Suez Canal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
This article appears to contradict itself. Please see the discussion on the talk page.
For other uses, see Suez (disambiguation).
Suez Canal, seen from Earth orbit, NASA.
Ships moored at El Ballah during transit

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

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

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

Contents

  • 1 History
    • 1.1 2nd millennium BC
    • 1.2 Repair by Necho, Darius I and Ptolemy
    • 1.3 Napoleon considers repair
    • 1.4 Re-construction by Suez Canal Company
    • 1.5 Suez Crisis
    • 1.6 The Arab-Israeli Wars of 1967 and 1973
  • 2 Operation
  • 3 Connections between the shores
  • 4 Environmental Impact
  • 5 Timeline
    • 5.1 Presidents of the Suez Canal Company (1855-1956)
    • 5.2 Chairmen of the Suez Canal Authority (1956-Present)
    • 5.3 British Vice-Consuls of Port Suez (1922-1941)
    • 5.4 British Consuls of Port Suez (1941-1956)
    • 5.5 Governors of the Suez Canal Zone
    • 5.6 Supreme Allied Commander
  • 6 Popular culture
  • 7 See also
  • 8 References
  • 9 External links

[edit] History

[edit] 2nd millennium BC

Perhaps as early as the 12th Dynasty, Pharaoh Senusret III (1878 BC–1839 BC) may have had a west-east canal dug through the Wadi Tumilat, joining the Nile with the Red Sea (which in ancient times reached north to the Bitter Lakes. See [1] and [2]) This allowed direct naval trade with Punt, and, indirectly, linked the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

The reliefs of the Punt expedition under Hatshepsut depict sea-going vessels carrying the expeditionary force returning from Punt. This has given rise to the theory that, at the time, a navigable link existed between the Red Sea and the Nile.[1][2]

Evidence indicates its existence by the 13th century BC during the time of Ramesses II (see [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]).

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

[edit] Repair by Necho, Darius I and Ptolemy

The waterway fell into disrepair, and according to the Histories of the Greek historian Herodotus, about 600 BC, Necho II undertook re-excavation but did not complete it. According to Herodotus 120,000 men perished in this undertaking. [8]

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

“ Saith King Darius: I am a Persian. Setting out from Persia, I conquered Egypt. I ordered this canal dug from the river called the Nile that flows in Egypt, to the sea that begins in Persia. When the canal had been dug as I ordered, ships went from Egypt through this canal to Persia, even as I intended. [9] ”

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

Construction of the canal

[edit] Napoleon considers repair

At the end of the 18th century while in Egypt,

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

1881 drawing of the Suez Canal.

[edit] Re-construction by Suez Canal Company

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

The excavation took nearly 11 years, mostly through the forced labour of Egyptian workers—a form of labour which was not unique to the French, nor the British before them. Some sources estimate that over 30,000 people were forced to work on the canal. [10]

The British recognized the canal as an important trade route and perceived the French project as a direct menace to their geopolitical and financial interests. The British Empire was the major global naval force and its power had increased during the American Civil War. So the British government officially condemned the forced work and sent armed bedouins to start a revolt among workers. Involuntary labour on the project ceased, and the Viceroy soon condemned the slavery, and the project stopped.[3]

Angered by the British opportunism, de Lesseps sent a letter to the British government remarking on the British lack of remorse only a few years earlier when 80,000 [11] Egyptian forced workers died in similar conditions while building the British railtrack in Egypt.

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Suez Crisis

Main article: Suez Crisis

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

[edit] The Arab-Israeli Wars of 1967 and 1973

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

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

[edit] Operation

USS Bainbridge, an American warship in the Suez Canal

The canal has no locks because the terrain through which it passes is flat, and the minor difference in sea level at the ends is easily coped with through the length of the canal.

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

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

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

By 1955 approximately two-thirds of Europe's oil passed through the canal. About 7.5% of world sea trade is carried via the canal today. Receipts from the canal July 2005 to May 2006 totaled $3.246 billion. In 2005, 18,193 vessels passed through the canal. [12]

[edit] Connections between the shores

From north to south connections are:

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


[edit] Environmental Impact

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 created the first salt-water passage between the Mediterranean and Red seas. The Red Sea is about 1.2 m higher than the Eastern Mediterranean [13], so the canal serves as a tidal strait that pours Red Sea water into the Mediterranean. The Bitter Lakes, which are hypersaline natural lakes that form part of the canal, blocked the migration of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean for many decades, but as the salinity of the lakes gradually equalized with that of the Red Sea, the barrier to migration was removed, and plants and animals from the Red Sea have begun to colonize the eastern Mediterranean. The Red Sea is generally saltier and more nutrient-poor than the Atlantic, so the Red Sea species have advantages over Atlantic species in the salty and nutrient-poor Eastern Mediterranean. Accordingly, most Red Sea species invade the Mediterranean biota, and only few do the opposite; this migratory phenomenon is known as the Lessepsian migration (after Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French engineer of the canal) or Erythrean invasion. The construction of the Aswan High Dam across the Nile River in the 1960s reduced the inflow of freshwater and nutrient-rich silt from the Nile into the eastern Mediterranean, making conditions there even more like the Red Sea, and worsening the impact of the invasive species.

Invasive species originated from the Red Sea and introduced into the Mediterranean by the construction of the canal have become a major component of the Mediterranean ecosystem, and have serious impacts on the Mediterranean ecology, endangering many local and endemic Mediterranean species. Up to this day, about 300 species native to the Red Sea have already been identified in the Mediterranean Sea, and there are probably others yet unidentified. In recent years, the Egyptian government's announcement of its intentions to deepen and widen the canal, have raised concerns from marine biologists, fearing that such an act will only worsen the invasion of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean, facilitating the crossing of the canal for yet additional species[4].

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 the canal construction, but then allowing the growth of agriculture and settlements along the canal. [5]

[edit] Timeline

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

Before nationalization:

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

Since nationalization:

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

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

[edit] Governors of the Suez Canal Zone

[edit] Supreme Allied Commander

During the Suez Crisis:

[edit] Popular culture

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

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