The Suez Canal
The Suez Canal is an achievement that man has made and
a great help through the entire world. This is one of
many difficult tasks that man has done and completed.
This was a big task and a big construction and was done
many years ago. This canal only transported a little
water and was not deep enough for ships or boats.
The idea of liking the Mediterranean Sea and Red sea first
occurred during the age of the pharaohs. The pharaoh dug
the canal to link both seas but soon after the canal was
neglected and eventually got filled in by silt. Along
came the Greeks and they dug the canal out again. Once
again the canal was neglected and happen to fill in with
silt again. The Romans dug it out a couple of times and
then they too neglected the canal. Finally the Arab
conquest of Egypt dug it for the last time.
During the French campaign of 1798, Napoleon thought of
linking the two seas directly by means of navigation canal,
but engineers did not support the idea of believing that
the Red Sea level is nine meters higher than the
Mediterranean.
On November 30, 1854 the French engineer Ferdinand
De-lesseps managed to sign a concession with the Egyptian
government to dig the Suez Canal.
On April 25. 1859 the digging of the Canal began and
continued for ten years. More than 1.5 million Egyptian
The Essay on Suez Canal
THE SUEZ CANAL There seems to have always been an interest in linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Most of the early efforts were directed towards a link from the Nile to the Red Sea, thus indirectly linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean through the Nile. Strabo and Pliny record that the earliest effort was directed by Senusret III, but no evidence that there was an actual canal built ...
workers took part, of which more than 125,000 lost their
lives.
November 17th, 1876 the inauguration of the Suez Canal
came
to be.
In July 1956, Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal after it
had been an international company for about 87 years.
The Suez Canal’s strategic importance lies in the fact that
it is essential for world trade. It transports 14% of the
total world trade, 26% of oil exports, 41% of the total
volume of goods and cargo that reach Arab Gulf ports.
The Suez Canal saves 86% of the normal trip if used
instead of going around the whole continent.
The Egyptian government has always tried to make the best
of what it can of the Suez Canal and trying to make it
better for ships passing through. This way it is a lot
easier for big ships to come through along with making it
faster and safer. At the present moment the Suez Canal
can accommodate ships up to 500 meters long, 70 meters
wide and a draught of 70 feet. Also every year more than
25,000 ships pass through the canal. The canal is a total
of 100 miles long and surprisingly has no locks to
accommodate the 9-meter drop.
People have had dreams for over 4,000 years to build a
canal that ships could transport good to other countries
and to trade with other countries with out going so far
out of the way. This is a dream come true for every one
that uses the canal. Many people in the Middle East can’t
possibly think of what life would be like without the canal.
Suez Timeline. 1995.
http:www.sis.gov.eg/calendar/html/cl171196.htm
Suez canal. Compton’s Encyclopedia Online. 1998
http://www.optionline.com/comptons/ceo/04610_A.html
Suez Canal.
Encyclopedia Britannica. 1998.
http://www.encyclopidia.com/articles/12444.html
