rocket-light over Tower Hill, the first man to walk beneath a navigable river and come up the other side.
About this story
- Category
- Dramatic Turning Points
- Length
- 10 illustrated pages
Who appears
- Marc Isambard Brunel — The tunnel's engineer, seventy-four and half-paralysed
- Isambard Kingdom Brunel — His son, resident engineer turned bulldozing fixer
- Jack Treloar — Cornish shield miner, last of the original gang
- Hetty Pardew — Toll-keeper's daughter, sells tunnel souvenirs
- Ezra Coffin — Licensed Thames waterman who ferries the gang
What happens on 30 November 2026
This story is finished and scheduled. On 30 November 2026 it opens here in full — every page illustrated, with narration you can listen to — as part of Wonder History. Nothing on this page is a placeholder: the story exists, it has been reviewed, and this is its address.
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