Sir Richard Branson, about to embark on his channel crossing in a floating car.

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Channel

The English Channel (French: La Manche (IPA: ), "the sleeve") is the part of the Atlantic Ocean that separates the island of Great Britain from northern France and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. more...

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It is about 563 km (350 mi) long and at its widest is 240 km (150 mi). The Strait of Dover is the narrowest part of the channel, being only 34 km (21 mi) from Dover to Cap Gris Nez, and is located at the eastern end of the English Channel, where it meets the North Sea. During the period of ancient Roman hegemony the channel was known in Latin as the Oceanus Britannicus and up until around 1549 it was known as the British Sea.

The channel is relatively shallow, with an average depth of about 120 m at its widest part, reducing to about 45 m between Dover and Calais. From there eastwards the sea continues to shallow to about 26 m in the Broad Fourteens where it lies over the watershed of the former land bridge between East Anglia and the Low Countries. The Channel Islands lie in the channel, close to the French side. The Isles of Scilly in the United Kingdom and Ushant in France mark the western end of the Channel. The French dÃ©partement of Manche, which incorporates the Cotentin Peninsula that juts out into the channel, takes its name from the surrounding seaway.

Formation

Before the end of the Devensian glaciation (the most recent ice age) around 10,000 years ago, the British Isles were part of continental Europe. During this period the North Sea and almost all of the British Isles were covered with ice. The sea level was about 120 m lower than it is today, and the channel was an expanse of low-lying tundra, through which passed a river which drained the Rhine and Thames towards the Atlantic to the west. As the ice sheet melted, a large freshwater lake formed in the southern part of what is now the North Sea. As the meltwater could still not escape to the north (as the northern North Sea was still frozen) the outflow channel from the lake entered the Atlantic Ocean in the region of Dover and Calais.

At some point around 6500 BC, catastrophic Erosion swept away the chalk to create the English Channel, leaving the iconic white cliffs of Dover. Wave action on the soft, chalk cliffs widened the Channel further, a process which continues today.

History

The channel has been a key natural defence for Britain, allowing the nation to intervene but rarely be dangerously threatened in European conflicts, mostly notable in the fight against Napoleon during the Napoleonic Wars, and Nazi Germany during the World War II. Nevertheless, the channel has been the scene of many invasions and attempted invasions, including the Roman conquest of Britain, the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Spanish Armada in 1588, and the Normandy landings in 1944. The channel has been the scene of many naval battles, including the Battle of Goodwin Sands (1652), the Battle of Portland (1653), the Battle of La Hougue (1692) and the engagement between USS Kearsarge and CSS Alabama (1864).