To General [Samuel] Bentham, asking that machinist Henry Maudslay immediately send the surveying tools required to meet the frenzied demands for Naval construction – three months before Admiral Nelson was to defeat the French fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar. Born in France, Sir Marc Isambard Brunel (1769-1849) emigrated, during the Reign of Terror, to New York, where, for six years, he became the city’s Chief Engineer and acquired American citizenship before sailing to England to help the Royal Navy build ships for its wars with Napoleon, working.in close partnership with Bentham, the Inspector General of Naval Works. Ironically, both men would play historical second fiddle – Bentham to his philosopher brother, Jeremy, Brunel to his son Isambard, who was destined to become one of the 19th century’s greatest engineers. But Brunel senior did make his own mark (and win a knighthood from Queen Victoria) by his historic achievement of constructing an underwater tunnel – still in use today - beneath the Thames River.