Πτυχιακή του Βασιλάκη

ΑΚΑ∆ΗΜΙΑ ΕΜΠΟΡΙΚΟΥ ΝΑΥΤΙΚΟΥ ΗΠΕΙΡΟΥ

ΘΕΜΑ ΠΤΥΧΙΑΚΗΣ ΕΡΓΑΣΙΑΣ :

MAJOR WORLD CANALS

ΟΝΟΜΑ ΣΠΟΥ∆ΑΣΤΗ: ΧΡΙΣΤΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙΟΣ Α.Μ.Σ: 1542 ΕΠΙΒΛΕΠΩΝ ΚΑΘΗΓΗΤΗΣ: Κ. ΚΑΡΑΚΑΤΣΑΝΗ, Μ. Ed. ΗΜΕΡΟΜΗΝΙΑ ΑΝΑΘΕΣΗΣ: 2/6/2009 ΗΜΕΡΟΜΗΝΙΑ ΚΑΤΑΘΕΣΗΣ: 26/5/2011

Α.Ε.Ν/ ΗΠΕΙΡΟΥ ΣΧΟΛΗ ΠΛΟΙΑΡΧΩΝ ΠΡΕΒΕΖΑΣ ΘΕΜΑ ΠΤΥΧΙΑΚΗΣ ΕΡΓΑΣΙΑΣ: MAJOR WORLD CANALS ΟΝΟΜΑ ΣΠΟΥ∆ΑΣΤH : ΧΡΙΣΤΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙΟΣ Α.Μ.Σ: 1542 ΕΠΙΒΛΕΠΩΝ ΚΑΘΗΓΗΤΗΣ: Κ. ΚΑΡΑΚΑΤΣΑΝΗ, Μ.Ed. ΗΜΕΡΟΜΗΝΙΑ ΑΝΑΘΕΣΗΣ: 2/6/2009 ΗΜΕΡΟΜΗΝΙΑ ΚΑΤΑΘΕΣΗΣ:26/5/2011

SUMMARY

This paper is about major canals, artificial waterways which create a floating bridge between two seas, between a sea and a lake, or carry water from one place to another one, serving in this way many purposes and uses. The major world canals discussed are the Suez Canal and Panama Canal which are long passages connecting the Mediterranean and Red seas, and the Atlantic and Pacific oceans respectively. The Kiel canal which links the North and Baltic seas is analyzed showing its importance in saving time and providing safety from dangerous storm-prone areas. In addition, the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway System is presented in detail including locks, canals, channels and lakes which permit travelling all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to North Great Lakes.

Erie Canal, Welland Canal and New York State Barge Canal are also examined along with Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, Lake Ontario, and Lake Huron. Finally the paper refers to the Corinth Canal and its importance in minimizing the distance from the Aegean to Ionian and Adriatic seas.

Major World Canals

CONTENTS

Introduction..........................................................................................................................3 Suez Canal...........................................................................................................................5 History..................................................................................................................................5 Panama Canal.....................................................................................................................17 History................................................................................................................................18 Kiel Canal..........................................................................................................................37 History................................................................................................................................37 Operation............................................................................................................................38 Great Lakes - St.Lawrence Seaway System .....................................................................39 History................................................................................................................................39 Erie Canal...........................................................................................................................44 Welland Canal....................................................................................................................53 History................................................................................................................................53 New York State Barge Canal.............................................................................................59 History................................................................................................................................59 Great Lake Michigan ........................................................................................................61 Great Lake Ontario............................................................................................................63 Great Lake Superior ..........................................................................................................65 Great Lake Huron..............................................................................................................69 Corinth Canal.....................................................................................................................72 History ..............................................................................................................................72 Conclusion.........................................................................................................................74 Bibliography......................................................................................................................75

Major World Canals

2

MAJOR WORLD CANALS INTRODUCTION Canal is long thin stretch of water which is physically made by nature forces or artificially made either for boats to travel along or for taking water from one area to another. There are two types of canal: 1.

Aqueducts: water supply canals that are used for the conveyance and delivery

of potable water

for

human

consumption, municipal uses,

and agriculture irrigation. Rills and Acequias are small versions.

2.

Waterways: navigable transportation canals used for carrying ships and boats

shipping goods and conveying people.

Those connected to existing lakes, rivers, or oceans. Included are inter-basin

canals, such as the Suez Canal, Erie Canal, and the Panama Canal.

Canals are created in one of three ways, or a combination of the three, depending on available water and available path:

A canal can be created where no stream presently exists. The body of the canal is

either dug or the sides are created by piling dirt, stone, concrete, or other building materials. The water for the canal must be provided from an external source like other streams or reservoirs.

A stream can be canalized to make its navigable path more predictable and easier

to maneuver. Canalization modifies the stream to more safely carry traffic by controlling the flow of the stream with dredging, damming, and modifying its path.

When a stream is too difficult to modify with canalization, a second stream can be

created next to the existing stream. This is called a lateral canal. The existing stream usually acts as the water source and its banks provide a path for the new body.

Major World Canals

3

Smaller transportation canals can carry barges or narrowboats, while ship canals allow seagoing ships to travel to an inland port or from one sea or ocean to another such as Panama Canal.

At their simplest, canals consist of a trench filled with water. Depending on the stratum the canal passes through, it may be necessary to line the cut with some form of watertight material such as clay or concrete. When this is done with clay this is known as puddling.

Canals need to be level, and while small irregularities in the lie of the land can be dealt with through cuttings and embankments, for larger deviations, other approaches have been adopted. The most common is the pound lock which consists of a chamber within which the water level can be raised or lowered connecting either two pieces of canal at a different level or the canal with a river or the sea. When there is a hill to be climbed, flights of many locks in short succession may be used.

Locks use a lot of water, so builders have adopted other approaches. These include boat lifts, such as the Falkirk wheel, which use a caisson of water in which boats float while being moved between two levels; and inclined planes where a caisson is hauled up a steep railway.

To cross a stream or road, the solution is usually to bridge with an aqueduct. To cross a wide valley (where the journey delay caused by a flight of locks at either side would be unacceptable) the centre of the valley can be spanned by an aqueduct.

Some canals attempted to keep changes in level down to a minimum. These canals known as contour canals would take longer winding routes, along which the land was a uniform altitude. Other generally later canals took more direct routes requiring the use of various methods to deal with the change in level.

Canals have various features to tackle the problem of water supply. In some cases such as the Suez Canal the canal is simply open to the sea. Where the canal is not at sea level a number of approaches have been adopted. Taking water from existing rivers or springs was an option in some cases, sometimes supplemented by other methods to deal with seasonal variations in flow. Where such sources were unavailable, reservoirs, either separate from the canal, or built into its course, and back pumping was used to provide the required water. In other cases water pumped from mines was used to feed the canal.

Major World Canals

4

In certain cases extensive "feeder canals" were built to bring water from sources located far from the canal.

SUEZ CANAL The Suez Canal also known by the nickname "The Highway to India", is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened in November 1869 after 10 years of construction work, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without navigation around Africa. The northern terminus is Port Said and the southern terminus is Port Tawfik at the city of Suez. Ismailia lies on its west bank, 3 km (1.9 miles) north of the half-way point.

When first built, the canal was 164 km (102 mi) long and 8 m (26 ft) deep. After multiple enlargements, the canal is 193.30 km (120.11 miles) long, 24 m (79 ft) deep, and 205 metres (673 ft) wide as of 2010. It consists of the northern access channel of 22 km/14 miles, the canal itself of 162.25 km/100.82 miles and of the southern access channel of 9 km/5.6 miles.

It is single-lane with passing places in Ballah By-Pass and in the Great Bitter Lake. It contains no locks; seawater flows freely through the canal. In general, the Canal north of the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer. The current south of the lakes changes with the tide at Suez.

The canal is owned and maintained by the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) of the Arab Republic of Egypt. Under international treaty, it may be used "in time of war as in time of peace, by every vessel of commerce or of war, without distinction of flag."

History Ancient west-east canals have facilitated travel from the Nile to the Red Sea. One smaller canal is believed to have been constructed under the auspices of either Senusret II or Ramesses II.Another canal probably incorporating a portion of the first was constructed under the reign of Necho II and completed by Darius.

Major World Canals

5

2nd Millennium BC The legendary Sesostris (likely either Pharaoh Senusret II or Senusret III of the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt) is suggested to have perhaps started work on an ancient canal joining the River Nile with the Red Sea (1897 BC–1839 BC). (It is said that in ancient times the Red Sea reached northward to the Bitter Lakes and Lake Timsah.

One of their kings tried to make a canal to it (for it would have been of no little advantage to them for the whole region to have become navigable; Sesostris is said to have been the first of the ancient kings to try), but he found that the sea was higher than the land. So he first, and Darius afterwards, stopped making the canal, lest the sea should mix with the river water and spoil it.

Next comes the Tyro tribe and, on the Red Sea, the harbour of the Daneoi, from which Sesostris, king of Egypt, intended to carry a ship-canal to where the Nile flows into what is known as the Delta; this is a distance of over 60 miles. Later the Persian king Darius had the same idea, and yet again Ptolemy II, who made a trench 100 feet wide, 30 feet deep and about 35 miles long, as far as the Bitter Lakes.

French cartographers discovered the remnants of an ancient north-south canal running past the east side of Lake Timsah and ending near the north end of the Great Bitter Lake in the second half of the 19th century. (This ancient, second, canal may have followed a course along the shoreline of the Red Sea when it once extended north to Lake Timsah.

In the 20th century the northward extension of this ancient canal was discovered, extending from Lake Timsah to the Ballah Lakes, which was subsequently dated to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt by extrapolating the dates of ancient sites erected along its course.However it remains unknown whether or not this is the same as Sesostris' ancient canal and whether it was used as a waterway or as a defence against the east.

The reliefs of the Punt expedition under Hatshepsut 1470 BC depict seagoing vessels carrying the expeditionary force returning from Punt. This has given rise to the suggestion that, at the time, a navigable link existed between the Red Sea and the Nile.

Major World Canals

6

Evidence seems to indicate its existence by the 13th century BC during the time of Ramesses II.

Canals dug by Necho, Darius I and Ptolemy Remnants of an ancient west-east canal, running through the ancient Egyptian cities of Bubastis, Pi-Ramesses, and Pithom were discovered by Napoleon Bonaparte and his cadre of engineers and cartographers in 1799.

According to the Histories of the Greek historian Herodotus, about 600 BC, Necho II undertook to dig a west-east canal through the Wadi Tumilat between Bubastis and Heroopolis, and perhaps continued it to the Heroopolite Gulf and the Red Sea. Regardless, Necho is reported as having never completed his project.

Herodotus was told that 120,000 men perished in this undertaking, but this figure is doubtlessly exaggerated. According to Pliny the Elder, Necho's extension to the canal was approximately 57 English miles, equal to the total distance between Bubastis and the Great Bitter Lake, allowing for winding through valleys that it had to pass through. The length that Herodotus tells us, of over 1000 stadia (i.e., over 114 miles), must be understood to include the entire distance between the Nile and the Red Sea at that time.

With Necho's death, work was discontinued. Herodotus tells us that the reason the project was abandoned was because of a warning received from an oracle that others would benefit by its successful completion. In fact, Necho's war with Nebuchadnezzar II most probably prevented the canal's continuation.

Necho's project was finally completed by Darius I of Persia, who conquered Ancient Egypt. We are told that by Darius's time a natural waterway passage which had existed between the Heroopolite Gulf and the Red Sea in the vicinity of the Egyptian town of Shaluf, located just south of the Great Bitter Lake, had become so blocked with silt that Darius needed to clear it out so as to allow navigation once again. According to Herodotus, Darius's canal was wide enough that two triremes could pass each other with oars extended, and required four days to traverse. Darius commemorated his achievement

Major World Canals

7

with a number of granite stelae that he set up on the Nile bank, including one near Kabret, and a further one a few miles north of Suez.

Napoleon discovers an ancient canal

Napoleon Bonaparte's interest in finding the remnants of an ancient waterway passage culminated in a cadre of archaeologists, scientists, cartographers and engineers scouring the area beginning in the latter months of 1798. Their findings, recorded in the Description de l'Égypte, include detailed maps that depict the discovery of an ancient canal extending northward from the Red Sea and then westward toward the Nile.

The Suez Canal at Ismailia in 1860. The Ismailia segment was completed in November 1862.

Napoleon had contemplated the construction of another, modern, north-south canal to join the Mediterranean and Red Sea. But his project was abandoned after the preliminary survey erroneously concluded that the Red Sea was 10 metres (33 ft) higher than the Mediterranean, making a locks-based canal 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.

Though by this time unnavigable, the ancient route from Bubastis to the Red Sea still channeled water in spots as late as 1861 and as far east as Kassassin.

Construction by Suez Canal Company

In 1854 and 1856 Ferdinand de Lesseps obtained a concession from Sa'id Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt and Sudan, to create a company to construct a canal open to ships of all nations. The company was to operate the canal for 99 years from its opening. De Lesseps had used his friendly relationship with Sa'id, which he had developed while he was a French diplomat during the 1830s. As stipulated in the concessions, Lesseps convened

Major World Canals

8

the International Commission for the piercing of the isthmus of Suez (Commission Internationale pour le percement de l'isthme des Suez) consisting of thirteen experts from seven countries, among them McClean, President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in London, and again Negrelli, to examine the plans of Linant de Bellefonds and to advise on the feasibility of and on the best route for the canal. After surveys and analyses in Egypt and discussions in Paris on various aspects of the canal, where many of Negrelli's ideas prevailed, the commission produced a final unanimous report in December 1856 containing a detailed description of the canal complete with plans and profiles. The Suez Canal Company (Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez) came into being on 15 December 1858 and work started on the shore of the future Port Said on April 25, 1859.

The excavation took some 10 years using forced labour (Corvée) of Egyptian workers during a certain period. Some sources estimate that over 30,000 people were working on the canal at any given period, that altogether more than 1.5 million people from various countries were employed, and that thousands of laborers died on the project.

The British government had opposed the project of the canal from the outset to its completion. As one of the diplomatic moves against the canal, it disapproved the use the slave labor of forced workers on the canal. The British Empire was the major global naval force and officially condemned the forced work and sent armed bedouins to start a revolt among workers. Involuntary labour on the project ceased, and the viceroy condemned the Corvée, halting the project.

Angered by the British opportunism, de Lesseps sent a letter to the British government remarking on the British lack of remorse a few years earlier when forced workers died in similar conditions building the British railway in Egypt.

Initially international opinion was skeptical and Suez Canal Company shares did not sell well overseas. Britain, the United States, Austria, and Russia did not buy any significant number of shares. All French shares were quickly sold in France. A contemporary British sceptic 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 canal's receipts... could ever be

Major World Canals

9

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)’’ The canal opened to shipping on 17 November 1869. Although numerous technical, political, and financial problems had been overcome, the final cost was more than double the original estimate. The opening was performed by Khedive Ismail of Egypt and Sudan, and at Ismail's invitation French Empress Eugenie in the Imperial yacht Aigle, piloted by Napolean Coste who was bestowed by the Khedive the Order of the Medjidie (Blue Flame of Service c1955). The first ship to follow the yacht Aigle through the canal was the British P&O liner Delta.

After the opening of the canal, the Suez Canal Company was in financial difficulties.

The remaining works were completed only in 1871, and traffic was below expectations in the first two years. Lesseps therefore tried to increase revenues by interpreting the kind of net ton referred to in the second concession (tonneau de capacité) as meaning a ship's real freight capacity and not only the theoretical net tonnage of the Moorsom System introduced in Britain by the Merchant Shipping Act in 1854. The ensuing commercial and diplomatic activities resulted in the International Commission of Constantinople establishing a specific kind of net tonnage and settling the question of tariffs in their protocol of 18 December 1873.This was the origin of the Suez Canal Net Tonnage and the Suez Canal Special Tonnage Certificate still used today.

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 colonisation of Africa. The construction of the Suez Canal was one of the reasons of the Panic of 1873, because the goods from the Far East were carried in sailing vessels around the Cape of Good Hope and were stored in British warehouses, but sailing vessels were not adaptable for use through the Suez Canal, because the prevailing winds of the Mediterranean Sea blow from west to east.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 in 1875, but French shareholders still held the majority. Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was accused by William Ewart Gladstone of undermining Britain's

Major World Canals

10

constitutional system, due to his lack of reference or consent from Parliament when purchasing the shares with funding from the Rothschilds.

The Convention of Constantinople in 1888 declared the canal a neutral zone under the protection of the British, who had occupied Egypt and Sudan at the request of Khedive Tewfiq to suppress the Urabi Revolt against his rule. They were later to defend the strategically important passage against a major Ottoman attack in 1915, during the First World War. Under the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, the United Kingdom insisted on retaining control over the canal. In 1951 Egypt repudiated the treaty, and in 1954 the U.K. agreed to remove its troops. Withdrawal was completed on 18 July 1956.

Suez Crisis After the United Kingdom and the United States withdrew their pledge to support the construction of the Aswan Dam due to Egyptian overtures towards the Soviet Union, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the canal in 1956 and transferred it to the Suez Canal Authority, intending to finance the dam project using revenue from the canal. This led up to the Suez Crisis, known in the Arab World as the Tripartite Aggression, in which the U.K., and France, and Israel invaded Egypt. According to the pre-agreed war plans, the Israeli invaded Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, forcing Egypt to engage them militarily, and allowing the Anglo-French partnership to declare the resultant fighting a threat to the canal and enter the war on Israel's side.

To save the British from what he thought was a disastrous action, and to stop the war from a possible escalation, Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs, Lester B. Pearson, proposed the creation of the first United Nations peacekeeping force to ensure access to the canal for all, and an Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai. On 4 November 1956, a majority of nations at the United Nations voted for Pearson's peacekeeping resolution, which mandated the UN peacekeepers to stay in Sinai unless both Egypt and Israel agreed to their withdrawal. The United States backed this proposal by putting pressure on the British government by selling sterling, which would cause it to depreciate. Britain then agreed to withdraw its troops. Pearson was later awarded the

Major World Canals

11

Nobel Peace Prize. As a result of damage and ships intentionally sunk under orders from Nasser the canal was closed until April 1957, when it was cleared with UN assistance. A UN force (UNEF) was established to maintain the free navigability of the canal, and peace in the Sinai Peninsula.

Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 In May 1967 President Nasser ordered the UN peacekeeping forces out of Sinai, including the Suez Canal area. Despite Israeli objections in the United Nations, the peacekeepers were withdrawn and the Egyptian army took up positions on the Israeli border, closing the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. The canal itself had been closed to Israeli shipping since 1949, except for a short period in 1951-1952.

After the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, also called the Six Day War, the canal was closed by an Egyptian blockade until 5 June 1975. As a result, fourteen cargo ships known as "The Yellow Fleet" remained trapped in the canal for over eight years. In 1973, during the October War, the canal was the scene of a major crossing by the Egyptian army into Israeli-occupied Sinai, and in the later stage of the war, a crossing by the Israeli army to African Egypt. Much wreckage from this conflict remains visible along the canal's edges.

In reaction to the October War the United States initiated Operation Nimbus Moon. The helicopter carrier USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2) was sent to the Canal, carrying twelve RH-53D minesweeping helicopters of HM-12. These partly cleared the Suez Canal between May and December 1974.She was relieved by the LST USS Barnstable County (LST1197).The British Royal Navy initiated ( Operation Rheostat) and Task Group 65.2 provided the RN Minehunters, HMS Maxton, HMS Bossington & HMS Wilton and HMS Abdiel a Practice Minelayer /MCMV Support Ship which spent two periods of 6 months in 1974 and in 1975 based at Ismailia. When the Canal Clearance Operations were completed, the Suez Canal and its lakes were considered 99% clear of mines.The

Major World Canals

12

Canal was then reopened by President Sadat aboard an Egyptian destroyer which led the first convoy Northbound to Port Said in 1975.

The UNEF mandate expired in 1979.Despite the efforts of the United States, Israel, Egypt, and others to obtain an extension of the UN role in observing the peace between Israel and Egypt,as called for under the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty of 1979,the mandate could not be extended because of the veto by the USSR in the security council, at the request of Syria. Accordingly,negotiations for a new observer force in the Sinai produced the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO),stationed in Sinai in 1981 in coordination with a phased Israeli withdrawal. It is there under agreements between the United States,Israel,Egypt,and other nations.

Capacity The canal allows passage of ships up to 20m(66 ft) draft or 240,000 deadweight tons and up to a maximum height of 68 m (223 ft) above water level and a maximum beam of 77.5m(254 ft) under certain conditions.

Some supertankers are too large to traverse the canal. Others can offload part of their cargo onto a canal-owned boat to reduce their draft, transit, and reload at the other end of the canal.

Alternatives Route The main alternative is travelling around the Cape of Good Hope at the south of the African continent.This was the only route before the canal was constructed, and more recently when the canal was closed.It is still the only route for ships which are too large for the canal.In the early 21st century the long route has enjoyed increased popularity because of increasing piracy in Somalia. Between 2008 and 2010, it is estimated that the canal has lost 10% of traffic due to the threat of piracy,and another 10%due to the financial crisis.An oil tanker going from Saudi Arabia to the United States has 2,700 miles longer to go when taking the route south of Africa rather than the canal.

Major World Canals

13

Before the canal's opening in 1869 goods were sometimes offloaded from ships and carried overland between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

Operation The canal has no locks due to the flat terrain, and the minor sea level difference between each end is inconsequential for shipping.

There is one shipping lane with passing areas in Ballah-Bypass near El Qantara and in the Great Bitter Lake.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, awaiting passage of the northbound convoy. The northbound convoy passes the second southbound convoy, which moors in Ballah-Bypass . The passage takes between 11 and 16 hours at a speed of around 8 knots (15 km/h; 9 mph). The low speed helps prevent erosion of the canal banks by ships' wakes.

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. In 2008, a total of 21,415 vessels passed through the canal and the receipts from the canal totaled $5.381 billion, with the average cost per-ship at roughly $251,000.

New Rules of Navigation that constitute an improvement over the older ones were passed by the board of directors of the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) to organise vessels’ and tankers’ transit that came into force as of 1 January 2008.

The most important amendments to the Rules include allowing vessels with 62-foot (19 m) draught to transit and increasing the allowed breadth from 32 metres (105 ft) up to 40 metres (130 ft) following improvement operations, as well as imposing a fine on vessels using divers without permission from outside the SCA inside the canal boundaries.

The amendments also allow vessels loaded with dangerous cargo, such as radioactive or inflammable materials, to transit, if they conform with the latest amendments provided by international conventions.

Major World Canals

14

The SCA also has the right to determine the number of tugs required to assist warships transiting the canal to achieve the highest degree of safety during transit.

Connections between the shores From north to south connections are: The Suez Canal Bridge, also called the Egyptian-Japanese Friendship Bridge, is a highlevel road bridge at El Qantara. In Arabic, al qantara means "the bridge". It has a 70metre (230 ft) clearance over the canal and was built with assistance from the Japanese government and by Penta Ocean Construction.

El Ferdan Railway Bridge 20 km (12 miles) north of Ismailia was completed in 2001 and is the longest swing span bridge in the world, with a span of 340 m (1100 ft). The previous bridge was destroyed in 1967 during the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Pipelines taking fresh water under the canal to Sinai,about 57km (35 miles) north of Suez, at 30°27.3′N 32°21.0′E. Ahmed Hamdi Tunnel south of the Great Bitter Lake was built in 1983. Because of leakage problems, a new water-tight tunnel was built inside the old one, from 1992 to 1995.

The Suez Canal overhead line crossing powerline was built in 1999.

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

Environmental impact The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 created the first salt-water passage between the Mediterranean and Red seas. Although the Red Sea is about 1.2 m (4 ft) higher than the eastern Mediterranean,the current between the Mediterranean and the middle of the canal at the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer. The current south of the Bitter Lakes is tidal, varying with the height of tide at Suez.The Bitter Lakes, which were hypersaline natural lakes, blocked the migration of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean for many decades, but as the salinity of the lakes gradually equalised with

Major World Canals

15

that of the Red Sea, the barrier to migration was removed, and plants and animals from the Red Sea have begun to colonise 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 called Lessepsian migration (after Ferdinand de Lesseps) or Erythrean invasion. Also impacting the eastern Mediterranean, starting in 1968, was the operation of Aswan High Dam across the River Nile. While providing for increased human development, the project both reduced the inflow of freshwater and ended all natural nutrient-rich silt from entering the eastern Mediterranean at the adjacent Nile Delta. This provided less natural dilution of Mediterranean salinity and ended the higher levels of natural turbidity, additionally making conditions more like those in the Red Sea. 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. Currently about 300 species from the Red Sea have been identified in the Mediterranean Sea, and there are probably others yet unidentified. The Egyptian government's intent to enlarge the canal has raised concerns from marine biologists, fearing that this will worsen the invasion of Red Sea species in the Mediterranean.

Construction of the Suez Canal was preceded by cutting a small fresh-water canal from the Nile delta along Wadi Tumilat to the future canal, with a southern branch to Suez and a northern branch to Port Said.Completed in 1863,these brought fresh water to a previously arid area,initially for canal construction, and subsequently facilitating growth of agriculture and settlements along the canal.

Major World Canals

16

PANAMA CANAL The Panama Canal is a 77-kilometre (48 miles) ship canal in Panama that joins the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and is a key conduit for international maritime trade. Built from 1904 to 1914, annual traffic has risen from about 1,000 ships in the canal's early days to 14,702 vessels in 2008, measuring a total 309.6 million Panama Canal/Universal Measurement System (PC/UMS) tons. In total over 815,000 vessels have passed through the canal. It has been named one of the seven modern wonders of the world by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

One of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken, the canal had an enormous impact on shipping between the two oceans, replacing the long and treacherous route via either the Strait of Magellan or Cape Horn at the southernmost tip of South America. A ship sailing from New York to San Francisco via the canal travels 9,500 km (5,900 miles), well under half the 22,500 km (14,000 miles) route around Cape Horn.

The concept of a canal near Panama dates to the early 16th century. The first attempt to construct a canal began in 1880 under French leadership, but was abandoned after 21,900 workers died, largely from disease (particularly malaria and yellow fever) and landslides.

The United States launched a second effort, incurring a further 5,600 deaths but succeeding in opening the canal in 1914. The U.S. controlled the canal and the Canal Zone surrounding it until the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties provided for the transition of control to Panama. From 1979 to 1999 the canal was under joint U.S.–Panamanian

Major World Canals

17

administration, and from 31 December 1999 command of the waterway was assumed by the Panama Canal Authority, an agency of the Panamanian government.

While the Pacific Ocean is west of the isthmus and the Atlantic to the east, the 8- to 10hour journey through the canal from the Pacific to the Atlantic is one from southeast to northwest. This is a result of the isthmus's "curving back on itself" in the region of the canal. The Bridge of the Americas (Spanish: Puente de las AmĂŠricas) at the Pacific end is about a third of a degree of longitude east of the end near Colon on the Atlantic.

The maximum size of vessel that can use the canal is known as Panamax. A Panamax cargo ship typically has a DWT of 65,000-80,000 tonnes, but its actual cargo is restricted to about 52,500 tonnes because of draft restrictions in the canal.The longest ship ever to transit was the San Juan Prospector, now Marcona Prospector, an ore-bulk-oil carrier that is 973 ft (296.57m) long, with a beam of 106 ft (32.31m).

History The earliest mention of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama dates to 1534, when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain ordered a survey for a route through Panama that would ease the voyage for ships traveling to and from Spain and Peru, as well as give the Spanish a tactical military edge over the Portuguese.During his expedition of 1788–1793, Alessandro Malaspina demonstrated the feasibility of a canal and outlined plans for its construction.

Given the strategic location of Panama and its isthmus separating two great oceans, other forms of trade links were attempted over the years. The ill-fated Darien scheme was an attempt launched by the Kingdom of Scotland in 1698 to set up an overland trade route, but was defeated by the generally inhospitable conditions, and abandoned in July of 1699.Finally, the Panama Railway was built across the isthmus, opening in 1855. This overland link became a vital piece of infrastructure, greatly facilitating trade and largely determining the later canal route.

Also in 1855, William Kennish, a Manx-born engineer in the employ of the United States government, surveyed and issued a report on a route for a proposed Panama

Major World Canals

18

Canal.His report was published in a book entitled ‘The Practicality and Importance of a Ship Canal to Connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans’.

French construction attempt An all-water route between the oceans was still seen as the ideal solution, and the idea of a canal was enhanced by the French success of the Suez Canal (which took 10 years to build the 102 miles canal, more than twice the size of the Panama Canal). The French, under Ferdinand de Lesseps, began construction on a sea-level canal (i.e., without locks) through what was then Colombia's province of Panama, on January 1, 1880. The French began work in a rush, with insufficient prior study of the geology and hydrology of the region. Excavation was conducted at such a steep angle that, in some years, rain-induced landslides poured nearly as much material into the canal as had been removed. In addition, disease, particularly malaria and yellow fever, sickened and killed vast numbers of employees, ranging from laborers to top directors of the French company. Public health measures were ineffective because the role of the mosquito as a disease vector was then unknown. These conditions made it impossible to maintain an experienced work force as fearful technical employees quickly returned to France. Even the hospitals contributed to the problem, unwittingly providing breeding places for mosquitoes inside the unscreened wards. Actual conditions were hushed up in France to avoid recruitment problems. In 1893, after a great deal of work, the French scheme was abandoned due to disease and the sheer difficulty of building a sea-level canal, as well as lack of French field experience, such as with downpours that caused steel equipment to rust. The high toll from disease was one of the major factors in the failure; as many as 22,000 workers were estimated to have died during the main period of French construction (1881–1889).

Beyond the hygienic and technical difficulties, financial mismanagement and political corruption also contributed to the French failure.

U.S. construction

Major World Canals

19

At this time, various interests in the United States were also expressing interest in building a canal across the isthmus, with some favouring a route across Nicaragua (see Nicaragua Canal and Ecocanal) and others advocating the purchase of the French interests in Panama. Eventually, in June 1902, the U.S. Senate voted in favor of pursuing the Panamanian option, provided the necessary rights could be obtained. (It is claimed that the vote was swayed by William Nelson Cromwell).

On January 22, 1903, the Hay-Herran Treaty was signed by United States Secretary of State John M. Hay and Dr. Tomรกs Herrรกn of Colombia. It would have granted the United States a renewable lease in perpetuity from Colombia on the land proposed for the canal.

This is often misinterpreted as the "99-year lease" due to misleading wording included in article 22 of the agreement that refers to property within the land but does not pertain to the control of the canal and the right for the United States to renew the lease indefinitely.

It was ratified by the United States Senate on March 14, 1903, but the Senate of Colombia did not ratify the treaty. Philippe Bunau-Varilla, chief engineer of the French canal company, told Roosevelt and Hay of a possible revolt and hoped that the U.S. would support it with troops and money. President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt changed tactics, promising support for Panama's intermittent separatist movement. On November 2, 1903, U.S. warships blocked sealanes for Colombian troops from coming to put down the revolt, while dense jungles blocked land routes. Panama achieved independence on November 3, 1903 when the United States sent naval forces to encourage Colombia's surrender of the region. The United States quickly recognized them. Also, on November 6, 1903, Phillipe Bunau-Varilla, Panama's ambassador to the United States, signed the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty, granting rights to the United States to build and indefinitely administer the Panama Canal. Although Bunau-Varilla was serving as Panama's ambassador, he was a French citizen and was not authorized to sign treaties on behalf of Panama without Panamanian review. This treaty would later become a contentious diplomatic issue between Panama and the U.S..

The United States, under President Theodore Roosevelt, bought out the French equipment and excavations for US$40 million and began work on May 4, 1904. The United States paid Colombia $25,000,000 in 1921, seven years after completion of the

Major World Canals

20

canal, for redress of President Roosevelt's role in the creation of Panama, and Colombia recognized Panama under the terms of the Thomson-Urrutia Treaty.

Isthmian Canal Commission The US Government created the Isthmian Canal Commission to oversee the construction of the Panama Canal in the early years of American involvement.

Established in 1904, it was given control of the Panama Canal Zone over which the United States exercised sovereignty.The commission reported directly to Secretary of War William Taft.

Joseph Bucklin Bishop, an associate of Theodore Roosevelt and a strong editorial advocate for US participation in the Canal project was appointed Executive Secretary of the Isthmian Canal Commission in Washington, D.C. the following year. Bishop was tasked with managing the Commission’s day-to-day matters but also with ensuring public support for the canal through public relations and by keeping the project’s official history. Bishop’s promised $10,000 annual salary was relentlessly criticized by Roosevelt’s opponents in Congress, mostly because it was twice what each of them made. Opposition newspapers joined in the criticism. In the summer of 1907, when escalating allegations of cronyism surrounding Bishop’s appointment threatened appropriations for Panama Canal construction, Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, surely with Roosevelt’s quiet consent, ordered Bishop out of Washington to Panama where the partisan political heat would be less intense. “I accept your decision without reluctance,” Bishop informed Taft, “and shall go to the Isthmus, not sadly but cheerfully.”It would not be his first trip to Panama. In the fall of the previous year, Bishop had gone ahead to advance Roosevelt’s historic inspection tour, the first time a sitting President had journeyed outside the U.S. Joseph Bucklin Bishop would, except for month-long summer breaks, remain on the isthmus for seven years, serving clandestinely at first as Theodore Roosevelt’s “eyes and ears.” He reported back on the “astonishing” progress that Army Corps of Engineers Colonel George Washington Goethals and his team were making excavating the “big

Major World Canals

21

ditch” and building dams and locks. Before long, Bishop became Goethals’s trusted aide, serving as his first line of defense against workers with complaints and grievances. But Bishop’s greatest achievement in Panama would be as founding editor of The Canal Record, a weekly newspaper for the thousands of workers in Panama. His regular reports of cubic yards dug by rival work divisions, and the competitive baseball games they played created a spirit of healthy competition that lifted worker morale and productivity.

The “good news” of The Canal Record also built vital public support on newspaper editorial pages back home and in the halls of the United States Congress where annual appropriations required to keep the canal project moving forward.

Planning and construction begins John Frank Stevens, Chief Engineer from 1905 to 1907, successfully argued the case against the incredibly massive excavation required for a sea-level canal like the French had tried to build and convinced Theodore Roosevelt of the necessity and feasibility of a canal built with dams and locks. One of Stevens' primary achievements in Panama was in building the infrastructure necessary to complete the canal. He had the Panama Railway rebuilt and upgraded with modern heavy-duty equipment. Implementing the recommendations of Walter Reed and Dr. William Gorgas, Stevens also built proper housing with screens for canal workers and oversaw investment in extensive sanitation and mosquito-abatement programs that minimized the spread of the deadly mosquitospread diseases—particularly malaria and yellow fever. The mosquito had been identified as the vector (disease spreading agent) by Cuban physician and scientist Dr. Carlos Finlay in 1881. Finlay's theory and investigative work had recently been confirmed by Dr. Walter Reed while in Cuba with the U.S. Army after the Spanish-American War (1898) (see also Health measures during the construction of the Panama Canal).

With the diseases under control, and after significant work on preparing the infrastructure and railroad, construction of an elevated canal with locks began in earnest.

Even the construction of the Panama Canal with locks still required the excavation of an enormous volume of material and was envisioned by John Frank Stevens as a massive

Major World Canals

22

earth-moving project using the Panama Railway as efficiently as possible. The railroad, starting in 1904, had to be comprehensively upgraded with heavy-duty double-tracked rails over most of the line to accommodate all the new rolling stock of about 115 heavyduty locomotives and 2,300 dirt spoils railroad cars. There were about 102 of the new railroad-mounted steam shovels brought in from the United States and elsewhere. The steam shovels were some of the largest in the world in 1906 when they were introduced.

The new railroad closely paralleled the canal where it could and was moved and reconstructed where it interfered with the canal work. In many places the new Lake Gatun flooded over the original rail line and a new rail line had to be raised above the water by massive dirt fills and bridges.

The Panama Canal Railway, besides hauling all the millions of tons of men, equipment and supplies, did much more. Essentially all of the hundreds of millions of cubic yards of material removed from the required canal cuts were broken up by explosives, loaded by steam shovels, mounted on one set of railroad tracks, and loaded onto rail cars and hauled out by locomotives pulling the spoils cars on parallel tracks. Most of the cars carrying the dirt spoils were wooden flat cars lined with steel floors that used a crude but effective unloading device—the Lidgerwood system. The railroad cars had only one side and steel aprons bridged the spaces between the cars. The rock and dirt was first blasted loose by explosives. Two sets of tracks were then built or moved up to where the loosened material lay. The steam shovels, moving on one set of tracks, picked up the loosened dirt and then piled it on the steel-floored flat cars traveling on a parallel set of tracks. The dirt was piled high up against the one closed side of the car. The train moved forward as the cars were filled until all cars were filled. A typical train had twenty dirt cars arranged as essentially one long boxcar. On arrival of the train at one of the approximately 60 different dumping grounds, a three-ton steel plow was put on the last car (or a car carrying the plow was attached as the last car) and a huge winch with a braided steel cable stretching the length of all cars was attached to the engine. The winch, powered by the train’s steam engine, pulled the plow the length of the dirt-loaded train by winching up the steel cable. The plow scraped the dirt off the railroad cars, allowing the entire train-load of dirt cars to be unloaded in about ten minutes or less. The plow and winch were then detached for use on another train. Another plow, mounted on a steam engine,

Major World Canals

23

then plowed the dirt spoils away from the track.When the fill got large enough, the track was relocated on top of the old fill to allow almost continuous unloading of new fill with a minimum amount of effort. When the steam shovels or dirt trains needed to move to a new section, techniques were developed by William Bierd, former head of the Panama Railroad, to pick up large sections of track and their attached ties by large steam-powered cranes and relocate them intact without disassembling and rebuilding the track. A dozen men could move a mile of track a day the work previously done by up to 600 men. This allowed the tracks used by both the steam shovels and dirt trains to be quickly moved to wherever they needed to go. While constructing the Gaillard Cut, about 160 loaded dirt trains went out of the cut daily, and returned empty one train about every one and a half minutes of the day.

The railroads, steam shovels, enormous steam-powered cranes, rock crushers, cement mixers, dredges, and pneumatic power drills used to drill holes for explosives (about 30,000,000 pounds (14,000 t) were used) were some of the new (in 1906) pieces of construction equipment used to construct the canal. Nearly all this new equipment was built by new, extensive machine building technology developed and built in the United States by companies such as the Joshua Hendy Iron Works. In addition, the canal used large refrigeration systems for making ice, extensive large electrical motors to power the pumps and controls on the canal's locks and other new technology. They built extensive electrical generation and distribution systems one of the first wide-scale uses of large electrical motors and generators. Electrical-powered donkey engines pulled the ships through the locks on railroad tracks laid parallel to the locks. New technology, not available before, allowed massive earth cuts and fills to be used on the new railroad and canal that were many times larger than those done in the original 1851–1855 railroad construction. The Americans replaced the old French equipment with machinery designed for a larger scale of work (such as the giant hydraulic crushers supplied by the Joshua Hendy Iron Works) to quicken the pace of construction.President Roosevelt had the former French machinery minted into medals for all workers who spent at least two years on the construction to commemorate their contribution to the building of the canal.

These medals featured Roosevelt's likeness on the front, the name of the recipient on one

Major World Canals

24

side, and the worker's years of service, as well as a picture of the Culebra Cut on the back.

In 1907, when John Frank Stevens resigned, Roosevelt appointed U.S. Army Colonel George Washington Goethals as Chief Engineer of the Panama Canal.

Ellicott Dredges, a Baltimore, Maryland, USA company formerly known as the Ellicott Machine Company, built the cutter dredges used in some of the construction of the Panama Canal after the cuts were deep enough to float them.The first machine delivered was a steam-driven, 900 hp (670 kW), 20-inch dredge. In 1941, Ellicott Dredges also built the dredge MINDI, a 10,000 hp (7,500 kW), 28-inch cutter suction dredge still operating in the Panama Canal.

The building of the canal was completed in 1914, two years ahead of the target date of June 1, 1916. The canal was formally opened on August 15, 1914 with the passage of the cargo ship SS Ancon.Coincidentally, this was also the same month that fighting in World War I (the Great War) began in Europe. The advances in hygiene resulted in a relatively low death toll during the American construction; still, about 5,600 workers died during this period (1904–1914). This brought the total death toll for the construction of the canal to around 27,500.

Later developments By the 1930s it was seen that water supply would be an issue for the canal; this prompted the building of the Madden Dam across the Chagres River above Gatun Lake.

The dam, completed in 1935, created Madden Lake (later Alajuela Lake), which acts as additional water storage for the canal. In 1939, construction began on a further major improvement: a new set of locks for the canal, large enough to carry the larger warships which the United States was building at the time and had planned to continue building.

The work proceeded for several years, and significant excavation was carried out on the new approach channels, but the project was canceled after World War II. After the war, U.S. control of the canal and the Canal Zone surrounding it became contentious as relations between Panama and the U.S. became increasingly tense. Many

Major World Canals

25

Panamanians felt that the Canal Zone rightfully belonged to Panama; student protests were met by the fencing in of the zone and an increased military presence.The unrest culminated in riots in which approximately 20 Panamanians and 3–5 U.S. soldiers were killed on Martyr's Day, January 9, 1964. Negotiations toward a new settlement began in 1974, and resulted in the Torrijos-Carter Treaties. Signed by President of the United States Jimmy Carter and Omar Torrijos of Panama on September 7, 1977, this mobilized the process of granting the Panamanians free control of the canal so long as Panama signed a treaty guaranteeing the permanent neutrality of the canal. The treaty led to full Panamanian control effective at noon on December 31-1999, and the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) assumed command of the waterway.

Before this handover, the government of Panama held an international bid to negotiate a 25-year contract for operation of the container shipping ports located at the canal’s Atlantic and Pacific outlets. The contract was not affiliated with the ACP or Panama Canal operations and was won by the firm Hutchison Whampoa, a Hong Kong-based shipping concern whose owner is Li Ka Shing.

Layout The canal consists of artificial lakes, several improved and artificial channels, and three sets of locks. An additional artificial lake, Alajuela Lake (known during the American era as Madden Lake), acts as a reservoir for the canal. The layout of the canal as seen by a ship passing from the Pacific end to the Atlantic is as follows: From the buoyed entrance channel in the Gulf of Panama (Pacific side), ships travel 13.2 km (8.2 miles) up the channel to the Miraflores locks, passing under the Bridge of the Americas.

The two-stage Miraflores lock system, including the approach wall, is 1.7 km (1.1 miles) long, with a total lift of 16.5 meters (54 ft) at mid-tide.

The artificial Miraflores Lake is the next stage, 1.7 km (1.0 miles) long, and 16.5 meters (54 ft) above sea level.

Major World Canals

26

The single-stage Pedro Miguel lock, which is 1.4 km (0.8 miles) long, is the last part of the ascent with a lift of 9.5 meters (31 ft) up to the main level of the canal.

The Gaillard (Culebra) Cut slices 12.6 km (7.8 miles) through the continental divide at an altitude of 26 meters (85 ft), and passes under the Centennial Bridge.

The Chagres River (Río Chagres), a natural waterway enhanced by the damming of Lake Gatún, runs west about 8.5 km (5.3 miles), merging into Lake Gatun.

Gatun Lake, an artificial lake formed by the building of the Gatun Dam, carries vessels 24.2 km (15.0 miles) across the isthmus.

The Gatún locks, a three-stage flight of locks 1.9 km (1.2 miles) long, drop ships back down to sea level.

A 3.2 km (2.0 miles) channel forms the approach to the locks from the Atlantic side.

Limón Bay (Bahía Limón), a huge natural harbour, provides an anchorage for some ships awaiting passage, and runs 8.7 km (5.4 miles) to the outer breakwater.

Thus, the total length of the canal is 77.1 km (47.9 miles).

Lock size The size of the locks determines the maximum size of ships allowed passage. Because of the importance of the canal to international trade, many ships are built to the maximum size allowed. These are known as Panamax vessels.

Initially the locks at Gatun had been designed to be 28.5 meters (94 ft) wide. In 1908 the United States Navy requested that width be increased to at least 36 meters (118 ft) which would allow the passage of US naval ships. Eventually a compromise was made and the locks were built 33.53 meters (110.0 ft) wide. Each lock is 320 meters (1,050 ft) long with the walls ranging in thickness from 15 meters (49 ft) at the base to 3 meters (9.8 ft) at the top. The central wall between the parallel locks at Gatún is 18 meters (59 ft) thick and stands in excess of 24 meters (79 ft) high. The steel lock gates measure an average of 2 meters (6.6 ft) thick, 19.5 meters (64 ft) wide and 20 meters (66 ft) high. It is the size of the locks, specifically the Pedro Miguel Locks, along with the height of the Bridge of the Americas at Balboa, that determine the Panamax metric and limit the size of ships that may use the Canal.

Major World Canals

27

The 2006 Third lock lane project will create larger locks, and deeper and wider channels, allowing bigger ships to transit. The allowed dimensions of ships will increase by 25% in length, 51% in beam, and 26% in draft, as defined by New Panamax.

Tolls Tolls for the canal are decided by the Panama Canal Authority and are based on vessel type, size, and the type of cargo carried.

For container ships, the toll is assessed per the ship's capacity expressed in twenty-foot equivalent units or TEUs. One TEU is the size of a container measuring 20 feet (6.1 m) by 8 feet (2.44 m) by 8.5 feet (2.6 m). Effective May 1, 2009, this toll is US$72.00 per TEU. A Panamax container ship may carry up to 4,400 TEU. The toll is calculated differently for passenger ships and for container ships carrying no cargo (“in ballast�). As of May 1, 2009 the ballast rate is US$57.60 per TEU. Passenger vessels in excess of 30,000 tons (PC/UMS), known popularly as cruise ships, pay a rate based on the number of berths, that is, the number of passengers that can be accommodated in permanent beds. The per-berth charge is currently $92 for unoccupied berths and $115 for occupied berths. Started in 2007, this charge has greatly increased tolls for such vessels. Passenger vessels of less than 30,000 tons or with less than 33 tons per passenger are charged on the same "per-ton" schedule as freighters.

Most other types of vessel pay a toll per PC/UMS net ton, in which one "ton" is actually a volume of 100 cubic feet (2.83cubic meters). (The calculation of tonnage for commercial vessels is quite complex.) As of fiscal year 2008, this toll is US$3.90 per ton for the first 10,000 tons, US$3.19 per ton for the next 10,000 tons, and US$3.82 per ton for the next 10,000 tons, and US$3.76 per ton thereafter. As with container ships, a reduced toll is charged for freight ships "in ballast".

Major World Canals

28

Small vessels up to 583 PC/UMS net tons when carrying passengers or cargo, or up to 735 PC/UMS net tons when in ballast, or up to 1,048 fully loaded displacement tons, are assessed minimum tolls based upon their length overall, according to the following table:

Length of vessel Toll Up to 15.240 meters (50 ft) US$1,300 More than 15.240 meters (50 ft) up to 24.384 meters (80 ft) US$1,400 More than 24.384 meters (80 ft) up to 30.480 meters (100 ft) US$1,500 More than 30.480 meters (100 ft) US$2,400 The most expensive regular toll for canal passage to date was charged on May 16, 2008 to the Disney Magic, which paid US$331,200.The least expensive toll was 36 cents to American adventurer Richard Halliburton, who swam the canal in 1928.The average toll is around US$54,000. The highest fee for priority passage charged through the Transit Slot Auction System was US$220,300, paid on August 24, 2006 by the Panamax tanker Erikoussa, bypassing a 90-ship queue waiting for the end of maintenance works on the Gatun locks, thus avoiding a seven-day delay. The normal fee would have been just US$13,430.

Current issues Ninety-six years since its opening, the canal continues to enjoy great success. Even though world shipping—and the size of ships themselves—has changed markedly since the canal was designed, it continues to be a vital link in world trade, carrying more cargo than ever before, with fewer overhead costs.Nevertheless, the canal faces a number of potential problems.

Efficiency and maintenance

Major World Canals

29

There were fears that efficiency and maintenance would suffer following the U.S. withdrawal; however, this does not appear to have been the case. Capitalizing on practices developed during the American administration, canal operations are improving under Panamanian control.Canal Waters Time (CWT), the average time it takes a vessel to navigate the canal, including waiting time, is a key measure of efficiency; according to the ACP, since 2000, it has oscillated between 20 and 30 hours. The accident rate has also not changed appreciably in the past decade, varying between 10 and 30 accidents each year across approximately 14,000 total annual transits. An official accident is one in which a formal investigation is requested and conducted.

Increasing volumes of imports from Asia which previously landed on the U.S. westcoast ports are now passing through the canal to the American east coast. The total number of oceangoing transits increased from 11,725 in 2003 to 13,233 in 2007, falling to 12,855 in 2009. (the Canal’s fiscal year runs from October to September).This has been coupled with a steady rise in average ship size and in the numbers of Panamax vessels passing, so that the total tonnage carried rose from 227.9 million PC/UMS tons in fiscal year 1999 to a record high of 312.9 million tons in 2007, falling to 299.1 million tons in 2009.Despite the reduction in total transits due to the negative impact of vessel size (e.g., the inability of large vessels to pass each other in the Gaillard Cut), this represents significant overall growth in canal capacity.

The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) has invested nearly US$1 billion in widening and modernising the canal, with the aim of increasing capacity by 20%.The ACP cites a number of major improvements, including the widening and straightening of the Gaillard Cut to reduce restrictions on passing vessels, the deepening of the navigational channel in Gatun Lake to reduce draft restrictions and improve water supply, and the deepening of the Atlantic and Pacific entrances of the canal. This is supported by new equipment, such as a new drill barge and suction dredger, and an increase of the tug boat fleet by 20%. In addition, improvements have been made to the operating machinery of the canal, including an increased and improved tug locomotive fleet, the replacement of more than 16 km of locomotive track, and new lock machinery controls. Improvements have been made to the traffic management system to allow more efficient control over ships in the canal.

Major World Canals

30

In December 2010, record breaking rain totals caused a 17 hour closure of the canal this was the first closure since the American invasion in 1989. Also, an access road to the Centenario bridge collapsed.

Capacity The canal is presently handling more vessel traffic than had ever been envisioned by its builders. In 1934 it was estimated that the maximum capacity of the canal would be around 80 million tons per year, as noted above, canal traffic in 2009 consisted of 299.1 million tons of shipping.

The water that is used to raise and lower vessels in the Canal is fed by gravity from Gatun Lake (pictured above) into each set of locks.

To improve capacity a number of improvements have been imposed on the current canal system. These improvements aim to maximise the possible use of current locking system: Implementation of an enhanced locks lighting system.

Construction of two tie-up stations in Gaillard Cut. Gaillard Cut widening from 192 to 218 metres (630 to 715 ft).

Improvements to the tugboat fleet.

Implementation of the carousel lockage system in Gatun locks.

Development of an improved vessel scheduling system.

Deepening of Gatun Lake navigational channels from 10.4 to 11.3 metres (34 to 37 ft) PLD. Modification of all locks structures to allow an additional draft of about 0.30 metres (0.98 ft).

Deepening of the Pacific and Atlantic entrances.

Construction of a new spillway in Gatun, for flood control.

These improvements will enlarge the capacity from 280–290 million PCUMS (2008) to 330–340 PCUMS (2012).

Major World Canals

31

Competition

Despite having enjoyed a privileged position for many years, the canal is increasingly facing competition from other quarters. Because canal tolls are expected to rise, some critics have suggested that the Suez Canal may become a viable alternative for cargo en route from Asia to the U.S. east coast.The Panama Canal, however, continues to serve more than 144 of the world’s trade routes and the majority of canal traffic comes from the "All-Water Route" (the route from Asia to the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts via the Panama Canal).

The increasing rate of melting of ice in the Arctic Ocean has led to speculation that the Northwest Passage or Arctic Bridge may become viable for commercial shipping at some point in the future. This route would save 9,300 km (5,800 miles) on the route from Asia to Europe compared with the Panama Canal, possibly leading to a diversion of some traffic to that route. However, such a route is beset by unresolved territorial issues and would still hold significant problems due to ice.

Water issues

Gatun Lake is filled with rainwater, and the lake accumulates excess water during wet months. The water is lost to the oceans at a rate of 101,000 m3 (26,700,000 US gal; 22,200,000 imp gal) per lock-cycle going downwards. Since a ship will have to go upward to Lake Gatun first and then descend, a single passing will cost double the amount, but the same waterflow cycle can be used for another ship passing in the opposite direction. The ship's submerged volume is not relevant to the amount of water.During the dry season, when there is less rainfall, there is also a shortfall of water in Gatun Lake.

As a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact and a member of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the ACP has developed an environmentally and socially sustainable program for expansion, which will protect the aquatic and terrestrial resources of the Canal Watershed. After completion, expansion

Major World Canals

32

will guarantee the availability and quality of water resources by using unique watersaving basins at each new lock. These water-saving basins will diminish water loss and preserve freshwater resources along the waterway by reusing water from the basins into the locks. Each lock chamber will have three water-saving basins, which will reuse 60 percent of the water in each transit. There are a total of nine basins for each of the two lock complexes, and a total of 18 basins for the entire project.

The Pacific side sea level is about 20 centimeters (8 inches) higher than that of the Atlantic side due to differences in ocean conditions such as water densities and weather conditions.

The future As demand is rising, the canal is positioned to be a significant feature of world shipping for the foreseeable future. However, changes in shipping patterns particularly the increasing numbers of post-Panamax ships will necessitate changes to the canal if it is to retain a significant market share. It is anticipated that by 2011, 37% of the world's container ships will be too large for the present canal, and hence a failure to expand would result in a significant loss of market share. The maximum sustainable capacity of the present canal, given some relatively minor improvement work, is estimated at between 330 and 340 million PC/UMS tons per year; it is anticipated that this capacity will be reached between 2009 and 2012. Close to 50% of transiting vessels are already using the full width of the locks.

An enlargement scheme similar to the 1939 Third Lock Scheme, to allow for a greater number of transits and the ability to handle larger ships, has been under consideration for some time, has been approved by the government of Panama, and is in progress, with completion expected in 2014.The cost is estimated at US$5.25 billion, and the project will double the canal's capacity and allow more traffic and the passage of longer and wider ships. This proposal to expand the canal was approved in a national referendum by approximately 80% on October 22, 2006.

Major World Canals

33

Third set of locks project

The current plan is for two new flights of locks to be built parallel to, and operated in addition to, the old locks: one to the east of the existing Gatún locks, and one south west of Miraflores locks, each supported by approach channels. Each flight will ascend from ocean level direct to the Gatún Lake level; the existing two-stage ascent at Miraflores / Pedro Miguel will not be replicated. The new lock chambers will feature sliding gates, doubled for safety, and will be 427 meters (1,400 ft) long, 55 meters (180 ft) wide, and 18.3 meters (60 ft) deep; this will allow the transit of vessels with a beam of up to 49 meters (160 ft), an overall length of up to 366 meters (1,200 ft) and a draft of up to 15 meters (50 ft), equivalent to a container ship carrying around 12,000 twenty-foot (6.1 m) long containers (TEU).

The new locks will be supported by new approach channels, including a 6.2 km (3.8 mi) channel at Miraflores from the locks to the Gaillard Cut, skirting around Miraflores Lake. Each of these channels will be 218 meters (715 ft) wide, which will require postPanamax vessels to navigate the channels in one direction at a time. The Gaillard Cut and the channel through Gatún Lake will be widened to no less than 280 meters (918 ft) on the straight portions and no less than 366 meters (1,200 ft) on the bends. The maximum level of Gatún Lake will be raised from reference height 26.7 meters (87.5 ft) to 27.1 meters (89 ft).

Each flight of locks will be accompanied by nine water reutilization basins (three per lock chamber), each basin being approximately 70 meters (230 ft) wide, 430 meters (1410 ft) long and 5.50 meters (18 ft) deep. These gravity-fed basins will allow 60% of the water used in each transit to be reused; the new locks will consequently use 7% less water per transit than each of the existing lock lanes. The deepening of Gatún Lake, and the raising of its maximum water level, will also provide significant extra water storage capacity. These measures are intended to allow the expanded canal to operate without the construction of new reservoirs.

The estimated cost of the project is US$5.25 billion. The project is designed to allow for an anticipated growth in traffic from 280 million PC/UMS tons in 2005 to nearly 510 million PC/UMS tons in 2025; the expanded canal will have a maximum sustainable

Major World Canals

34

capacity of approximately 600 million PC/UMS tons per year. Tolls will continue to be calculated based on vessel tonnage, and will not depend on the locks used. The new locks are expected to open for traffic in 2015. The present locks, which will be 100 years old by that time, will then have greater access for maintenance, and are projected to continue operating indefinitely.An article in the February 2007 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine describes the plans for the canal, focusing on the engineering aspects of the expansion project.There is also a follow-up article in the February 2010 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine.

On September 3, 2007, thousands of Panamanians stood across ParaĂ­so Hill in Panama to witness a huge explosion and the launch of the Expansion Program. The first phase of the project will be dry excavations of the 218 meter (715 ft) wide trench connecting the Culebra Cut with the Pacific coast, removing 47 million cubic meters of earth and rock.

Building the new canal

It was announced in July 2009 that the Belgian dredging company Jan De Nul, together with a consortium of contractors consisting of the Spanish Sacyr Vallehermoso, the Italian Impregilo and the Panamanian company Cusa, had been awarded the contract to build the six new locks. The contract will result in $100 million in dredging works over the next few years for the company, and a great deal of work for the company's construction division. The design of the locks is a carbon copy of the Berendrecht lock which is 68m wide and 500m long, making it the largest lock in the world. Completed in 1989 by the Port of Antwerp, which De Nul helped build, the company still has engineers and specialists who were part of that project. It is ironic to many Americans, the original architects and engineers of the successful project, that US firms are not involved in any direct way in this 21st Century project.

Canal Pilots

Major World Canals

35

During the last one hundred years, the Autoridad del Canal de Panamรก has appointed a few "Panama Canal Honorary Pilots". The most recent of these were Commodore Ronald Warwick,a former Master of the Cunard Line's RMS Queen Elizabeth 2, who has traversed the Canal more than 50 times, and Captain Raffaele Minotauro, Master Senior Grade, of the former Italian governmental navigation company known in the shipping world as the "Italian Line".

Gatun Lake Created in 1913 by the damming of the Charges River Gatun Lake is an essential part of the Panama Canal which forms a water passage between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, permitting ship transit in both directions. At the time it was formed Gatun Lake was the largest man-made lake in the world. The impassable rain-forest around Gatun Lake has been the best defense of the Panama Canal. Today these areas have endured practically unscathed by human interference and are one of the few accessible areas on earth that various native Central American animal and plant species can be observed undisturbed in their natural habitat. World famous Barro Colorado Island, which was established for scientific study when the lake was formed and is today operated by the Smithsonian Institution, is the largest island on Gatun Lake. Many of the most important ground breaking scientific and biological discoveries of the tropical animal and plant kingdom originated here. Lake Gatun encompasses approximately 180 square miles (470 square km), a vast tropical ecological zone part of the Atlantic Forest Corridor and Eco-tourism on Gatun Lake has become a worthwhile industry for Panamanians. Gatun Lake also serves to provide the millions of gallons of water necessary to operate the Panama Canal locks each time a ship passes through and provides drinking water for Panama City and Colon. Angling is one of the primary recreational pursuits on Gatun Lake. It is suspected that the Cichla Pleiozona species of Peacock Bass was introduced by accident to Gatun Lake by a renowned Panamanian aquarist and doctor in 1958. Locally called Sargento these peacock bass are not a native game fish of Panama but originate from the Amazon, Rio Negro and Orinoco river basins of South America where they are called Tucanare or Pavon and are considered a premier

Major World Canals

36

game fish. Since 1958 the Cichla Pleiozona species of Peacock Bass have flourished to become the dominant angling game fish in Gatun Lake of the Panama Canal. The aggressive fish is an angler's dream come true. They hit topwater lures, subsurface lures imitating baitfish, and a variety of fly patterns. When hooked, they perform admirably, generating a respectable fight on appropriate tackle. Oddly, they have a preference for feeding during daylight hours. Lake Gatun remains to this day, as it has been for more than 50 years, one of the best peacock bass angling lakes in the world.

Major World Canals

37

KIEL CANAL The Kiel Canal, known as the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal until 1948, is a 61-mile (98kilometre) long canal in the German Bundesland Schleswig-Holstein that links the North Sea at Brunsbüttel to the Baltic Sea at Kiel-Holtenau. An average of 250 nautical miles (460 kilometres) is saved by using the Kiel Canal instead of going around the Jutland Peninsula. This not only saves time but also avoids potentially dangerous storm-prone seas. According to the canal's website, it is the most heavily used artificial seaway in the world; over 43,000 vessels passed through in 2007, excluding small craft.

Besides its two sea entrances, the Kiel Canal is linked, at Oldenbüttel, to the navigable River Eider by the short Gieselau Canal.

History The first connection between the North and Baltic Seas was the Eider Canal, which used stretches of the Eider River for the link between the two seas. The Eiderkanal was completed in 1784 and was a 27-mile (43-kilometre) part of a 109-mile (175-kilometre) long waterway from Kiel to the Eider River's mouth at Tönning on the west coast. It was only 29 metres (32 yards) wide with a depth of three metres (ten feet), which limited the vessels that could use the canal to 300 tonnes displacement.

A combination of naval interests—the German navy wanted to link its bases in the Baltic and the North Sea without the need to sail around Denmark and commercial pressure encouraged the development of a new canal.

In June 1887, construction works started at Holtenau, near Kiel. The canal took over 9000 workers eight years to build. On June 21, 1895, the canal was officially opened by Kaiser Wilhelm II for transiting from Brunsbüttel to Holtenau. A ceremony was held in Holtenau where Wilhelm II named it the Kaiser Wilhelm Kanal, and laid the final stone.

The opening of the canal was filmed by British director Birt Acres and surviving footage of this early film is preserved in the Science Museum in London.

Major World Canals

38

In order to meet the increasing traffic and the demands of the German Navy, between 1907 and 1914 the canal width was increased. The widening of the canal allowed the passage of a Dreadnought-sized battleship. This meant that these battleships could travel from the Baltic Sea to the North Sea without having to go around Denmark. The enlargement projects were completed by the installation of two larger canal locks in BrunsbĂźttel and Holtenau.

After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles internationalised the canal while leaving it under German administration. Adolf Hitler repudiated its international status in 1936.

After the end of World War II the canal was reopened to all traffic.

Operation There are detailed traffic rules for the canal.Each vessel in passage is classified in one of six traffic groups according to its dimensions. Depending on their classification, ships may be obliged to accept assistance of a tugboat, or to accept pilots or specialised canal helmsmen. Furthermore, there are regulations regarding the passing of oncoming ships.

In some cases a ship is required to moor at the bollards provided at intervals along the canal to allow the passage of oncoming vessels. Special rules apply to pleasure craft.

While most large, modern cruise ships cannot pass through this canal due to clearance limits under bridges, MS Norwegian Dream has special funnels and masts that can be lowered for passage. Swan Hellenic's Minerva, Fred Olsen Cruises' ship Balmoral, Oceania Cruises' Regatta, and MS Prinsendam of Holland America Line are able to transit the canal.

The German Navy’s sail training barque Gorch Fock was designed to allow lowering (telescoping) of the tops of her masts, specifically for the vessel to navigate Kiel Canal otherwise the ship would be too tall for several bridges spanning the waterway.

Major World Canals

39

THE GREAT LAKES-ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY SYSTEM St. LAWRENCE SEAWAY The Saint Lawrence Seaway , is the common name for a system of locks, canals and channels that permits ocean-going vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the North American Great Lakes, as far as Lake Superior. Legally it extends from Montreal to Lake Erie, including the Welland Canal. The seaway is named after the Saint Lawrence River, which it follows from Lake Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean. This section of the seaway is not a continuous canal, but rather comprises stretches of navigable channels within the river, a number of locks, as well as canals made to bypass rapids and dams in the waterway. A number of locks are managed by the Canadian Saint Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation and others by the U.S. Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation.

History The Saint Lawrence Seaway was preceded by a number of other canals. In 1871, locks on the Saint Lawrence allowed transit of vessels 186 ft (57 m) long, 44 ft 6 in (13.56 m) wide, and 9 ft (2.7 m) deep. The Welland Canal at that time allowed transit of vessels 142 ft (43 m) long, 26 ft (7.9 m) wide, and 10 ft (3.0 m) deep, but was generally too small to allow passage of larger ocean-going ships.

The first proposals for a binational comprehensive deep waterway along the St. Lawrence came in the 1890s. In the following decades the idea of a power project became inseparable from the seaway - in fact, the various governments involved believed that the deeper water created by the hydro project were necessary to make the seaway channels feasible. American proposals for development up to and including the First World War met with little interest from the Canadian federal government. But the two

Major World Canals

40

national government submitted St. Lawrence plans, and the Wooten-Bowden Report and the International Joint Commission both recommended the project in the early 1920s.

Although the Liberal Mackenzkie King was reluctant to proceed, in part of because of opposition to the project in Quebec, in 1932 the two countries inked a treaty. This failed to receive the assent of Congress. Subsequent attempts to forge an agreement in the 1930s came to naught as the Ontario government of Mitchell Hepburn, along with Quebec, got in the way. By 1941, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister King made an executive agreement to build the joint hydro and navigation works, but this too failed to receive the assent of Congress. Proposals for the seaway were met with resistance from railway and port lobbyists in the United States.

In the post-1945 years, proposals to introduce tolls still could not induce the U.S. Congress to approve the project. Growing impatient, and with Ontario desperate for hydro-electricity, Canada began to consider "going it alone." This seized the imagination of Canadians, engendering a groundswell of St. Lawrence nationalism. Fueled by this support, the Canadian Louis St. Laurent government decided over the course of 1951 and 1952 to construct the waterway alone, combined with a hydro project (which would prove to be the joint responsibility of Ontario and New York - as a power dam would change the water levels, it required bilateral cooperation). However, the Truman and Eisenhower administrations considered it a national security threat for Canada to alone control the deep waterway, and used various means - such as delaying and stalling the Federal Power Commission license for the power aspect - until Congress in early 1954 approved an American seaway role via the Wiley act. Canada, out of concern for the ramifications of the bilateral relationship, reluctantly acquiesced.

In the United States, Dr. N.R. Danelian was the Director of the 13 volume St. Lawrence Seaway Survey in the U.S. Department of Navigation (1932-1963), worked with the U.S. Secretary of State on Canadian-United States issues regarding the Seaway and worked for over 15 years on passage of the Seaway Act. He later became President of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Association to further the interests of the Seaway development to benefit the American Heartland.

The seaway opened in 1959 and cost $638 million in Canadian dollars, $336.2 million of which was paid by the U.S. government. Queen Elizabeth II and President Dwight D.

Major World Canals

41

Eisenhower formally opened the Seaway with a short cruise aboard Royal Yacht Britannia after addressing the crowds in St. Lambert, Quebec.

The seaway's opening is often credited with making the Erie Canal obsolete, thus setting off the severe economic decline of several cities in Upstate New York.

Locks in the Saint Lawrence River There are seven locks in the Saint Lawrence River portion of the Seaway.

From

downstream to upstream they are: St. Lambert Lock - Saint Lambert, QC C么te Ste. Catherine Lock - Sainte-Catherine, QC Beauharnois Locks (2 locks) - Melocheville, QC Snell Lock - Massena, NY Eisenhower Lock - Massena, NY Iroquois Lock - Iroquois, ON

Lock and channel dimensions The size of vessels that can traverse the seaway is limited by the size of locks. Locks on the St. Lawrence and on the Welland Canal are 766 ft (233.5 m) long, 80 ft (24.4 m) wide, and 30 ft (9.14 m) deep. The maximum allowed vessel size is slightly smaller: 740 ft (225.6 m) long, 78 ft (23.8 m) wide, and 26.5 ft (8.1 m) deep; many vessels designed for use on the Great Lakes following the opening of the seaway were built to the maximum size permissible by the locks, known informally as Seawaymax or SeawayMax. Large vessels of the lake freighter fleet are built on the lakes and cannot travel downstream beyond the Welland Canal. On the remaining Great Lakes, these ships are constrained only by the largest lock on the Great Lakes Waterway, the Poe Lock at the Soo Locks, which is 1,200 ft (365.8 m) long, 110 ft (33.5 m) wide and 32 ft (9.8 m) deep.

A vessel's draft is another obstacle to passage on the seaway, particularly in connecting waterways such as the St. Lawrence River. The depth in the channels of the seaway is 41

Major World Canals

42

ft (12.5 m) (Panamax-depth) downstream of Quebec City, 35 ft (10.7 m) between Quebec City and Deschaillons, 37 ft (11.3 m) to Montreal, and 27 ft (8.2 m) upstream of Montreal. Channel depths and limited lock sizes mean that only 10% of ocean-going ships can traverse the entire seaway. Proposals to expand the seaway, dating from as early as the 1960s, have been rejected as too costly, and environmentally and economically unsound. Lower water levels in the Great Lakes have also posed problems for some vessels in recent years.

While the seaway is currently (2010) mostly used for shipping bulk cargo, the possibility of its use for large-scale container shipping is under consideration as well. If the project goes ahead, feeder ships would take containers from the port of Oswego on Lake Ontario in upstate New York to Melford International Terminal in Nova Scotia for transfer to larger ocean-going ships.

Environmental impact To create a navigable channel through the Long Sault rapids and to allow hydroelectric stations to be established immediately upriver from Cornwall, Ontario and Massena, New York, an artificial lake had to be created. Called Lake St. Lawrence, it required the flooding on July 1, 1958 of six villages and three hamlets in Ontario, now collectively known as "The Lost Villages". There was also inundation on the New York side, but no communities were affected. The creation of the seaway also led to the introduction of invasive species of aquatic animals, most notably the zebra mussel into the Great Lakes Basin.

The seaway provides significant entertainment and recreation such as boating, camping, fishing, and scuba diving. Of particular note is that the seaway provides a number of divable shipwrecks within recreational scuba limits (shallower than 130 ft (40 m)) The region also offers technical diving with some wrecks lying at 240 ft depth. Surprisingly, the water temperature can be as warm as 75 째F (24 째C) during the mid to late summer months. The first 10 ft of Lake Ontario is warmed and enters the St. Lawrence river, the fast moving waterbody has no thermocline.

Major World Canals

43

Incidents On 12 July 2010,the Richelieu (owned by Canada Steamship Lines) ran aground after losing power near the C么te-Sainte-Catherine lock. The grounding punctured a fuel tank, spilling an estimated 200 tonnes of diesel fuel, covering approximately 500 square meter.

The seaway and the lock were shut down to help contain the spill.

Major World Canals

44

ERIE CANAL The Erie Canal is a waterway in New York that runs about 363 miles (584 km) from Albany, New York, on the Hudson River to Buffalo, New York, at Lake Erie, completing a navigable water route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. The canal contains 36 locks and encompasses a total elevation differential of around 565 ft. (169 m). First proposed in 1807, it was under construction from 1817 to 1825 and officially opened on October 26, 1825.

It was the first transportation system between the eastern seaboard (New York City) and the western interior (Great Lakes) of the United States that did not require portage, was faster than carts pulled by draft animals, and cut transport costs by about 95%. The canal fostered a population surge in western New York state, opened regions farther west to settlement, and helped New York City become the chief U.S. port. It was enlarged between 1834 and 1862. In 1918, the enlarged canal was replaced by the larger New York State Barge Canal.

Today, it is part of the New York State Canal System. In 2000, the United States Congress designated the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor to recognize the national significance of the canal system as the most successful and influential humanbuilt waterway and one of the most important works of civil engineering and construction in North America. Mainly used by recreational watercraft in the recent past, the canal saw an upsurge in commercial traffic in 2008.

Background From the first days of the expansion of the English colonies from the coast of North America into the heartland of the continent, a recurring problem was that of transportation between the coastal ports and the interior. Close to the seacoast, rivers often provided adequate waterways, but the presence of the Appalachian Mountains, a few hundred miles inland presented a great challenge. Passengers and freight had to travel overland, a journey made more difficult by the rough condition of the roads. That

Major World Canals

45

the principal exportable product of the Ohio Valley was grain did not help matters, as grain was a high-volume, low-priced commodity, frequently not worth the cost of transporting it to far-away population centers (this was a factor leading to the Whiskey Rebellion). In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it became clear to coastal residents that the city or state that succeeded in developing a cheap, reliable route to the West would enjoy economic success, and that the port at the seaward end of such a route would see business increase greatly. In time, projects were devised in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.

Profile of the original canal The original canal was 363 miles (584 km) long, from Albany on the Hudson to Buffalo on Lake Erie. The channel was a cut 40 feet (12 m) wide and 4 feet (1.2 m) deep, with removed soil piled on the downhill side to form a walkway called the towpath. Canal boats, up to 3.5 feet (1.1 m) in draft, were pulled by horses and mules on the towpath.

There was only one towpath, generally on the north side of the ditch. When canal boats met, the boat with right-of-way steered to the towpath side of the canal. The other boat steered toward the berm or heelpath side of the canal. The driver or "hoggee" (pronounced HO-gee) of the privileged boat brought his team to the canalside edge of the towpath while the hoggee of the other boat moved to the outside of the towpath and stopped his team. His towline would go slack, fall into the water and sink to the bottom while his boat continued on by momentum. The privileged boat's team would step over the other boat's towline, and then their boat would pass over the sunken towline without stopping. Once clear, the other boat's team would continue on its way.

The sides of the cut were lined with stone set in clay, and the bottom was also lined with clay. The stonework required hundreds of German masons, who later built many of New York's famous buildings.

Major World Canals

46

Construction Construction began July 4, 1817, at Rome, New York. The first 15 miles (24 km), from Rome to Utica, opened in 1819. At that rate the canal would not be finished for thirty years. The main problems were felling trees to clear a path through virgin forest and moving excavated soil, both of which took longer than expected, but the builders solved these problems. To fell a tree, they threw rope over the top branches and winched it down. They pulled out the stumps with an innovative stump puller. A pair of huge wheels were set loose on an axle. A large wheel, barely smaller than the others, was fixed to the center of the axle. A chain was wrapped around the axle and hooked to the stump. A rope was wrapped around the center wheel and hooked to a team of oxen. The mechanical advantage (torque) obtained ripped the stumps out of the soil. Soil to be moved was shoveled into large wheelbarrows that were dumped into mule-pulled carts.

A three-man team with mules could build a mile in a year. The remaining problem was finding enough labor, and increased immigration helped fill the need. The men who planned and oversaw construction were novices, both as surveyors and as engineers.

There were no civil engineers in the United States. James Geddes and Benjamin Wright, who laid out the route, were judges whose experience in surveying was in settling boundary disputes. Geddes had only used a surveying instrument for a few hours.

Canvass White was a 27-year-old amateur engineer who persuaded Clinton to let him go to Britain at his own expense to study the canal system there. Nathan Roberts was a mathematics teacher and land speculator. Yet these men "carried the Erie Canal up the Niagara escarpment at Lockport, maneuvered it onto a towering embankment to cross over Irondequoit Creek, spanned the Genesee River on an awesome aqueduct, and carved a route for it out of the solid rock between Little Falls and Schenectady—and all of those venturesome designs worked precisely as planned." Many of the laborers working on the canal were Scots Irish, who had recently come to the United States as a group of about 5,000 from Northern Ireland, most of whom were Protestants and wealthy enough to pay for this caravan.

Construction continued at an increased rate as new workers arrived. When the canal reached Montezuma Marsh (at the outlet of Cayuga Lake west of Syracuse), over 1,000

Major World Canals

47

workers died of swamp fever and construction stopped. Work continued on the downhill side towards the Hudson, and when the marsh froze in winter, the crews worked to complete the section across the swamps.

The middle section from Utica to Salina (Syracuse) was completed in 1820 and traffic on that section started up immediately. The eastern section, 250 miles (400 km) from Brockport to Albany, opened on September 10, 1823 to great fanfare.

The Champlain Canal, a 64 miles (103 km) north-south route from Watervliet on the Hudson to Lake Champlain, opened on the same date.

In 1824, before the canal was completed, a detailed Pocket Guide for the Tourist and Traveler, Along the Line of the Canals, and the Interior Commerce of the State of New York, was published for the benefit of travelers and land speculators — possibly America's first tour guide.

After Montezuma Marsh, the next obstacle was crossing the Niagara Escarpment, an 80-foot (24 m) wall of hard dolomitic limestone, to rise to the level of Lake Erie. The route followed the channel of a creek that had cut a ravine steeply down the escarpment, with two sets of five locks in a series, giving rise to the community of Lockport. These 12-foot (3.7 m) lift-locks had a total lift of 60 feet (18 m), exiting into a deeply cut channel. The final leg had to be cut 30 feet (9.1 m) through another limestone layer, the Onondaga ridge. Much of that section was blasted with black powder. The inexperience of the crews often led to accidents, and sometimes rocks falling on nearby homes.

Two villages competed to be the terminus: Black Rock, on the Niagara River, and Buffalo, at the eastern tip of Lake Erie. Buffalo expended great energy to widen and deepen Buffalo Creek to make it navigable and to create a harbor at its mouth. Buffalo won over Black Rock, and grew into a large city, encompassing its former competitor.

Work was completed on October 26, 1825. The event was marked by a statewide "Grand Celebration," culminating in successive cannon shots along the length of the canal and the Hudson, a 90-minute cannonade from Buffalo to New York City. A flotilla of boats, led by Governor Dewitt Clinton aboard the Seneca Chief, sailed from Buffalo to New York City in ten days. Clinton then ceremonially poured Lake Erie water into New York Harbor to mark the "Wedding of the Waters." On its return trip, the Seneca Chief

Major World Canals

48

brought a keg of Atlantic Ocean water back to Buffalo to be poured into Lake Erie by Buffalo's Judge Samuel Wilkeson, who would later become mayor.

Enlargements and improvements Derelict aqueduct over Nine Mile Creek north of Camillus, New York built in 1841 and abandoned c.1918, one of 32 aqueducts on the Erie Canal; it has since been restored.

Problems developed but were quickly solved. Leaks developed along the entire length of the canal, but these were sealed with a newly invented cement that hardened underwater (hydraulic cement). Erosion on the clay bottom proved to be a problem and the speed was limited to 4 mph (6 km/h).

The original design planned for an annual tonnage of 1.5 million tons (1.36 million metric tons), but this was exceeded immediately. An ambitious program to improve the canal began in 1834. During this massive series of construction projects, known as the First Enlargement, the canal was widened to 70 feet (21 m) and deepened to 7 feet (2.1 m). Locks were widened and/or rebuilt in new locations, and many new aqueducts were constructed. The canal was also straightened and slightly re-routed in some stretches, resulting in the abandonment of short segments of the original 1825 canal. The First Enlargement was completed in 1862, with further minor enlargements in later decades.

Today, the reconfiguration of the canal created during the First Enlargement is commonly referred to as the Improved Erie Canal or the Old Erie Canal, to distinguish it from the canal's modern-day course. Existing remains of the 1825 canal abandoned during the Enlargement are sometimes referred to today as Clinton's Ditch (which was also the popular nickname for the entire Erie Canal project during its original 1817-1825 construction).

Additional feeder canals soon extended the Erie Canal into a system. These included the Cayuga-Seneca Canal south to the Finger Lakes, the Oswego Canal from Three Rivers north to Lake Ontario at Oswego, and the Champlain Canal from Troy north to Lake Champlain. From 1833 to 1877, the short Crooked Lake Canal connected Keuka Lake and Seneca Lake. The Chemung Canal connected the south end of Seneca Lake to Elmira in 1833, and was an important route for Pennsylvania coal and timber into the

Major World Canals

49

canal system. The Chenango Canal in 1836 connected the Erie Canal at Utica to Binghamton and caused a business boom in the Chenango River valley. The Chenango and Chemung canals linked the Erie with the Susquehanna River system. The Black River Canal connected the Black River to the Erie Canal at Rome and remained in operation until the 1920s. The Genesee Valley Canal was run along the Genesee River to connect with the Allegheny River at Olean, but the Allegheny section, which would have connected to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, was never built. The Genesee Valley Canal was later abandoned and became the Genesee Valley Canal Railroad.

In 1903, the New York state legislature authorized construction of the New York State Barge Canal as the "Improvement of the Erie, the Oswego, the Champlain, and the Cayuga and Seneca Canals". In 1905, construction of the Barge Canal began, which was completed in 1918, at a cost of $96.7 million. Freight traffic reached a total of 5.2 million short tons (4.7 million metric tons) by 1951, before declining in the face of combined rail and truck competition.

Competition As the canal brought travelers to New York City, it took business away from other ports such as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore, Maryland. Those cities and their states chartered projects to compete with the Erie Canal. In Pennsylvania, the Main Line of Public Works was a combined canal and railroad running west from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh on the Ohio River, opened in 1834. In Maryland, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ran west to Wheeling, West Virginia, also on the Ohio River, and was completed in 1853.

Other competition was more direct. The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad opened in 1837, providing a bypass to the slowest part of the canal between Albany and Schenectady.

Other railroads were soon chartered and built to continue the line west to Buffalo, and in 1842 a continuous line (which later became the New York Central Railroad and its Auburn Road in 1853) was open the whole way to Buffalo. As the railroad served the same general route as the canal, but provided for faster travel, passengers soon switched to it. However as late as 1852, the canal carried thirteen times more freight tonnage than

Major World Canals

50

all the railroads in New York state combined; it continued to compete well with the railroads through 1882, when tolls were abolished.

The New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railway was completed in 1884, as a route running closely parallel to both the canal and the New York Central Railroad. However, it went bankrupt and was acquired the next year by the New York Central.

Impact The Erie Canal made an immense contribution to the wealth and importance of New York City, Buffalo, and New York State. Its impact went much further, increasing trade throughout the nation by opening eastern and overseas markets to Midwestern farm products and by enabling migration to the West. New ethnic Irish communities formed in some towns along its route after completion, as Irish immigrants were a large portion of the labor force involved in its construction. Earth extracted from the canal was transported to the New York city area and used as landfill in New York and New Jersey.

A plaque honoring the canal's construction is located in Battery Park in southern Manhattan.

Because so many immigrants traveled on the canal, many genealogists have sought copies of canal passenger lists. Unfortunately, apart from the years 1827–1829, canal boat operators were not required to record or report passenger names to the government, which, in this case, was the State of New York. Those 1827–1829 passenger lists survive today in the New York State Archives, and other sources of traveler information are sometimes available.

The Canal also helped bind the still-new nation closer to Britain and Europe. British repeal of the Corn Law resulted in a huge increase in exports of Midwestern wheat to Britain. Trade between the US and Canada also increased as a result of the Corn Law and a reciprocity (free-trade) agreement signed in 1854; much of this trade flowed along the Erie.

Its success also prompted imitation: a rash of canal-building followed. Also, the many technical hurdles that had to be overcome made heroes of those whose innovations made the canal possible. This led to an increased public esteem for practical education.

Major World Canals

51

Many notable authors wrote about the canal, including Herman Melville, Frances Trollope, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Samuel Hopkins Adams and the Marquis de Lafayette, and many tales and songs were written about life on the canal. The popular song Low Bridge by Thomas S. Allen was written in 1905 to memorialize the canal's early heyday, when barges were pulled by mules rather than engines. Chicago, among other Great Lakes cities, recognized the commercial importance of the canal to its economy, and two West Loop streets are named Canal and Clinton (for canal proponent DeWitt Clinton).

Concern that erosion caused by logging in the Adirondacks could silt up the canal contributed to the creation of another New York National Historic Landmark, the Adirondack Park, in 1885.

The New York State Canal System In 1992, the New York State Barge Canal was renamed the New York State Canal System (including the Erie, Cayuga-Seneca, Oswego, and Champlain Canals) and placed under the newly created New York State Canal Corporation, a subsidiary of the New York State Thruway Authority. The Canal System is operated using money generated by Thruway tolls.

21st century Since the 1990s, the Canal system has been used primarily by recreational traffic, although a small but growing amount of cargo traffic still uses it.

Today, the Erie Canal Corridor covers 524 miles (843 km) of navigable water from Lake Champlain to the Capital Region and west to Buffalo. The area has a population of 2.7 million: about 75% of Central and Western New York's population lives within 25 miles (40 km) of the Erie Canal.

The Erie Canal is open to small craft and some larger vessels from May through November each year. During winter, water is drained from parts of the canal for

Major World Canals

52

maintenance. The Champlain Canal, Lake Champlain, and the Chambly Canal and Richelieu River in Canada form the Lakes to Locks Passage, making a tourist attraction of the former waterway linking eastern Canada to the Erie Canal. In 2006, recreational boating fees were eliminated to attract more visitors.

Travel on the Canal's middle section (particularly in the Mohawk Valley) was severely hampered by flooding in late June and early July 2006. Flood damage to the canal and its facilities was estimated as at least $15 million.

There were some 42 commercial shipments on the canal in 2008, compared to 15 such shipments in 2007 and more than 33,000 shipments in 1855, the canal's peak year.

According to the New York Times, the new growth in commercial traffic is due to the rising cost of diesel fuel. Canal barges can carry a short ton of cargo 514 miles on one gallon of diesel fuel, while a gallon allows a train to haul the same amount of cargo 202 miles and a truck 59 miles. Canal barges can carry loads up to 3,000 short tons and are used to transport objects that would be too large for road or rail shipment. The system is served by several commercial towing companies.

Major World Canals

53

WELLAND CANAL The Welland Canal is a ship canal in Canada that extends 42 km (27.0 miles) from Port Weller, Ontario, on Lake Ontario, to Port Colborne, Ontario, on Lake Erie. As a part of the St. Lawrence Seaway, this canal enables ships to ascend and descend the Niagara Escarpment and to bypass the Niagara Falls.

Approximately 40,000,000 tonnes of cargo are carried through the Welland Canal annually by a traffic of about 3,000 ocean and Great Lakes vessels. This canal was a major factor in the growth of the city of Toronto. The original canal and its successors allowed goods from such Great Lakes ports as Detroit, Cleveland, Windsor, and other heavily industrialized areas of the United States and Ontario to be shipped to the port of Montreal or to Quebec City, where they were usually reloaded onto ocean-going vessels for international shipping.

The completion of the Welland Canal made the Trent-Severn Waterway, that connected Lake Ontario with Lake Huron, obsolescent as a commercial traffic route for Great Lakes navigation.

The southern terminus of the Welland Canal on Lake Erie, located at Port Colborne, is 99.5 meters (326.5 feet) higher above sea level than the northern terminus if the Canal at Port Weller on Lake Ontario. This canal includes eight ship locks, each of which is 24.4 meters (80 feet) wide by 233.5 meters (766 feet) long. Due to the Garden City Skyway, the maximum height of the masts of the ships allowed on this canal is 35.5 meters (116.5 feet). All other highway or railroad crossings of the Welland Canal are either movable bridges (of the vertical lift or bascule bridge types) or subterranean tunnels. The maximum permissible length of a ship in this canal is 225.5 meters (740 feet). It takes ships an average of about eleven hours to traverse the entire length of the Welland Canal.

History Before the digging of the Welland Canal, shipping traffic between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie used a portage road between Chippawa, Ontario, and Queenston, Ontario, both

Major World Canals

54

of which are located on the Niagara River—above and below Niagara Falls, respectively.

First Welland Canal The Welland Canal Company was incorporated in 1824 by William Hamilton Merritt, in part to provide a regular flow of water for his watermills. The construction began at Allanburg, Ontario, on November 30, at a point now marked as suchs on the west end of Bridge #11 (formerly Highway 20). This canal opened for a trial run on November 30, 1829 (exactly five years, to the day, after the ground-breaking in 1824). After a short ceremony at Lock One, in Port Dalhousie, the schooner Anne & Jane (also called "Annie & Jane" in some texts made the first transit, upbound to Buffalo, N.Y., with Merritt as a passenger on her deck. The first canal ran from Port Dalhousie, Ontario on Lake Ontario south along Twelve Mile Creek to St. Catharines, Ontario. From there it took a winding route up the Niagara Escarpment through Merritton, Ontario to Thorold, Ontario, where it continued south via Allanburg to Port Robinson, Ontario on the Welland River. Ships went east (downstream) on the Welland River to Chippawa, at the south (upper) end of the old portage road, where they made a sharp right turn into the Niagara river, upstream towards Lake Erie. Originally, the section between Allanburg and Port Robinson was planned to be carried in a subterranean tunnel. However, the sandy soil in this part of Ontario made a tunnel infeasible, and a deep open-cut canal was dug instead.

A southern extension from Port Robinson opened in 1833. This extension followed the Welland River south to Welland (known then as the settlement of Aqueduct, for the wooden aqueduct that carried the canal over the Welland River at that point), and then split to run south to Port Colborne on Lake Erie. A feeder canal ran southwest from Welland to another point on Lake Erie, just west of Rock Point. With the opening of the extension, the canal stretched 44 km (27 mi) between the two lakes, with 40 wooden locks. The minimum lock size was 33.5 m by 6.7 m (110 ft by 22 ft), with a minimum ca5nal depth of 2.4 m (8 ft).

Major World Canals

55

Second Welland Canal In 1839 the government of Upper Canada approved the purchase of shares in the canal company in response to the company's continuing financial problems in the face of the continental financial panic of 1837. The buyout was completed in 1841, and work began to deepen the canal and to reduce the number of locks to 27, each 45.7 m (150 ft) by 8.1 m (26.5 ft). By 1848, a 2.7 m (9 ft) deep path was completed, not only through the Welland Canal but also the rest of the way to the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Competition came in 1854 with the opening of the Erie and Ontario Railway, running parallel to the original portage road. In 1859, the Welland Railway opened, parallel to the canal and with the same endpoints. But this railway was affiliated with the canal, and was actually used to help transfer cargoes from the lake ships, which were too large for the small canal locks, to the other end of the canal (The remnants of this railway are today owned by the Trillium RR). Smaller ships called "canallers" also took a part of these loads. Due to this problem, it was soon apparent that the canal would have to be enlarged again.

Third Welland Canal In 1887, a new shorter alignment was completed between St. Catharines and Port Dalhousie. One of the most interesting features of this third Welland Canal, was the Merritton Tunnel on the Grand Trunk Railway line that ran under the canal at Lock 18.

Another tunnel, nearby, carried the canal over a sunken section of the St David's Road.

The new route had a minimum depth of 4.3m (14ft) with 26 stone locks, each 82.3m (270 ft) long by 13.7 m (45 ft) wide. Even so, the canal was still too small for many boats.

Major World Canals

56

Fourth (current) Welland Canal Construction on the current canal began in 1913 and was completed in 1932. The route was again changed north of St. Catharines, now running directly north to Port Weller. In this configuration, there are eight locks, seven at the Niagara Escarpment and the eighth, a guard lock, at Port Colborne to adjust with the varying water depth in Lake Erie. The depth was now 7.6 m (25 ft), with locks 233.5 m (766 ft) long by 24.4 m (80 ft) wide.

Fifth (proposed but uncompleted) Welland Canal In the 1950s, with the building of the present St. Lawrence Seaway, a standard depth of 8.2 m (27 ft) was adopted. The 13.4-kilometre (8.3 mile) long Welland By-pass, built between 1967 and 1972, opened for the 1973 shipping season, providing a new and shorter alignment between Port Robinson and Port Colborne and by-passing downtown Welland. All three crossings of the new alignment—one an aqueduct for the Welland River—were built as tunnels. Around the same time, the Thorold Tunnel was built at Thorold and several bridges were removed. These projects were to be tied into a proposed new canal, titled the Fifth Welland Canal, which was planned to by-pass most of the existing canal to the east and to cross the Niagara Escarpment in one large superlock. While land for the project was expropriated and the design finalized, the project never got past the initial construction stages and has since been shelved. The present (4th) canal is scheduled to be replaced by 2030, almost exactly 100 years after it first opened, and 200 years since the first full shipping season, in 1830, of the original canal.

Accidents and the Welland Canals On June 20, 1912, the government survey steamer "La Canadienne" lost control due to mechanical problems in the engine room and smashed into the upstream gates of Lock #22 of the 3rd Welland Canal, forcing them open by six inches. The resulting surge of

Major World Canals

57

water flooded downstream, cresting the upstream gates of Lock #21 where 5 boys were fishing. One boy ran to safety, one of the boys, David Boucke was saved by a government surveyor Hugh McGuire. But the remaining three, Willie Wallace Tifney (age 5), Willie Tacke (age 5) and Leonard Bretwick (age 4) were knocked into the water, drowning in the surge.

On August 25, 1974, the northbound ore-carrier Steelton struck Bridge 12 in Port Robinson, Ontario. The bridge was rising and the impact knocked the bridge over, destroying it. No one was killed. The bridge has not been replaced and the inhabitants of Port Robinson have been served by a ferry for many years. The Welland Public Library archive has images of the aftermath.

On August 11, 2001, the lake freighter Windoc collided with Bridge 11 in Allanburg, Ontario, closing vessel traffic on the Welland Canal for two days. The accident destroyed the ship's wheelhouse and funnel (chimney), ignited a large fire on board, and caused minor damage to the vertical lift bridge. The accident and portions of its aftermath were captured on amateur video. The vessel was a total loss, but there were no reported injuries, and no pollution to the waterway. The damage to the bridge was focused on the centre of the vertical-lift span. It was repaired over a number of weeks and reopened to vehicular traffic on November 16, 2001. The Marine Investigation Report concluded, "it is likely that the [vertical lift bridge] operator's performance was impaired while the bridge span was lowered onto the Windoc."

Sabotage and the Welland Canals The Welland Canal has been the focus of plots on a number of occasions throughout its existence. However, only two have ever been carried out. The earliest and potentially most devastating attack occurred on September 9, 1841 at Lock #37 (Allanburg) of the first Welland Canal (43.07796째N 79.20991째W (approximately 180m north of today's Allanburg bridge), when an explosive charge destroyed one of the lock gates. However, a catastrophic flood was prevented when a guard gate located upstream of the lock closed into place preventing the upstream waters from careening down the route of the Canal

Major World Canals

58

and causing further damage and possible injury or loss of life. It was suspected that Benjamin Lett was responsible for the explosion.

The next act of sabotage wouldn't occur for nearly 60 years. On April 21, 1900 about 6:30 in the evening, a dynamite charge was set off against the hinges of Lock #24 of the Third Welland Canal (just to the east of Lock #7 of today's Canal (43.122976째N 79.192372째W), doing minor damage. This time, the saboteurs were caught in nearby Thorold. John Walsh, John Nolan and the ringleader "Dynamite" Luke Dillon (a member of Clan-na-Gael) were tried at the Welland Courthouse and found guilty, receiving life sentences at Kingston Penitentiary. Nolan lost his sanity while incarcerated, John Walsh was eventually released while Luke Dillon remained in custody until July 12, 1914 The First World War brought with it plots against the Canal and the most notable of them came to be known as "The Von Papen Plot".

In April 1916, a United States federal grand jury issued an indictment against Franz von Papen, then a senior German diplomat, on charges of a plot to blow up the Welland Canal. However, Papen was at the time safely on German soil, having been expelled from the US several months previously for alleged earlier acts of espionage and attempted sabotage.

Von Papen remained under indictment on these charges until he became Chancellor of Germany in 1932, at which time the charges were dropped.

Shipping season The Welland Canal closes in winter (January-March) when ice or weather conditions become a hazard to navigation. The shipping season re-opens in spring when the waters are once more safe. In 2007, the season opened on the earliest date ever, March 20, just hours ahead of the vernal equinox.

Major World Canals

59

NEW YORK STATE BARGE CANAL The New York State Canal System (formerly known as the New York State Barge Canal) is a successor to the Erie Canal and other canals within New York. Currently, the 525-mile (845 km) system is composed of the Erie Canal, the Oswego Canal, the Cayuga-Seneca Canal, and the Champlain Canal.

The Erie Canal connects the Hudson River to Lake Erie; the Cayuga-Seneca Canal connects Seneca Lake and Cayuga Lake to the Erie Canal; the Oswego Canal connects the Erie Canal to Lake Ontario; and the Champlain Canal connects the Hudson River to Lake Champlain.

History In 1903 New York State legislature authorized construction of the "New York State Barge Canal" as the "Improvement of the Erie, the Oswego, the Champlain and the Cayuga and Seneca Canals". In 1905, construction of the Barge Canal began, which was completed in 1918, at a cost of $96.7 million. The Barge Canal's new route took advantage of rivers (such as the Mohawk River, Oswego River, Seneca River, Genesee River and Clyde River) that the original Erie Canal builders had avoided, thus bypassing some major cities formerly on the route, such as Syracuse and Rochester. However, particularly in western New York State, the canal system uses the same channel as the original Erie Canal.

Since the 1970s, the state has ceased modernizing the system due to the shift to truck transport. The canal is preserved primarily for historical and recreational purposes.

Today, very few commercial vessels use the canal; it is mainly used by private pleasure boats, although it also serves as a supply of fresh water and as a method of controlling floods. The last regularly schedule commercial ship operating on the canal was the Day Peckinpaugh which ceased operation in 1994.

Since 1992, the Barge Canal is no longer known by that name. Individual canals in the New York State Canal System, formerly collectively known as "the Barge Canal," are

Major World Canals

60

now referred to by their original names (Erie Canal, Oswego Canal, Cayuga-Seneca Canal, and Champlain Canal). Today, the system's canals are 12 feet (4 m) deep, 120 feet wide, with 57 electrically operated locks, and can accommodate vessels up to 2000 tons (1800 metric tons). The canal system is open for navigation generally from May 1st through November 15th.

Financial support of the canal system is from tolls collected on the New York State Thruway; since 1992, it is operated by the Thruway Authority's Canal Recreationway Commission. The application of tolls to support the canal and other non-thruway projects is a matter of controversy. Usage fees for boaters were eliminated in 2006.

In 2004, the New York State Canal Corporation reported a total of 122,034 recreational lockings on the canal, along with 8,514 tour boat lockings and 7,369 hire boat lockings, and a total of 12,182 tons of cargo valued at approximately $102 million was shipped on the canal system.

Travel on the Canal's middle section (particularly in the Mohawk River valley) was severely hampered during destructive flooding in Upstate New York in late June and early July 2006. Flood damage to the canal system and its facilities was estimated to be at least $15 million.

Newly elected Governor Andrew Cuomo has appointed Schenectady Mayor Brian Stratton to head up the Canal System.

Major World Canals

61

LAKE MICHIGAN Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America and the only one located entirely within the United States. It is the second largest of the Great Lakes by volume and the third largest by surface area, after Lake Superior and Lake Huron.

Hydrologically, the lake is a large bay of Lake Michigan-Huron, having the same surface elevation as Lake Huron. It is bounded, from west to east, by the U.S. states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. The word "Michigan" originally referred to the lake itself, and is believed to come from the Ojibwa word mishigami meaning "great water".

History Some of the earliest human inhabitants of the Lake Michigan region were the Hopewell Indians. Their culture declined after 800 A.D., and for the next few hundred years the region was the home of peoples known as the Late Woodland Indians. In the early seventeenth century, when western European explorers made their first forays into the region, they encountered descendants of the Late Woodland Indians: the Chippewa, Menominee, Sauk, Fox, Winnebago, Miami, Ottawa, and Potawatomi. It is believed that the French explorer Jean Nicolet was the first non-Native American to reach Lake Michigan in 1634 or 1638.

With the advent of European exploration into the area in the late 17th century, Lake Michigan became part of a line of waterways leading from the Saint Lawrence River to the Mississippi River and thence to the Gulf of Mexico. French coureurs des bois and voyageurs established small ports and trading communities, such as Green Bay, on the lake during the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

The first person to reach the deep bottom of Lake Michigan was J. Val Klump, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Klump reached the bottom via submersible as part of a 1985 research expedition.

Major World Canals

62

Connection to ocean and open water The Saint Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes Waterway opened the Great Lakes including Lake Michigan to ocean-going vessels. Wider ocean-going container ships do not fit through the locks on these routes and has thus limited shipping on the lakes.

Despite their vast size, large sections of the Great Lakes freeze in winter, interrupting most shipping. Some icebreakers ply the lakes.

The Great Lakes are also connected by canal to the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Illinois River (from Chicago) and the Mississippi River. An alternate track is via the Illinois River (from Chicago), to the Mississippi, up the Ohio, and then through the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (combination of a series of rivers and lakes and canals), to Mobile Bay and the Gulf. Commercial tug-and-barge traffic on these waterways is heavy.

Pleasure boats can also enter or exit the Great Lakes by way of the Erie Canal and Hudson River in New York. The Erie Canal connects to the Great Lakes at the east end of Lake Erie (at Buffalo, NY) and at the south side of Lake Ontario (at Oswego, NY).

Major World Canals

63

LAKE ONTARIO

Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. Ontario, Canada's most populous province, was named for the lake. It is bounded on the north and southwest by the province of Ontario, and on the south by the American state of New York. In the Wyandot (Huron) language, ontarío means “Lake of Shining Waters”. It is the last in the Great Lakes chain and serves as the outlet to the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence River.

Lake Ontario is the easternmost of the Great Lakes and the smallest in surface area (7,540 square miles, 19,529 km2), although it exceeds Lake Erie in volume (393 cubic miles, 1639 km3). It is the 14th largest lake in the world, with a shoreline 712 miles (1146 km) long. As the last lake in the Great Lakes' hydrologic chain, Lake Ontario has the lowest mean surface elevation, 246 feet (75 m) above sea level, 100 metres lower than its neighbor upstream. Its maximum length is 193 miles (311 km) and its maximum width is 53 miles (85 km). The lake's average depth is 283 feet (86 m), with a maximum depth of 802 feet (244 m). The lake's primary source is the Niagara River, draining Lake Erie, with the St. Lawrence River serving as the outlet. The drainage basin covers 64,030 km2 (24,720 sq mi).

Ocean and Lake navigation The Great Lakes Waterway connects lake Ontario downstream to the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence Seaway, and upstream to the other lakes in the chain via the Welland Canal and to Lake Erie. The Trent-Severn Waterway for pleasure boats connects Lake Ontario at the Bay of Quinte to Georgian Bay (Lake Huron), via Lake Simcoe. The Oswego Canal connects the lake at Oswego to the New York State Canal System, with outlets to the Hudson River, Lake Erie, and Lake Champlain.

Major World Canals

64

The Rideau Canal, also for pleasure boats, connects Lake Ontario at Kingston to the Ottawa River in downtown Ottawa.

HISTORY The lake was previously identified in some maps under different French names. In 1632 and 1656 is was referred to as Lac de St. Louis or Lake St. Louis by Samuel de Champlain and cartographer Nicolas Sanson respectively. In 1660 Jesuit historian Francis Creuxius coined the name Lacus Ontarius. In a map drawn in the Relation des JÊsuites (1662–1663), the lake bears the legend "Lac Ontario ou des Iroquois" with the name "Ondiara" in smaller type. A French map produced in 1712 created by military engineer Jean-Baptiste de Couagne, identified Lake Ontario as "Lac Frontenac". Iroquois people called the lake "Skanadario".

Major World Canals

65

LAKE SUPERIOR Lake Superior is the largest of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded to the north by the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of Minnesota, and to the south by the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Michigan. It is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area if Lake Michigan-Huron is counted as two lakes and is the world's third-largest freshwater lake by volume.

History The first people came to the Lake Superior region 10,000 years ago after the retreat of the glaciers in the last Ice Age. They are known as the Plano, and they used stone-tipped spears to hunt caribou on the northwestern side of Lake Minong.

The next documented people were known as the Shield Archaic (c. 5000-500 BC).

Evidence of this culture can be found at the eastern and western ends of the Canadian shore. They used bows and arrows, dugout canoes, fished, hunted, mined copper for tools and weapons, and established trading networks. They are believed to be the direct ancestors of the Ojibwe and Cree.

The Laurel people (c. 500 BC to AD 500) developed seine net fishing, evidence being found at rivers around Superior such as the Pic and Michipicoten.

Another culture known as the Terminal Woodland Indians (c. AD 900-1650) has been found. They were Algonkian people who hunted, fished and gathered berries. They used snow shoes, birch bark canoes and conical or domed lodges. At the mouth of the Michipicoten River, nine layers of encampments have been discovered. Most of the Pukaskwa Pits were likely made during this time.

The Anishinaabe, also known as the Ojibwe or Chippewa, have inhabited the Lake Superior region for over five hundred years and were preceded by the Dakota, Fox, Menominee, Nipigon, Noquet and Gros Ventres. They called Lake Superior Anishnaabe Gichgamiing, or "the Ojibwe's Ocean". After the arrival of Europeans, the Anishinaabe

Major World Canals

66

made themselves the middle-men between the French fur traders and other Native peoples. They soon became the dominant Indian nation in the region: they forced out the Sioux and Fox and won a victory against the Iroquois west of Sault Ste. Marie in 1662.

By the mid-18th century, the Ojibwe occupied all of Lake Superior's shores.

In the 18th century, the fur trade in the region was booming, with the Hudson's Bay Company having a virtual monopoly. In 1783, however, the North West Company was formed to rival Hudson's Bay Company. The North West Company built forts on Lake Superior at Grand Portage, Nipigon, the Pic River, the Michipicoten River, and Sault Ste. Marie. But by 1821, with competition taking too great a toll on both, the companies merged under the Hudson's Bay Company name.

Many towns around the lake are either current or former mining areas, or engaged in processing or shipping. Today, tourism is another significant industry; the sparselypopulated Lake Superior country, with its rugged shorelines and wilderness, attracts tourists and adventurers.

Shipping Lake Superior has been an important link in the Great Lakes Waterway, providing a route for the transportation of iron ore and other mined and manufactured materials.

Large cargo vessels called lake freighters, as well as smaller ocean-going freighters, transport these commodities across Lake Superior.

Shipwrecks According to shipwreck historian Frederick Stonehouse, the southern shore of Lake Superior between Grand Marais, Michigan, and Whitefish Point is known as the "Graveyard of the Great Lakes" and more ships have been lost around the Whitefish Point area than any other part of Lake Superior. These shipwrecks are now protected by the Whitefish Point Underwater Preserve. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was the last major

Major World Canals

67

shipwreck on Lake Superior, sinking 17 miles (27 km) from Whitefish Point on November 10, 1975.

According to legend, "Lake Superior seldom gives up her dead". This is because of the unusually low temperature of the water, estimated at under 36 °F (2 °C) on average around 1970. Normally bacteria feeding on a sunken decaying body will generate gas inside the body, causing it to float to the surface after a few days. The water in Lake Superior is cold enough year-round to inhibit bacterial growth, and bodies tend to sink and never surface. This is alluded to in Gordon Lightfoot's ballad, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". The Edmund Fitzgerald's 29 crew members all perished. Edmund Fitzgerald adventurer Joe MacInnis reported that in July 1994, explorer Frederick Shannon's Expedition 94 to the Fitzgerald discovered and filmed a man's body near the port side of her pilothouse, not far from the open door, "fully clothed, wearing an orange life jacket, and lying face down in the sediment." No crew members were ever recovered.

The Fitzgerald was swallowed up so intensely by Lake Superior that the 729-foot (222 m) ship split in half. Her two pieces are sitting approximately 170 feet (52 m) apart in a depth of 550 feet (170 m).

Storms that claimed multiple ships include the Mataafa Storm on November 28, 1905, and the Great Lakes Storm of 1913.

In August 2007 wreckage was found of the Cyprus, a 420-foot (130 m) ore carrier which sank during a Lake Superior storm in 460 feet (140 m) of water. All but Charles G. Pitz of the Cyprus’ 23 crew perished on October 11, 1907. The ore carrier sank in Lake Superior on her second voyage, while hauling iron ore from Superior, Wisconsin, to Buffalo, New York. Built in Lorain, Ohio, the Cyprus was launched August 17, 1907.

In 1918 the last warships ever to sink in the great lakes, Inkerman and Cerisoles Minesweepers vanished in a Lake Superior storm marking the largest loss of life on Lake Superior to date.

The lake is fed by over 200 rivers. The largest include the Nipigon River, the St. Louis River, the Pigeon River, the Pic River, the White River, the Michipicoten River, the Bois Brule River and the Kaministiquia River. Lake Superior drains into Lake Huron by the St. Marys River. The rapids on the river necessitate the Sault Locks (pronounced "soo"),

Major World Canals

68

a part of the Great Lakes Waterway, to move boats over the 25 feet (8 m) height difference from Lake Huron.

Water levels The lake's average surface elevation is 600 feet (183 m) above sea level. Until approximately 1887 the natural hydraulic conveyance through the St. Marys River rapids determined outflow from Lake Superior. By 1921 development in support of transportation and hydropower resulted in gates, locks, power canals and other control structures completely spanning St. Marys rapids. The regulating structure is known as the Compensating Works and is operated according to a regulation plan known as Plan 1977A. The current water levels, including diversions of water from the Hudson Bay watershed, are governed by the International Lake Superior Board of Control which was established in 1914 by the International Joint Commission.

Superior's water levels temporarily reached a new low in September 2007, slightly less than the previous record low in 1926. However, the water levels returned within a few days.

The lake fluctuates from month to month with the highest lake levels in October and November. The normal highwater mark is 1.17 feet (0.36 m) above datum (601.1 ft or 183.2 metres). In the summer of 1985, Lake Superior reached its highest level at 2.33 feet (0.71 m) above datum. The winter of 1986 set new highwater records through the winter and spring months (January - June), ranging from 1.33 feet (0.41 m) to 1.833 feet (0.559 m) above Chart Datum.

The lake fluctuates from month to month with the lowest lake levels in April and March. The normal lowwater mark is 0.33 feet (0.10 m) below datum (601.1 ft or 183.2 metres). In the winter of 1926 Lake Superior reached its lowest level at 1.58 feet (0.48 m) below datum. Additionally, the entire first half of the year (January - June) saw record low months. The low water was a continuation of the dropping lake levels from the previous year, 1925; which set lowwater records for October through December. During this nine-month period (Oct 1925-June 1926) water levels ranged from 1.58 feet (0.48 m)

Major World Canals

69

to 0.33 feet (0.10 m) below Chart Datum. In the summer of 2007 monthly historic lows were set; August at 0.66 feet (0.20 m), September at 0.58 feet (0.18 m).

LAKE HURON Lake Huron is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. Hydrologically, it comprises the larger portion of Lake Michigan-Huron. It is bounded on the east by the Canadian province of Ontario and on the west by the state of Michigan in the United States. The name of the lake is derived from early French explorers who named it for the Huron people inhabiting the region.

Lake Huron is the second largest of the Great Lakes, with a surface area of 59,596 km2 (23,010 sq mi) making it the third largest fresh water lake on earth (fourth largest lake if the saline Caspian Sea is included). It contains a volume of 3,540 km3 (850 cubic miles), and a shoreline length of 3,827 mi (6,157 km).

The surface of Lake Huron is 577 ft (176 m) above sea level. The lake's average depth is 195 ft (59 m), while the maximum depth is 750 ft (229 m). It has a length of 206 mi (332 km) and a greatest breadth of 183 mi (293 km).

Important cities on Lake Huron include: Goderich, Sarnia, Bay City, Alpena, Rogers City, Cheboygan, St. Ignace, and Port Huron.

A notable feature of the lake is Manitoulin Island, which separates the North Channel and Georgian Bay from Lake Huron's main body of water. It is the world's largest freshwater island.

Water Levels The lake fluctuates from month to month with the highest lake levels in October and November. The normal highwater mark is 2.00 feet (0.61 m) above datum (577.5 ft or 176.0 meters). In the summer of 1986, Lakes Michigan and Huron reached their highest level at 5.92 feet (1.80 m) above datum. The high water records began in February 1986

Major World Canals

70

and lasted through the year, ending with January 1987. Water levels ranged from 3.67 feet (1.12 m) to 5.92 feet (1.80 m) above Chart Datum.

Lake levels tend to be the lowest in winter. The normal lowwater mark is 1.00 foot (0.30 m) below datum (577.5 ft or 176.0 meters). In the winter of 1964, Lakes Michigan and Huron reached their lowest level at 1.38 feet (0.42 m) below datum. As with the highwater records, monthly low water records were set each month from February 1964 through January 1965. During this twelve month period water levels ranged from 1.38 feet (0.42 m) to 0.71 feet (0.22 m) below Chart Datum.

History The French, the first European visitors to the region, often referred to Lake Huron as La Mer Douce, "the fresh-water sea". In 1656, a map by French cartographer Nicolas Sanson, refers to the lake as Karegnondi, a Wendat word which has been variously translated as "Freshwater Sea", "Lake of the Hurons", or simply "lake".

The lake was generally labeled "Lac des Hurons" (Lake of the Huron) on most early European maps. The Great Lakes Waterway continues thence to Lake St. Clair; the Detroit River and Detroit, Michigan; into Lake Erie and thence – via Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River – to the Atlantic Ocean.

Like the other Great Lakes, it was formed by melting ice as the continental glaciers retreated toward the end of the last ice age. Before this, Lake Huron was a low-lying depression through which flowed the now-buried Laurentian and Huronian Rivers; the lake bed was criss-crossed by a large network of tributaries to these ancient waterways, with many of the old channels still evident on bathymetric maps.

Shipwrecks More than a thousand wrecks have been recorded in Lake Huron. These purportedly include the first European vessel to sail the Great Lakes, Le Griffon built in 1679 on the eastern shore of Lake Erie, near Buffalo, New York, Sieur de la Salle navigated across

Major World Canals

71

Lake Erie, up the Detroit River, Lake St. Clair and the St. Clair River out into Lake Huron. Passing the Straits of Mackinac, La Salle and the Griffon made landfall on Washington Island, off the tip of the Door Peninsula on the Wisconsin side of Lake Michigan. Here, La Salle filled the Griffon with pelts and in late November 1679 sent the Griffon back to the site of modern day Buffalo, never to be seen again.

Two wrecks have been identified as the Griffon, although neither has gained final verification as the actual wreck. Blown by a fierce storm after leaving, the Griffon ran aground before the storm. The people of Manitoulin Island say that the wreck in Mississagi Straits at the western tip of the island is that of the Griffon. Meanwhile, others near Tobermory say that the wreck on Russell Island, 150 miles further east in Georgian Bay

is

Major World Canals

that

of

the

Griffin.

72

CORINTH CANAL The Corinth Canal is a canal that connects the Gulf of Corinth with the Saronic Gulf in the Aegean Sea. It cuts through the narrow Isthmus of Corinth and separates the Peloponnesian peninsula from the Greek mainland, thus effectively making the former an island. The builders dug the canal through the Isthmus at sea level; no locks are employed. It is 6.3 kilometres (3.9 miles) in length and was built between 1881 and 1893.

History Several rulers in antiquity dreamed of cutting a canal through the Isthmus. The first to propose such an undertaking was the tyrant Periander in the 7th century BC.He abandoned the project due to technical difficulties, and instead constructed a simpler and less costly overland portage road, named Diolkos.According to another theory, Periander feared that a canal would have robbed Corinth of its dominating role as entrepôt for goods.Remnants of the Diolkos still exist next to the modern canal.

The Diadoch Demetrius (336–283 BC) planned to construct a canal as a means to improve his communication lines, but dropped the plan after his surveyors, miscalculating the levels of the adjacent seas, feared heavy floods.

The historian Suetonius tells us that the Roman Dictator Julius Caesar (r. 49-44 BC) projected, among other grandiose engineering schemes, a canal through the Isthmus.He was assassinated before he could bring the scheme to fruition.

The Roman Emperor Nero (r. 54–68 A.D.) launched an excavation, personally breaking the ground with a pickaxe and removing the first basket-load of soil,but the project was abandoned when he died shortly afterwards. The Roman workforce, consisting of 6000 Jewish prisoners of war, started digging 40–50 m (130–160 ft) wide trenches from both sides, while a third group at the ridge drilled deep shafts for probing the quality of the rock (which were reused in 1881 for the same purpose). As the modern canal follows the same course as Nero's, no remains have survived.

Major World Canals

73

The modern attempt at construction began in the 1870s following the successful opening of the Suez Canal. A French company was hired to build it, but due to financial difficulties, the company ceased work after only the two ends had been dug. Finally, in 1881 the Hungarian architects IstvĂĄn TĂźrr and BĂŠla Gerster, who had also been involved with early surveys for the Panama Canal, were hired to plan a new canal. A Greek company led by Andreas Syngros (the main contractor being Antonis Matsas) ultimately took over the project and completed it in 1893.

It is prominently featured in the 1967 spy film La Route de Corinthe where an antagonist, after being pushed over the high cliff of the canal cut, hits the wall several times during his fall before ultimately entering the water.

On April 7, 2010, Australian daredevil Robbie Maddison performed a motocross jump over the canal.

Achievement The Corinth Canal is considered a great technical achievement for its time. It saves the 700-kilometre (430 miles) journey around the Peloponnesus for smaller ships, but since it is only 24 metres (79 ft) wide it is too narrow for modern ocean freighters. The canal is nowadays mostly used by tourist ships; 11,000 ships per year travel through the waterway. The water in the canal is 8 metres (26 ft) deep.At the maximum, the walls are 52 metres high.

At each end of the canal, seashore roads cross using submersible bridges that are lowered to the canal bottom to allow maritime traffic to pass. After the bridge rises to the top and before the cars cross, children run out and pick up fish that came up with the bridge on its flat surface.

Geology The canal was cut through heavily faulted sedimentary rock in an active seismic zone.Between 1893 and 1940, it was closed for a total of four years for maintenance and

Major World Canals

74

to stabilise the walls. In 1923 alone, 41,000 cubic meters of material fell into the canal, which required two years to clear out.

CONCLUSION

To sum up, the canals which are a colossal architectural achievement of human kind stand beside the Egyptian Pyramids and the Great Wall of China and other wonders of the world. The canals have greatly contribute to the expansion of trade, also helping to make a world without boundaries, minimizing the big distances and reducing the speed of product delivery . The canals stand as a crowning monument to the engineering field and the entire international work force that made the completion of a canal possible and available for trade. The canals have influenced world trade patterns, impulse growth in developed countries, and have been a primary driving force for economic expansion in many remote areas and lands of the world.Finally the canals have given new and more convenient shipping routes and reduced the time needed for transportation to the minimum.

Major World Canals

75

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canals 2. Http://en.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/canal 3. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez Canal 4. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama canal 5. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiel Canal 6. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St. Lawrence Seaway 7. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corinth canal 8. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie Canal 9. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welland Canal 10. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New York State Barge Canal 11. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake Michigan 12. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake Ontario 13. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake Superior 14. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake Huron

Major World Canals

76