How Brexit got its name
QUESTION Who coined the word Brexit?
THE term Brexit was adapted from an earlier word, Grexit, which was used to describe the possibility of a Greek exit from the eurozone as a consequence of that country’s financial turmoil in the early part of this decade.
Citigroup economist Ebrahim Rahbari is the earliest known source for the term Grexit and it was used by him and Citigroup’s Global chief economist Willem H. Buiter on February 6, 2012.
It may have first appeared on social media, probably Twitter, where contractions are used to reduce character count.
The term Brexit first appears in May 2012 by economics blogger Peter Wilding in a post entitled Stumbling Towards The Brexit. It was used on Twitter later that day by journalist David Gow.
The words Grexit and Brexit have coined similar terms to describe the potential exit of countries from the EU, among them Swexit (Sweden), Frexit (France) and even Irexit. More imaginative are the words humorists have coined for the Czech Republic, Portugal and Finland – Czechout, Departugal and Finish.
Bob Dillon, Edinburgh.
QUESTION What’s the history of Ireland’s Carnegie libraries?
FURTHER to earlier answers, the Carnegie library in Cork was destroyed by fire by the Black and Tans on the evening of December 11, 1920.
The library was situated near City Hall and both buildings were set alight as a reprisal for an ambush at Dillon’s Cross in which one British soldier was killed.
The first building to go up in flames was the home of an old Fenian leader, Brian Dillon, and afterwards the Tans moved into the city centre and torched one side of Patrick Street. Their next target was on the south bank of the Lee, where the City Hall and Carnegie library were razed. Tim Horgan, Cork.
QUESTION My dad told me work to build a Channel Tunnel started in England in the Seventies, but was cancelled. Was this true?
AS EARLY as 1802, Albert Mathieu-Favier, a French mining professor, put forward a plan for a Channel tunnel. His scheme would have seen horse-drawn carriages trundling through, with oil lamps lighting the way. Mathieu-Favier conceived giant chimneys to ventilate his tunnel. However, concerns over national security stalled these early attempts.
By the latter half of the century, interest in the idea was re-kindled. Soil surveys had demonstrated that the chalk under the Channel would be relatively easy to tunnel through.
Confidence in such projects was high following Marc Isambard Brunel’s 1,300ft Thames tunnel (1843); the 100-mile Suez Canal (1869); and the eight-mile railway tunnel that had been cut through the Alps in 1871.
In 1875 an Act of Parliament authorised the Channel Tunnel Company Ltd to start preliminary trials. This was an Anglo-French project with a simultaneous Act of Parliament in France.
By 1877 several shafts had been sunk to a depth of 330ft at Sangatte in France, but initial work carried out at St Margaret’s Bay, to the east of Dover, had to be abandoned due to flooding.
In 1880, South Eastern Railway chairman Sir Edward Watkin and French Suez Canal contractor Alexandre Lavalley conducted exploratory works on either side of the Channel, coming together in 1882 under the umbrella of the Submarine Railway Company.
In 1880, No. 1 shaft was sunk and a 7ft diameter pilot tunnel begun below Abbot’s Cliff, between Dover and Folkestone, 10ft above high water level.
Initially a boring machine invented by Colonel Frederick Beaumont was used for the work, but this was supplanted by the rotary boring machine invented by Captain Thomas English. This machine was 33ft long, powered by compressed air and capable of cutting half a mile per month.
However, the project was again to be stymied by military concerns. Top brass, led by General Garnet Wolseley, petitioned the UK Parliament that French legions could invade through the Channel. The Board of Trade cancelled the project in July 1883.
The entrance to Watkin’s tunnel works in the cliff face contains hundreds of yards of supported tunnels, though it is closed for safety reasons.
Michael P. Smith, Kent.
QUESTION What were the worst warships of the 20th century?
FURTHER to an earlier answer, my grandfather’s ship, HMS Marshal Ney, would be in the running for this title. She was a monitor – a seagoing artillery platform in World War I, used to bombard enemy positions onshore but never intended to take on other enemy vessels.
A shallow draft barge with a battleship turret, she had two 15in guns and was powered by German diesel engines. It was these engines that put paid to her brief career as a fighting ship.
My grandfather, H J Tweedie, took command of her while she was still on the stocks at Palmers at Jarrow, in northeast England, in 1915. She was slightly damaged in a Zeppelin raid just before she was launched by the captain’s wife, my grandmother.
During commissioning it was found to be impossible to keep both engines running at once. My grandfather recalled optimistically that only on two occasions did both engines fail altogether.
He described her seagoing qualities as that of a washtub. If she was given too much helm, it was better to let her go in a complete circle. But the Army in Flanders was desperate for Ney’s services, so many of her failings were overlooked.
The Ney was stationed at Dunkirk and would move up the coast to engage shore targets around Ostend. It was here the Germans had established the Tirpitz artillery battery. There ensued a number of artillery duels between this battery and the British monitors. During one such operation, both of Ney’s engines failed and she had to be towed out of range by the destroyer Viking. Eventually the engines were got going, but on entering port the steering gear gave up. The Ney put a 90ft dent in the wooden pier.
After being ordered back to port for repairs, the Ney moved to Dover, where one of her engines exploded and the cylinder head punched a hole through the armoured deck above it. No one was hurt, but it signalled the end of her fighting career.