Tunnel Through the Deeps

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Tunnel Through the Deeps (also published as A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!) is a 1972 alternate history/science fiction novel by Harry Harrison.

[edit] Plot summary

In an alternate history, the (abortive) United States lost the American Revolutionary War, George Washington was shot as a traitor, and America is still under control from an ascendant but benevolent and utopian British Empire. However, this world's divergence point from our own occurred far earlier, when the Moors won the battle of Navas de Tolosa on July 16, 1212 on the Iberian peninsula. Thus, it was John Cabot who discovered America, as Spain was unable to become unified due to the survival of an Islamic presence on its territory, and therefore could not finance the expedition of Christopher Columbus in 1492. The protagonist, Augustine Washington, is a direct descendant of George Washington.

The title refers to the construction of a submerged floating-tube pontoon bridge/tunnel across the Atlantic Ocean in the novel.

Captain Augustine Washington and Sir Isambard Brassey-Brunel (descendant of Isambard Kingdom Brunel) get together to link the heart of the British Empire with its far-flung Atlantic colony in North America, although they fall out over Gus' wooing of his young daughter, Isabel, and disputes over engineering the Transatlantic tunnel. However, the two are reconciled on Sir Isambard's deathbed, and the lovers marry afterwards.