Suez Canal

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For other uses, see Suez (disambiguation).
Suez Canal, seen from Earth orbit, NASA.
Suez Canal, seen from Earth orbit, NASA.
Ships moored at El Ballah during transit
Ships moored at El Ballah during transit

The Suez Canal (Arabic: قناة السويس, transliteration: Qanā al-Suways), is a large artificial canal in Egypt, west of the Sinai Peninsula. It is 163 km (101 miles) long and 300 m (984 ft) wide at its narrowest point, and runs between Port Said (Būr Sa'īd) on the Mediterranean Sea, and Suez (al-Suways) on the Red Sea.

The canal allows two-way water transportation, most importantly between Europe and Asia without circumnavigation of Africa. Before its opening in 1869, goods were sometimes offloaded from ships and carried over land between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

The canal comprises two parts, north and south of the Great Bitter Lake, linking the Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf of Suez on the Red Sea.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] 12th Dynasty

Perhaps as early as the 12th Dynasty, Pharaoh Senusret III (1878 BC - 1839 BC) may have had a west-east canal dug through the Wadi Tumilat, joining the Nile with the Red Sea, for direct trade with Punt, and thus allowing trade indirectly between the Red Sea and Mediterranean. Evidence indicates its existence by the 13th century BC during the time of Ramesses II (see [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]).

Numerous geological surveys conducted since the mid-1960s have found no additional evidence of any other ancient man-made canal (as opposed to natural tributaries) existing in the region and extending from the Nile to the Red Sea.

[edit] Repair by Necho, Darius I and Ptolemy

It later fell into disrepair, and according to the Histories of the Greek historian Herodotus, about 600 BC, Necho II undertook re-excavation but did not complete it.

The canal was finally completed by Darius I of Persia, who conquered Egypt. According to Herodotus, the completed canal was wide enough that two triremes could pass each other with oars extended, and required 4 days to traverse. Darius commemorated his achievement with a number of granite stelae that he set up on the Nile bank, including one near Kabret, 130 miles from Pie. The Darius Inscriptions read:

“ Saith King Darius: I am a Persian. Setting out from Persia, I conquered Egypt. I ordered this canal dug from the river called the Nile that flows in Egypt, to the sea that begins in Persia. When the canal had been dug as I ordered, ships went from Egypt through this canal to Persia, even as I intended. [6] ”

It was again restored by Ptolemy II about 250 BC. Over the next 1000 years it was successively modified, destroyed and rebuilt, until finally being put out of commission in the 8th century by the Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur.

Construction of the canal
Construction of the canal

[edit] Napoleon considers repair

At the end of the 18th century while in Egypt, Napoleon Bonaparte contemplated the construction of a canal to join the Mediterranean and Red Seas. But his project was abandoned after a first survey erroneously concluded that the Red Sea was 10 meters higher than the Mediterranean, making a giant locks-based canal much too expensive and very long to construct. The Napoleonic survey commission's error came from fragmented readings mostly done during wartime, which resulted in imprecise calculations.[citation needed]

1881 drawing of the Suez Canal.
1881 drawing of the Suez Canal.

[edit] Re-construction by Suez Canal Company

In 1854 and 1856 Ferdinand de Lesseps obtained a concession from Said Pasha, the viceroy of Egypt, to create a company to construct a maritime canal open to ships of all nations, according to plans created by Austrian engineer Alois Negrelli. The company was to operate the canal by leasing the relevant land, for 99 years from its opening, for navigation. De Lesseps had used his friendly relationship with Said, which he had developed while he was a French diplomat during the 1830s. The Suez Canal Company (Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez) came into being on December 15, 1858.

The excavation took nearly 11 years, mostly through the forced labor of Egyptian workers — a form of labor which was not unique to the French, nor the British before them. Some sources estimate that over 30,000 people were forced to work on the canal. [7] But others estimate that 120,000 people died from the work. [8]

The British recognized the canal as an important trade route and perceived the French project as a direct menace to their geopolitical and financial interests. The British Empire was the major global naval force and its power had increased during the American Civil War. So the British government officially condemned the forced work and sent armed bedouins to start a revolt among workers. Involuntary labor on the project ceased, and the Viceroy soon condemned the slavery, and the project stopped.[1]


Angered by the British opportunism, de Lesseps sent a letter to the British government remarking on the British lack of remorse only a few years earlier when 80,000 [9] Egyptian forced workers died in similar conditions while building the British railtrack in Egypt.

At first, international opinion was skeptical and the Suez Canal Company shares did not sell well overseas. Britain, United States, Austria and Russia did not buy any shares. All French shares were quickly sold in France. A contemporary British skeptic claimed:

“ "One thing is sure... our local merchant community doesn't pay practical attention at all to this grand work, and it is legitimate to doubt that the canals receipts... could ever by sufficient to recover its maintenance fee. It will never become a large ships accessible way in any case." (reported by German historian Uwe A. Oster) ”
One of the first traverses in the 19th century.
One of the first traverses in the 19th century.

The canal finally opened to traffic on November 17, 1869. Although numerous technical, political (due to the British rivalry), and financial problems had been overcome, the final cost was more than double the original estimate.

The canal had an immediate and dramatic effect on world trade. Combined with the American Transcontinental Railroad completed six months earlier, it allowed the entire world to be circled in record time. It played an important role in increasing European penetration and colonization of Africa[citation needed]. External debts forced Said Pasha's successor, Isma'il Pasha, to sell his country's share in the canal for £4,000,000 to the United Kingdom (UK) in 1875, but France still remained the majority shareholder.

The Convention of Constantinople in 1888 declared the canal a neutral zone under the protection of the British; British troops had moved in to protect it during a civil war in Egypt in 1882. Under the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, the UK insisted on retaining control over the canal. But in 1951, Egypt repudiated the treaty, and by 1954 the UK had agreed to pull out.

[edit] Suez Crisis

Main article: Suez Crisis

After the UK and the United States withdrew their pledge to support the construction of the Aswan Dam, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Canal in 1956, intending to finance the dam project using revenue from the Canal. This provoked the week-long Suez Crisis, in which a military alliance between the UK, France, and Israel invaded Egypt. To stop the war from spreading and to save the British from what he thought was a disastrous action, Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs, Lester B. Pearson, proposed the creation of the very first United Nations peacekeeping force to separate the combatants. On November 4th, 1956, a majority of nations at the UN voted for Pearson's peacekeeping resolution. The US backed up this proposal by putting immense financial pressure on the British government which only then agreed to withdraw its troops. Pearson was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. As a result of damage and sunken ships, the canal was closed until April 1957, when it had been cleared with UN assistance. A UN force (UNEF) was established to maintain the neutrality of the canal and the Sinai Peninsula.

[edit] Arab-Israeli War of 1967

After the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the canal was closed until June 5, 1975. In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, the canal was the scene of a major crossing by the Egyptian army into Israeli-occupied Sinai. Many pieces of sun-bleached destroyed military equipment from this conflict can still be seen along the edge of the canal.

After a UN mandate expired in 1979, negotiations for a new observer force produced the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), stationed in Sinai in 1981 in coordination with a phased Israeli withdrawal. It is not there under UN auspices but under agreements between the US, Israel, Egypt, and other nations. (Multinational Force and Observers).

[edit] Operation

USS Bainbridge, an American warship in the Suez Canal
USS Bainbridge, an American warship in the Suez Canal

The canal has no locks because the terrain through which it passes is flat, and sea level at both ends is the same.

The canal allows the passage of ships of up to some 150,000 tons displacement, with cargo. It permits ships of up to 16 m (53 ft) draft to pass, and improvements are planned to increase this to 22 m (72 ft) by 2010 to allow supertanker passage. Presently, supertankers can offload part of their cargo onto a canal-owned boat and reload at the other end of the canal. There is one shipping lane with several passing areas.

On a typical day, three convoys transit the canal, two southbound and one northbound. The first southbound convoy enters the canal in the early morning hours and proceeds to the Great Bitter Lake, where the ships anchor out of the fairway and await the passage of the northbound convoy. The northbound convoy passes the second southbound convoy, which moors to the canal bank in a by-pass, in the vicinity of El Qantara. The passage takes between 11 and 16 hours at a speed of around 8 knots. The low speed helps prevent erosion of the canal banks by ship's waves.

Egypt's Suez Canal Authority (SCA) reported that in 2003 17,224 ships passed through the canal. The canal averages about 8% of the world shipping traffic.

By 1955 approximately two-thirds of Europe's oil passed through the canal. About 7.5% of world sea trade is carried via the canal today. Receipts from the canal July 2005 to May 2006 totaled $3.246 billion. In 2005, 18,193 vessels passed through the canal. [10]

[edit] Connections between the shores

From north to south connections are:

A railway on the west bank runs parallel to the canal for its entire length.


[edit] Environmental Impact

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 created the first salt-water passage between the Mediterranean and Red seas. The Red Sea is higher than the Eastern Mediterranean, so the canal serves as a tidal strait that pours Red Sea water into the Mediterranean. The Bitter Lakes, which are hypersaline natural lakes that form part of the canal, blocked the migration of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean for many decades, but as the salinity of the lakes gradually equalized with that of the Red Sea, the barrier to migration was removed, and plants and animals from the Red Sea have begun to colonize the eastern Mediterranean. The Red Sea is generally saltier and more nutrient-poor than the Atlantic, so the Red Sea species have advantages over Atlantic species in the salty and nutrient-poor Eastern Mediterranean. Accordingly, most Red Sea species invade the Mediterranean biota, and only few do the opposite; this migratory phenomenon is known as the Lessepsian migration (after Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French engineer of the canal) or Erythrean invasion. The construction of the Aswan High Dam across the Nile River in the 1960s reduced the inflow of freshwater and nutrient-rich silt from the Nile into the eastern Mediterranean, making conditions there even more like the Red Sea, and worsening the impact of the invasive species.

Invasive species originated from the Red Sea and introduced into the Mediterranean by the construction of the canal have become a major component of the Mediterranean ecosystem, and have serious impacts on the Mediterranean ecology, endangering many local and endemic Mediterranean species. Up to this day, about 300 species native to the Red Sea have already been identified in the Mediterranean Sea, and there are probably others yet unidentified. In recent years, the Egyptian government's announcement of its intentions to deepen and widen the canal, have raised concerns from marine biologists, fearing that such an act will only worsen the invasion of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean, facilitating the crossing of the canal for yet additional species[2].

[edit] Timeline

  • Circa 1799 — Napoleon I of France conquered Egypt and ordered a feasibility analysis. This reported a supposed 10 metre difference in sea levels, and a high estimated cost, so the project was set on standby.
  • Circa 1840 — A second survey demonstrated that the first one was erroneous; a direct link between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea would be possible and would not be as expensive as expected.
  • Circa 1854 — The French consul in Cairo, Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps, created the "Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez".
  • 25 Apr 1859 — The French were officially allowed to begin the canal construction (Said Pacha acquired 22% of the Suez Canal Company, the rest of the shares were controlled by French private holders).
  • 16 Nov 1869 — The Suez Canal opened; operated and owned by Suez Canal Company.
  • 25 Nov 1875 — Britain became a minority share holder in the Suez Company, acquiring 44% of the Suez Canal Company. The rest of the shares were controlled by French syndicates.
  • 25 Aug 1882 — Britain took control of the canal.
  • 2 Mar 1888 — The Convention of Constantinople guaranteed right of passage of all ships through the Suez Canal during war and peace.
  • 14 Nov 1936 — Suez Canal Zone established, under British control.
  • 13 Jun 1956 — Suez Canal Zone restored to Egypt.
  • 26 Jul 1956 — Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal.
  • 5 Nov 1956 to 22 Dec 1956 — French, British, and Israeli forces occupied the Suez Canal Zone.
  • 22 Dec 1956 — Restored to Egypt.
  • 5 June 1967 to 5 June 1975 — Canal closed and blockaded by Egypt, against Israel, sparking the Six-Day War.
  • 10 April 1975 — Suez Canal reopened.

[edit] Presidents of the Suez Canal Company (1855-1956)

Before nationalization:

[edit] Chairmen of the Suez Canal Authority (1956-Present)

Since nationalization:

[edit] British Vice-Consuls of Port Suez (1922-1941)

[edit] British Consuls of Port Suez (1941-1956)

[edit] Governors of the Suez Canal Zone

[edit] Supreme Allied Commander

During the Suez Crisis:

[edit] Popular culture

A popular film, Suez was made in 1938 and starred Tyrone Power as de Lesseps and Loretta Young as a love interest. A sweeping epic, it is very loosely based on history.

Suez Canal was recently featured in the video game Battlefield 2142 made by EA Games. The European Union and Pan-Asian forces fight each other for control of the canal after a futuristic ice age.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Le Fabuleux Destin Des Inventions : Le Canal de Suez. TV documentary produced by ZDF and directed by Axel Engstfeld (Germany, 2006).
  2. ^ Galil, B.S. and Zenetos, A. (2002). A sea change: exotics in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, in: Leppäkoski, E. et al. (2002). Invasive aquatic species of Europe: distribution, impacts and management. pp. 325-336.

[edit] External links

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Coordinates: 30°42′18″N, 32°20′39″E

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