48 Fun Facts About English Channel

What were the 'little ships' that sailed to Dunkirk in 1940?

Civilian boats ferrying troops, many of them fishing or pleasure craft, were needed because Dunkirk's beach was too shallow for big navy ships to come close.

What is the French name for the English Channel?

La Manche means 'the sleeve', a name usually said to describe the Channel's long outline, which tapers like a sleeve toward the Strait of Dover.

What rock forms England's famous white cliffs at the Channel's narrowest point?

Chalk formed from the remains of tiny algae that sank to an ancient seabed, and because it is soft, erosion keeps wearing the cliffs back.

Roughly how wide is the English Channel at its narrowest point?

About 30 km separates the coasts there, and until about 8,000 years ago a land bridge joined them, before melting ice raised the sea.

Who was supreme commander of the D-Day invasion across the Channel?

Dwight D. Eisenhower put off the invasion for 24 hours because of bad weather, then gave the go-ahead once his meteorologist forecast a break.

Which French abbey stands on a rocky islet that very high Channel tides cut off from the land?

Mont-Saint-Michel held out against English sieges in the Hundred Years' War, but after the French Revolution its abbey was turned into a prison.

Which queen ruled England when the Spanish Armada sailed up the Channel in 1588?

Elizabeth I went to her troops at Tilbury in military dress and is said to have told them she had the heart and stomach of a king.

Which famous medieval artwork tells the story of William the Conqueror's cross-Channel invasion of England in 1066?

The Bayeux Tapestry isn't really a tapestry: its scenes are stitched in wool onto a linen strip about 70 metres long rather than woven.

The Mary Rose, which sank in the Solent in 1545, was the warship of which English king?

Henry VIII's ship went down while leading an attack on a French invasion fleet, and her wreck was raised from the seabed in 1982.

What is the largest island in the English Channel?

The Isle of Wight's Carisbrooke Castle held Charles I prisoner before his execution, and one of his escape attempts failed when he got stuck in a window.

Which French writer, banished after opposing Napoleon III, settled in exile on Guernsey?

Victor Hugo had been expelled from neighbouring Jersey in 1855, so he moved on to Guernsey and bought Hauteville House there.

Which notorious sandbanks off the Kent coast are partly exposed at low tide?

The Goodwin Sands shelter the safe anchorage of The Downs, yet their shifting shoals keep wrecking ships in spite of lights and buoys.

After leaving Southampton in 1912, the Titanic crossed the Channel to pick up passengers at which French port?

Cherbourg's dock was too small for the giant liner, so passengers had to be ferried out to her by tender boats.

What did France open on the Rance estuary in Brittany in 1966?

A tidal power station: sealing off the estuary to build it wiped out much of the marine life there, and the basin behind the barrage has kept silting up.

Whose wireless system sent messages across the Channel between France and England in 1899?

Guglielmo Marconi had moved to London after getting little encouragement in Italy, and the Post Office's chief engineer backed his experiments.

What first broke through the ridge of rock that once joined Britain to France?

An overflowing lake is thought to have poured over the ridge in giant waterfalls, carving plunge pools that now lie buried in the seabed.

Which Roman leader was the first to lead an invasion of Britain across the Channel?

Julius Caesar's men didn't know a full moon brings very high tides there, so the rising sea and a storm wrecked or crippled many of their ships.

Which Viking leader was granted the land that became Normandy by the French king in 911?

Rollo agreed to be baptized as part of the deal, yet he is said to have died a pagan.

What did the English send drifting into the anchored Spanish Armada at night in 1588?

Ships set on fire threw the Spanish into a panic: several cut their anchors to escape, and the Armada lost its formation before the next day's battle.

Which 1759 naval victory thwarted a planned invasion of Britain during the Seven Years' War?

The Battle of Quiberon Bay came after the French fleet slipped through a gap in Admiral Hawke's blockade, only for Hawke to chase it down and wreck the invasion plan.

Which art movement took its name from a painting of the Channel port of Le Havre at sunrise?

Impressionism got its name from a mocking review: a critic sneered at Monet's Impression, Sunrise, yet the label stuck and came to name the whole group.

Which admiral's Trafalgar victory wrecked the fleet Napoleon had meant to use to seize the Channel?

Horatio Nelson was shot by a French sniper during the battle and died below decks hours later, knowing his fleet had won.

Who made the first aeroplane crossing of the Channel, from Calais to Dover, in July 1909?

Louis Bleriot's flight won him the Daily Mail's £1,000 prize, and by the end of the year orders for more than 100 copies of his plane had come in.

What kind of craft made the first flight across the Channel, in 1785?

A balloon carried Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries, but it sank so low over the sea that they threw out almost everything, even some of their clothes.

What did the Allies create to fool Germany about where the D-Day landings would come?

A phantom army, backed by dummy equipment and double agents' reports, kept German forces waiting for a main invasion somewhere else.

What was first laid under the Channel between England and France in 1850?

A telegraph cable, which went dead on its first night; the story goes that a fisherman hauled it up and cut it, and a sturdier armoured cable followed the next year.

What was the codename of Hitler's planned cross-Channel invasion of Britain?

Operation Sealion needed the Luftwaffe to beat the RAF first, and when it failed in the Battle of Britain, Hitler shelved the invasion for good.

What was the German warships' bold February 1942 run from Brest to Germany through the narrow sea called?

The Channel Dash so embarrassed Britain that The Times called it the most mortifying blow to its sea power in home waters since the 17th century.

Which part of the British Isles did German forces occupy in the Second World War?

The Channel Islands' occupation grew so desperate in its last winter that many islanders were saved from starvation only by Red Cross food parcels.

What did the wartime project PLUTO deliver across the Channel?

Fuel through undersea pipelines was pumped from coastal stations disguised as seaside cottages and other harmless-looking buildings to keep them secret.

Which French president opened the Channel Tunnel in 1994?

François Mitterrand rode a train from Paris while the Queen came through the tunnel from London, and the two trains pulled up nose to nose for the ceremony.

What did Eurotunnel announce a year after the Channel Tunnel opened for business?

A huge loss, one of the biggest in British corporate history, and only a deal swapping billions in bank loans for shares kept the tunnel from going under.

Which tunnel has since overtaken the Channel Tunnel as Europe's longest?

Gotthard Base runs almost flat through the bottom of the Alps, so much heavier freight trains can cross without climbing up into the mountains.

Who made the first observed, unassisted swim across the Channel in August 1875?

Captain Matthew Webb was stung by a jellyfish partway across, took a shot of brandy and kept going until he waded ashore after almost 22 hours.

In 1883, the first man to swim the Channel died trying to swim what?

The Niagara rapids pulled him under as onlookers watched him throw up his arms, and his body was found four days later.

Who became the first woman to swim the Channel, in 1926?

Gertrude Ederle beat the fastest time any man had swum by well over an hour, and New York welcomed her home with a ticker-tape parade.

Which comedian swam the English Channel for Sport Relief in 2006?

David Walliams raised about £1 million with the swim, then kept going for Sport Relief: he later swam the Strait of Gibraltar and the length of the Thames.

Which of these is banned from the roads of the island of Sark?

Cars are banned and there are no public streetlights, which helped Sark become the world's first 'dark sky island' in 2011.

What was the Gossamer Albatross, which crossed the Channel on 12 June 1979?

The human-powered aircraft needed so little power to fly that its designer, Paul MacCready, went on to build solar-powered planes.

Which fossil hunter found early ichthyosaur and plesiosaur skeletons in the Channel cliffs at Lyme Regis?

Mary Anning's finds made her famous among geologists, yet as a woman she was barred from the Geological Society of London and often went uncredited.

How did Frenchman Franky Zapata cross the Channel in 22 minutes in August 2019?

Franky Zapata's first try on a jet-powered flyboard ended in the sea when he missed the refuelling boat, so he came back with a bigger boat and made it.

In 1965 two vehicles of what type drove from Dover into the sea and crossed to Calais?

Amphicars were promoted with stunts like this crossing, and most of the fewer than 4,000 ever built were sold to buyers in America.

In January 1971, a German freighter went down in the Channel after striking what, even though warning lights marked it?

A sunken tanker had exploded and gone down the day before, and weeks later a third ship hit the wrecks, even after more lights and buoys had been added.

Why was Christopher Cockerell's hovercraft, later a Channel ferry, held up for years?

Official secrecy covered the idea for its possible military use, yet the armed forces showed little interest, so for years he could not develop it.

Why did the Mayflower leave the Channel port of Plymouth in 1620 without the Pilgrims' second ship?

It kept leaking, so many of its passengers squeezed onto the Mayflower, and the delay meant crossing in storm season and landing just before winter.

By what title is the British monarch traditionally known in Jersey and Guernsey?

Duke of Normandy lives on there because when King John lost mainland Normandy to France in 1204, the islands stayed with the English crown.

What kind of vessel was the Rob Roy, which began carrying passengers across the Channel in June 1821?

The paddle steamer drew few passengers at first, as locals preferred the sailing packets, but it was soon overtaking them, and the Post Office ordered steamers of its own.

In 1843 the South Eastern Railway opened a cross-Channel ferry route from Folkestone to which French port?

Boulogne ferries left from Folkestone's silted-up harbour, which had bankrupted its owners before the railway picked it up for just £18,000 and dredged it.