The various different ideas floated, and their respective pros, cons, backers and objectors

According to a despatch dated January 8, 1857, by Malta Governor William Reid addressed to the Colonial Office in London, it seems that an embryonic proposal to connect the harbours of Marsamxett and Grand Harbour was first mooted by the Knights of St John.

Reid says that “the idea to connect the two harbours by means of a canal across the peninsula from the head of one harbour to that of the other is very old. It had been proposed in the time of the Knights and has been frequently spoken of to me.” In fact, it is quite plausible that the Knights had considered this proposal. The technology for building below sea level was there at the time. The Knights built quays in Grand Harbour and proposed a molo, a breakwater, in the 18th century.

The seed of this idea may have been germinating in the minds of the Knights for long years. As early as 1558, a wide wet moat had been proposed by Italian military engineer Bartolomeo Genga in a plan for the defence of a new city on Mount Sciberras, immediately below the projected fortified land front across the Valletta/Floriana peninsula, secondarily connecting the waters of both harbours, roughly along a route, in shallow arc form, where the Floriana Lines now stand.

Did the Knights of St John perhaps also know that the Romans had dreamt of connecting the Mediterranean and the Red Seas via a canal, now the Suez Canal, to shorten the route to Persia, and hence the Order’s desire to connect Malta’s harbours?

The Romans were marine engineering and harbour works experts, and availed themselves of deep-sea divers called urinatores, who were trained to work underwater, each weighted with lead for quick immersion at depths of around 30 metres through the use of pipes and ‘kettles’ of air above their heads. Or were the Knights privy to the fact that, after all, centuries earlier, the Egyptians travelled between the two seas along narrow natural canals/rivulets on small boats?

Reid’s proposal

Reid’s idea was to have a straight underground tunnel (not a canal) route at sea level “along a line across the isthmus (sic) opposite to the places of greatest business”, at a point starting at the west end of Pinto stores, proceeding underneath Calcara Gate/Crucifix Hill, across Floriana, skirting the tips of the ditches of the Valletta counterguards/ravelins, to Marsamxett Harbour to a point beneath Msida Bastion Cemetery, exiting at today’s Hay Wharf.

He advocated that, due to the great expense of making an open cut across the high ground running along the Valletta peninsula, what is known as the Floriana Ridge, a direct communication by means of a tunnel under the ridge would be less costly.

On November 17, 1856, he requested the Public Works to estimate the cost of the tunnel connection. Reid proposed that it should contain water six feet deep, with two narrow canals affording a double tunnel line of traffic for barges instead of one broad waterway in which boats would meet. He submitted that one such tunnel, 3,000 feet long, 16 feet wide and 14 feet high, would cost around £10,000, based on an 1857 estimate made by Superintendent of Works H. Zimelli. The scheme included the construction of two hardstone bridges and iron chains at each end of the tunnel, the excavation of 288,000 cubic feet of rock below sea level and 384,00 cubic feet above sea level.

Bonavia’s proposal

An earlier scheme in another location had been proposed by the eminent Maltese architect Giuseppe Bonavia, consisting of an open-cut canal 50 to 60 feet wide by 11 feet deep between the Menqa ‘timber’ Basin in Marsa and the head of Pietà Creek.

Initially, the Chamber of Commerce was in favour of a canal connection, but it later opposed the idea when it realised that the Royal Navy was strategically safeguarding Imperial interests by attempting to transfer mercantile shipping to Marsamxett to make space for the British Fleet in Marsa.

In the meantime, Robert Stephenson arrived in Malta in January 1857 on his way back from Egypt. Stephenson was a renowned civil engineer, the son of George Stephenson of railway fame. He had vast experience on major civil works in England, Egypt and other countries, and, since 1856, had been assisting the Egyptian government on a new railway network and on the most important global engineering project of the time for maritime trade, the Suez Canal, whose works actually started in early 1859 at the Port Said end.

Stephenson’s proposal

After a technical study of both schemes and a site visit to examine the ground, Stephenson reported in favour of a canal route skirting the Floriana lines from the Menqa in Marsa to the head of Pietà Creek, a route that had been suggested by Bonavia.

The Portafoglio Maltese defined the advice as “un piano intermedio”, a sort of hybrid solution in the sense that Bonavia’s canal was preferred, not as an open-cut canal for its whole length, but as a canal/tunnel with a central section beneath the Blata il-Bajda ridge in tunnel form and two open-cut canal ends.

The governor immediately convened a meeting with high-ranking military officers, who, without hesitation, put forward their objections on the grounds of strategic military defence of the Floriana Lines, especially due to the proximity of the proposed open canal sections to the Floriana glacis.

After Reid’s acceptance of Stephenson’s recommendation to shift the route further inland from Reid’s tunnel route, a new canal route in a curvilinear form on plan was designed, presumably by architect William Scamp.

In February 1857, Maltese lithographer Giuseppe Brocktorff produced a coloured map titled Plan and Section of the Proposed Canal and Tunnel between the two Harbours.

The plan shows the curved large-radius mostly open-cut route divided into three sections, which started as an open-cut canal at the Marsa Menqa, marked as a fish pond on the map, passed in tunnel form in the central ridge section beneath the old cemetery in Ħamrun (now the MUSEUM headquarters) and ended in another open cut section at the head of Pietà Creek, skirting the multi-denominational Ta’ Braxia Cemetery, which incorporated within its burial grounds an earlier Jewish cemetery, close to the old Plague cemetery and to the Tad-duluri chapel, at the foot of Salita Pietà. The route bypassed the glacis of the Floriana Crown Works, but the military authorities again expressed concern at the proximity of the open cut to the glacis.

The section drawn at the bottom of the lithograph reveals that the overall length was 1,050 yards, but the tunnel scheme was restricted to a short section, only 300 yards long, to be driven through the central Ħamrun ridge. The two end-sections of the route were to be open-cut canals, not tunnels, 400 yards on the Marsa side and 350 yards on the Pietà side, where low-lying ravines permitted an open canal.

The rock levels along this curved route were generally lower than the ones along the original location proposed by Reid, the straight route for double tunnels close to the Valletta ditch, especially due to the two existing ravines at both ends of the curved route.

In this context, it will be noted that various maps of the 1565 Great Siege show graphically the Turks carrying boats across Blata il-Bajda, along this overland route from Pietà Creek to Marsa, in this instance even perhaps inwards of the then inexistent Floriana Lines, by taking advantage of the lowest elevations in the area for an attack by sea on Senglea.

Although it was a longer route, this curved canal scheme was therefore less costly than the shortest tunnel route across the Floriana peninsula close to the Valletta fortifications where the ridge was higher.

The option of deepening the Valletta ditch down to below sea level was also considered as another alternative route for the purpose of connecting the two harbours, but the latter proposal was dropped because the route was considered to be tortuous and unsafe for vessels.

In a despatch to London dated February 14, 1857, Reid said that Stephenson had advised him that “it would be better to make the communication where the Knights intended to have it, namely, outside of the most advanced fortifications of Floriana instead of the line I had suggested”.

This meant that the location and direction of the proposed Knights’ route was known to him in some detail, clear evidence of the suggested ditch route from the original Genga proposal three centuries earlier intended primarily to defend the fortificatory trace of Valletta and not to connect the two harbours, clearly a secondary consequence.

The reason for Stephenson’s preference for this route was that nearly two-thirds of that line might be open canal, the remaining third only being required to be a tunnel, with an attendant overall cost equivalent to Reid’s full tunnel proposal.

Reid forwarded another despatch to London, explaining that the canal/tunnel would be a great advantage both to the naval and military services, and to commerce. The Royal Navy would have a “speedy and sure communication between the Dockyard and their steamers in Marsamuset (sic) harbour”.

Reid forwarded a despatch to London, explaining that the canal/tunnel would be a great advantage both to the naval and military services, and to commerce

He reiterated that the route would strengthen the military position of Floriana, not weaken it. He claimed that Stephenson was in favour of taking advantage of two terraced ravines at the canal ends to have an open cut, thus reducing the length of tunnelling and the width of the isthmus to only 300 yards, while providing a new advantageous advanced military position supported by the cannon of Floriana at 250 yards distance; the enemy would be in peril if beaten back to the canal by a sortie from the garrison after advancing beyond the isthmus position; the bank could be precipitous and not sloped, to provide a better barrier; the approaches to the canal could be defended by gun boats from the water; and the Imperial government had the power to prevent storehouses to be built along or close to the canal, if these were prejudicial to its defence.

Although conscious of the army’s objections, Reid concluded in another despatch to London that the route endorsed by Stephenson would be the easiest and the least expensive, and that he had the support of the Admiralty. For these reasons, the Royal Navy was, in fact, also in favour of the project due to the great advantage to the fleet and naval service in general. The army and navy rivalry raised its head again, prejudicing the chances of implementation.

High-ranking naval officers in Malta argued that Britain was progressively increasing its naval presence in the Mediterranean in the mid-19th century, especially due to the Crimean War in 1854-55 and the expected opening of the Suez Canal in November 1869. In the age of steam, maritime trade was on the increase, and Malta’s strategic position as a trading post in the centre of the Mediterranean strengthened this view.

The British military, however, insisted on its objections to Stephenson’s proposed curved canal/tunnel route. Fear of attack by land from Sa Maison, considered the weakest point of the land defences, was a cogent reason. Mention was also made of the fear of the eventual presence of stores and buildings serving as cover, and the already much-too-extended defence lines to man.

For these reasons, the Commanding Officer Royal Engineers advised that “British Imperial interests shall in Malta consist in the value of its harbours and dockyard and the necessary works for their defence… I consider the proposed canal and tunnel to be decidedly objectionable”. He actually recommended “to adopt a passage by tramway or otherwise, through the ditch immediately outside Valletta and between it and Floriana… open to our use of the scarp and counterscarp”.

Proposed new dock at Marsa complicates and delays the canal project

The military objections did not lead to the shelving of the canal project, as a new dock proposal by the Royal Navy to be sited in the Marsa Basin in the line of the canal came up to complicate the matter further, now involving also the local community and the Chamber of Commerce, who were both intent on safeguarding the interests of the mercantile fleet.

As a result of this impasse, other proposals for new dock sites gained impetus, and both the canal project and the new dock proposals became bones of contention.

The Royal Navy, while debating with the army about the proposed canal, was more concerned about the space provided in Grand Harbour for the British warships and the pressing needs of dock construction. In the 1860s, France constructed dry docks for its largest warships at Toulon and Marseilles; Italy at Genoa and Spezia; Spain at Cartagena.

The British government was afraid that its naval strategy was not addressing the pronounced deficiencies in the Mediterranean vis-à-vis other navies, especially when Britain’s naval power was weakened after the cession of the Ionian islands to Greece by the 1864 Treaty of London.

Meanwhile, another issue arose in the late 1850s about silting and dredging at Pietà and Marsa. Governor Reid claimed that the harbours had silted up considerably with mud, as evidenced by the different shorelines in Admiral Smyth’s (1822) and Spratt/Graves’ (1856-60) maps.

The Menqa was clearly in need of dredging, while Pietà Creek provided clear proof of shore shifting in Malta’s harbours. There were reports that our Lady of Sorrows chapel in Pietà was flooded in 1612 with fish floating near its entrance during a heavy gregale storm, indicating that the shoreline reached as far inland as the foot of Telgħet Gwardamagia (near the Old Blackley) at the head of the creek, very close to the chapel.

Independently of the canal project in the Marsa Basin, and after years of haggling with the local government in representation of the mercantile community, whose ships were moored in French Creek, Reid’s successor, Governor Gaspard Le Marchant, decided to remove the merchant fleet to the Marsa Basin to provide adequate space for warships and for further dockyard facilities in French Creek.

In May 1859, the Maltese government, through a resolution passed by a majority of the British-appointed members in the Council of Government, ceded French Creek to the Royal Navy and pushed the mercantile fleet into the Marsa Basin, binding the Imperial government to construct two breakwaters within Grand Harbour (not at the entrance, which moles were, in fact, never built), to dredge the Marsa Basin and to build a camber in the second creek of the new extension in the place called Ħotba tal-Capu Mastru (The Menqa). These works were known as The Harbour Extension Works.

In 1861, while works were being carried out according to the 1859 resolution, the Imperial government, to add insult to injury, came up with the idea of constructing a new graving dock in the Menqa for iron-cased ships, according to the design of William Scamp, the navy’s architect, instead of extending Dock 1 in Dockyard Creek, as had been previously envisaged. The Menqa was reserved, according to the 1859 agreement, for the mercantile community, and the dock was proposed precisely in the location of the entry/exit point of the canal.

Political implications

The correspondence on the site of the dock is recorded in the printed Papers Related to the Proposed New Dock at Malta. Four alternatives were considered, but the major contenders were the extension of the dock in Dockyard Creek and the construction of a new one at the Menqa.

The Admiralty was in favour of the former solution, while other naval officers were in favour of William Scamp’s proposal who had drawn up the new dock design within the Menqa. In 1858, Gaspard Le Marchant gave his support to the Marsa site for the new dock, again prioritising Imperial interests over those of the mercantile fleet.

Gaspard Le Marchant gave his support to the Marsa site for the new dock, again prioritising Imperial interests over those of the mercantile fleet

The mercantile community was fuming. It was not enough that the mercantile fleet was being relegated to Marsa, without ancillary maritime facilities, instead of the well-protected French Creek where facilities were adequate. It was now expected to play second fiddle to Imperial interests by allowing a graving dock to be built according to William Scamp’s proposal for use by the Royal Navy’s warships and for the mercantile fleet only when its use was not required for Her Majesty’s ships.

This meant that the mercantile community was at the mercy of the Admiralty, as merchant vessels would be allowed to use the dock for repairs only when British warships would not be in the dock. They feared that there would certainly be loss of trade since ships would be diverted to Messina or Cagliari, because mercantile vessels would not have been guaranteed service in time due to the navy’s priority.

Furthermore, mercantile vessels would be prevented from mooring in the basin during the passage of warships of the largest class, and this created an unsustainable situation as none of the vessels could afford waiting time or downtime, apart from other objections regarding the additional expense to dredge the basin to accommodate the navy’s warships. Large iron ships were being introduced at this time and the only dock available was unsuitable to receive them.

In 1862, another resolution was proposed and later endorsed by the Imperial government. The Marsa Basin was to be deepened by another 12 feet for the passage of large warships, necessitating an additional cost to which the local government refused to contribute, arguing that the 1859 resolution did not envisage dredging to this depth.

Objections were raised by the Quattro Avvocati – Sciortino, Torreggiani, Mifsud and Pullicino – in the Council of Government in the sense that the local government should not fund the deepening which was the exclusive requirement of the navy.

The civil government was expecting the Imperial government to fork out the additional expense for deepening, as warships were larger than merchant vessels and the commercial community would do with less dredging to a lower depth of water.

In the meantime, the necessity of a dock was becoming more urgent; for if only the port of Cagliari threatened to rival the port of Malta, several other ports in Sicily and other ports in Italy were offering formidable competition.

Sciortino argued that the dock was actually in need of Imperial interests and would not benefit the local shipping community in the Menqa for the following reasons:

(i) It was not true that the existence of a large dock in Malta would attract merchant shipping to Malta, because if ships are sailing say between Valletta and Messina, would that ship come to Malta for repairs when the dock might be made use of by the Admiralty, who had priority?

(ii) The inconvenience of warships in mercantile waters and the consequent risk of collision, especially loss of time;

(iii) The Imperial government had formed the plan of driving the merchant shipping to Marsamxett Harbour, and

(iv) The intrusion now proposed for warships to enter mercantile waters may result in the expulsion from the Menqa where there were no facilities with or without the canal scheme.

During the sittings of the Council of Government, the quattro avvocati were supporting the Chamber of Commerce and the mercantile community in favour of siting the new dock in French Creek, while the Imperial government was pushing for the new graving dock to be sited at the Marsa Basin.

The Maltese mercantile community was also not in favour of the merchant fleet being pushed out of Grand Harbour. It feared that it would be relegated to a secondary Marsamxett Harbour where facilities for anchorage, ship repair and harbour facilities were very poor compared to Grand Harbour. It will soon be seen in this short study that this view was vindicated in 1897, when a proposal in this sense was in fact put forward by the Imperial government, again arousing the wrath of the mercantile community.

The Imperial government argued that the cost of the dock at the Menqa will be lower because “here the solid character of the rock encourages the expectation that the greater part of the dock may be formed by simply quarrying the natural stone, only making good fissures or flaws with cut stone, a mode of construction adopted with great success at Birkenhead”.

This was not possible in French Creek, “where from close analogy afforded during the construction of the present docks, broken ground, debris and abundant springs may be expected”.

It was intended to allow the contractors to quarry stone upon the line of the proposed canal free of charge. The governor also placed at the disposal of the Admiralty, quarries equally convenient, but of better quality, on Corradino Hill, free of charge, because of some difficulty with regard to the quality of the stone in the proposed canal cutting. Scamp advised that in the initial phase of the dock construction, the void of the old quarry located within the dock/canal line from which stone had been taken for the old moles of the harbours, should be availed of to reduce excavation volumes.

Notwithstanding this political wrangle, works started on this complex dock project at the northeast corner of the Menqa where there was an old slipway, but these were slowing down perhaps due to the consequent failure to keep it dry, probably for reasons of fissured rock and the geology of the area, which Scamp himself had warned would force its abandonment, although he favoured Marsa over French Creek for the new dock.

Scamp’s idea was not to line the dock with masonry to keep it dry due to the heavy expense, but sea water started gushing into the floor of the dock through boils and other fissures. Moreover, the technology to plug ‘boils’, sea water gushing out at pressure from rock fissures at dock floor level, was not available then, contrary to the successful plugging with concrete of a massive boil in the floor of Dock 4 in the early 1900s.

On November 11, 1862, Col. G.T. Greene, director of Admiralty Works, analysed the various site options for a first-class dock in Grand Harbour, including the one along the line of the canal in the Menqa. Although the dock works at Marsa had just started, he reported on the four options for locations of a new graving dock, which were:

1. An outer lock to Dock 1 in Dockyard Creek, according to Admiral Martin’s proposal;

2. Col Greene’s long deep dock in the proposed canal line in the Menqa;

3. A new dock in French Creek according to Churchward’s proposal (later Somerset Dock);

4. A dock in high ground between Dockyard Creek and French Creek, immediately below St Michael’s bastion.

The tug of war dragged on with debates in the House of Commons until in early 1864, it was decided “that the project of constructing a dock at the head of the Marsa at Malta be abandoned, and that the site in French Creek… be selected for that purpose”. The final decision came from London, applauded by the Quattro Avvocati who led the opposition to the Marsa location between 1863 and 1864.

In the face of these difficulties, the Imperial government, under fierce criticism of the Chamber of Commerce and the mercantile community lobby, who were opposing the idea of reserving the dock for the Royal Navy’s semi-exclusive use, was constrained to abandon the building of the dock in the Menqa in favour of extending Dock 1 in Dockyard Creek to satisfy the need of the Mediterranean Fleet, without committing itself on the canal scheme again due to the navy-army wrangle.

The canal ‘suspension’ rested for a few years until 1869, when Doublet, a Maltese businessman, made another attempt to rekindle interest in the canal without success.

Proposed canal project referred to Downing Street and is rejected

The canal proposal was again revived in 1872 during Sir Charles van Straubenzee’s governorship by the Admiralty through John Scott Tucker, a British civil engineer who was serving in the Royal Navy while based in Malta for some years. This time it was a canal all the way, no tunnel sections.

On March 27, 1872, Scott Tucker submitted a report to the Chief Secretary to Government, the Hon. Sir Victor Houlton, presenting clearly the advantages of a “ship canal” whose straight-line route was marked on a lithographed map attributed to Giuseppe Brocktorff and sold by G. Muir.

The canal would also partly implement one of the recommendations of the Sanitary Commission to improve the circulation of harbour waters and avoid unhealthy conditions due to stagnation at the heads of the two harbours. This recommendation was, in fact, binding on the Imperial government according to the May 1859 Grand Harbour Extension Resolution to accommodate warships to the Marsa Basin.

At the time, the only water access from one harbour to the other was still around St Elmo Point, but that passage was not navigable except in fine weather. Tucker proposed a straight-line open-cut canal from the Marsa northwest basin to Pietà Creek, with a 20-foot depth of water and a width of 100 feet at the waterline, to allow vessels to pass one another at all times.

The open-cut canal intersected three public roads, and swing bridges were to be provided to allow for passage of masted ships when required, at fixed times only. A 20-foot-wide roadway a few feet above sea level was proposed to be built on one side of the canal, with another 10-foot-wide road for the passage of carriages for towing purposes on the other side.

The deepest excavation to water level was 70 feet in the Blata l-Bajda ridge. Tucker estimated that the quantity or rock to be removed would be in the region of 410,000 cubic yards – the better part of which would be available as building stone for quay works, jetties and stores along and at the ends of the route. The line would bypass the Ta’ Braxia Protestant Cemetery. The plague cemetery at Pietà would have been touched but it was not mentioned in Tucker’s report.

The cost was estimated at £60,000 and this amount was to be raised by shares at five to six per cent interest open to the public and by subsidies/grants from the Malta and Imperial governments. Rock excavation was estimated to cost the equivalent of €0.23 per cubic metre.

As a possible alternative, Scott Tucker also proposed the construction of a straight tunnel across the Valletta peninsula underneath the fortified outworks of the main Valletta land front, from near Calcara Gate on Crucifix Hill in Grand Harbour to Marsamxett Harbour near Hay Wharf, but it would not allow the passage of masted vessels.

This line, shown and drawn by hand on Brocktorff’s lithograph, attached to the report, was seemingly the one that Governor Reid had suggested in 1857. This Floriana route was surely the shortest tunnel distance across the peninsula separating the two harbours.

Tucker’s vision was of two magnificent harbours astride the Valletta peninsula to promote naval concourse and mercantile trade. He also mentions that the Hydraulic Lift Dock was soon to open in Msida (eventually inaugurated in January 1873), that the P & O company was already operating in Msida Creek; that there were ships in quarantine moored at Manoel Island; that all vessels would be able to cross harbours without rounding St Elmo Point; and consequently Marsamxett Harbour would enjoy its fair proportion of patronage.

Tucker, however, was apologetic in attempting to estimate the amount of traffic using the canal, because he said that no traffic had at any time previously existed.

On the other hand, he pointed out that in “this day of steel and steam”, a greater number of vessels were expected to stop at Malta, and made particular emphasis on the potential of the hydraulic dock for the repair of vessels; “each owner of an engineer’s factory in the Grand Harbour might have a pontoon… with the vessel to be raised… floated to Msida… the lift acting as mother to them all”.

Again, the old debates with regard to harbour space for shipping reignited, and the canal proposal ground to a halt, also because this time, the Royal Navy was eyeing the hydraulic dock, which actually operated in Msida for 20 years until it closed down in 1893, when the Admiralty took over the entire installation to eventually dismantle it in 1903 for the re-use of its iron in Docks 4 and 5 in French Creek.

Strickland’s proposal

The canal proposal was revived for the umpteenth time in 1895 by the naval authorities when the requirements of the British fleet were increasing exponentially due to the British naval strategy in the Mediterranean. This revival was later supported by none other than Gerald Strickland, the then Chief Secretary to Government, who also made various other proposals in connection with the development of Sliema Creek, including berths for warships, the setting aside of Lazzaretto for commercial purposes and the transfer of the quarantine station to Comino.

A July 1895 file contains naval opinions by senior naval officers regarding a tunnel across Valletta. Dry tunnels were considered, but these were not of much use to the navy. A tunnel and an omnibus lift to the city in a central part of its length for passengers only was discarded on health grounds, while a tramway or railway tunnel were deemed to be too large to be economically feasible, even if sailors and naval officers would have been able to use the connection regularly. Both schemes would have had stations near Customs House and Marsamxett Gate.

The navy was interested in three waterways; a Pietà-Marsa canal route, the Valletta Ditch, and a tunnel boat-way underneath the city, which obviously excluded masted ships. Tenders were issued in June 1895 for two alternative and distinct proposals; one for a dry tunnel and shaft to accommodate a tramway, and another for a boat-way (passaggio per barche), both “to be lighted with electricity with a space in the middle for a lift and landing place”. The tender was never awarded.

In 1897, the British authorities proposed to transfer the mercantile fleet from Marsa to Marsamxett. The commercial community had again objected vehemently to this proposal. The northwest basin at Marsa was still being used by the commercial community according to the 1859 resolution, having been ejected earlier from French Creek to the inner reaches of the Grand Harbour.

The relegation of the mercantile fleet to a secondary role in Marsamxett Harbour was seen to be detrimental to trade in the islands, and was again objected to, although subsequently, arguments in favour of a proposal to build a dry dock and ship-building yard at Ta’ Xbiex and Gżira in Marsamxett Harbour, and to maintain the Hydraulic Lift Dock at Msida, attenuated the effects of this war game on the Grand Harbour naval rights.

In 1901, in a letter addressed to the Governor, the Chief Secretary to Government, Gerald Strickland, who had a wide vision with respect to large new schemes, what we today call infrastructural projects, gave his candid opinion on the development of Marsamxett Harbour, stating that “the waters of Marsamuscetto Creek were liable (sic) to be used in common for commercial and Imperial interest”. He suggested that no commercial vessels would be allowed to moor in Marsamxett Harbour except for ships using the Hydraulic Dock, the P&O Stores and the Lazzaretto.

He pointed out that if a quarantine harbour were provided in connection with the proposed Comino Quarantine Establishment, it would be necessary to admit ships for inspection or preliminary quarantine elsewhere, say just inside the proposed new breakwater in Grand Harbour, or in Sliema Creek, when it becomes an outer anchorage after the Lazzaretto Creek may have been set aside for commercial purposes.

Strickland objected to proposals for a commercial dock (i) at the head of Pietà Creek, arguing that Pietà had been “reserved as being on the most probable line for the canal under consideration between the two harbours”, while a dock (ii) at the head of Msida Creek “would be burdened with objections due to the impracticability of a swing bridge in view of the nature of traffic”.

There were other sites for a graving dock which were proposed and objected to by Strickland in his letter: (i) the site of the then existing Hydraulic Dock in Msida through the building of a temporary dam across Msida Creek; (ii) the unoccupied foreshore at Ta’ Xbiex where valuable space might be obtained cheaply by flattening the curve of the road and putting it back from the sea: (iii) building two breakwaters on the Malta side of the southern Comino Channel; (iv) the Gozo side of Comino and Gozo itself in the northern channel, providing in this case “the” harbour of Gozo; (v) the northern Comino Channel could be closed with a shorter length of breakwater and Gozo connected with Comino, opposite Għar Żimel (sic), thus forming a wide area of shelter simultaneously for Gozo itself and for the quarantine station at Comino, with excellent anchorage on either side.

Strickland concluded that all these marine works/schemes for dock construction, including the one in the line of the proposed Pietà-Marsa canal were considered beyond the limits of practical finance, especially the ones which incorporated breakwaters in the Fliegu, where the depth of about eight to 10 fathoms of water made the expense prohibitive.

In April 1900, a note to Governor Sir Francis Grenfell from HMS Renown reveals that a discussion regarding the canal was held on May 31 of the same year, resulting in a request to consult a “Mr Matthews”, who had reported on the feasibility of new docks and on a new breakwater at the harbour entrance, the one eventually built.

Around this time, a straight tunnel across Valletta was again proposed to connect the two harbours along a line starting at Customs House and ending near the landing place close to the old Marsamxett Gate.

The matter was finally referred to Downing Street, where an inter-departmental conference was held on October 14, 1903, at 21, Northumberland Avenue, to consider the canal question. Admiral Raban, representing the Navy, said that the Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty favoured the scheme but were not prepared to take the initiative to carry out the works themselves.

Colonel Ruck, representing the War Office, asserted that it was not concerned unless it could be shown that the sanitary condition of the harbours would be improved by the proposed canal, and that at present there was not sufficient evidence to show that this was the case, although a flushing tank in the northwest basin had been designed to circulate the stagnant waters in the harbour when the Grand Harbour breakwater was being built.

The Colonial Office let it be known that it was not financially in a position to take up the work, reserving the right to impose dues on commercial vessels for the use of the canal.

The naval authorities withdrew their support on the grounds that the service was better suited for civil and commercial purposes rather than naval ones, especially since warships were out of the equation.

The result was that the scheme “must be dropped, at any rate for the present”. History repeats itself. For the umpteenth time, the project was shelved by the Imperial government and never came to fruition.

A few years ago, in the third millennium, a similar proposal connecting both harbours via a tunnel, this time by the Maltese for the Maltese, seems to have been shelved.

Philosophers would say it’s destiny. Perhaps there will never be a link, a marriage between the two harbours; are they destined to remain separated?

 

William Soler is an architect with a keen interest in Maltese history and Melitensia.