Card of the Day: The Opening of the Mersey Tunnel

As Princess May of Teck, The Duchess of York, The Duchess of Cornwall, Princess of Wales and, later, Queen Mary, Mary of Teck was always amazed by the technological innovations that quickly developed during her lifetime. She was among the first of the Royal Family to have telephones installed in her home, to use (and drive) a motorcar, to fly in an airplane, to visit Cinemas and to appreciate the bright lights of electricity.

Queen Mary praised the ingenuity of her people and, being an avid traveler, was thrilled when new means of accessing different parts of the empire were designed. She was quite supportive of the opening of the Mersey Tunnel, “The Queensway,” which was the first roadway tunnel under the River Mersey.

The opening of this impressive innovation was depicted in the forty-second 1935 Silver Jubilee card by Wills’s Cigarette Company.

The reverse of the card reads:

THE OPENING OF THE MERSEY TUNNEL


The largest under-water road tunnel in the world is the 8,000,000 pound "Queensway," which runs beneath the Mersey for over two miles, and connects Lancashire with Cheshire. This great engineering work was opened in Liverpool by the King, who was accompanied by the Queen, on July 18th, 1934. The green and gold draperies at the entrance parted like a stage curtain, revealing inside the mouth of the Tunnel the glow of an electrically-lit greeting: "Merseyside Welcomes Your Majesties"; and simultaneously a signal flashed to inform Birkenhead that the link had been accomplished. Thousands of school children took part in the ceremony.

This nifty video from shows the King opening the tunnel. Quite grand…