Aimé Thomé de Gamond

Aimé Thomé de Gamond (November 1807 – 1876) was a French engineer and entrepreneur who believed in the feasibility of constructing a Channel Tunnel under the Straits of Dover.

However, despite his enthusiasm for such a venture, he died ridiculed and penniless because the project was not in conjunction with the political atmosphere of the period.

However, at the time both England and France thought that separation made better political and economical sense.

[3] His proposal was finally accepted in 1867 by Napoleon III and Queen Victoria but the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 brought an end to the project.

Gamond's fiercest supporter was his daughter Elizabeth, who once rowed a boat into the English Channel so he could dive to the seabed to perform geological surveys on the chalk because so little was known about the Weald–Artois Anticline.