Suez Canal
The Suez Canal (in Arabic: قناة السويس qanat al-Suways) is an artificial navigable canal located in Egypt that connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Gulf of Suez (Red Sea) through the isthmus(The Strip) of Suez. The canal turned the Sinai region into a new peninsula, constituting the border between the continents of Africa and Asia. Its length is 193 km between Port Said (on the Mediterranean shore) and Suez (on the Red Sea coast).
It was promoted, between 1859 and 1869, by Fernando de Lesseps under the direction of the engineer Louis Maurice Adolphe Linant de Bellefonds. It has belonged to Egypt since the nationalization of the Franco-British Suez Canal Company in 1956 and the subsequent Sinai War in 1957. The canal is of vital importance for Europe's oil supply and world trade in general, since it allows the communication between Europe and South Asia without going around the African continent by the Cape of Good Hope.
The canal was officially opened on November 17, 1869. It offers ships a direct route between the North Atlantic and North Indian Oceans through the Mediterranean and Red Seas, bypassing the South Atlantic and South Indian Oceans and reducing the distance of the journey from the Arabian Sea to London in approximately 8,900 kilometers (5,500 mi), or 10 days at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) at 8 days at 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph). The channel runs from the northern end of Port Said to the southern end of Port Tewfik in the city of Suez. Its length is 193.30 kilometers, including the north and south access channels. In 2020, more than 18,500 ships passed through the canal (an average of 51.5 per day).
The original canal featured a single-lane waterway with crossing points at the Ballah Bypass and the Great Bitter Lake. According to Alois Negrelli's plans, it contained no lock systems, and seawater flowed freely for him. In general, water from the canal north of the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer. South of the lakes, the current changes with the tide at Suez.
Although the canal was owned by the Egyptian government, European shareholders, mostly British and French, owned the concession company that operated it until July 1956, when President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized it, which led to the Suez Crisis of October–November 1956. The canal is operated and maintained by the state-owned Suez Canal Authority (SCA) of Egypt. Under the Constantinople Convention, it can be used "in time of war as in time of peace, by all ships of commerce or war, regardless of flag". Nevertheless, the canal has played an important strategic role. military as a naval shortcut and choke point. Navies with coasts and bases in the Mediterranean and Red Seas (Egypt and Israel) have a particular interest in the Suez Canal. After Egypt closed the Suez Canal at the start of the Six Day War on June 5, 1967, the canal remained closed for precisely eight years, reopening on June 5, 1975.
In 2014, the Egyptian government launched the construction of the extension and widening of the Ballah bypass by 35 kilometers to speed up transit time of the Chanel. The expansion was intended to nearly double the capacity of the Suez Canal, from 49 to 97 ships per day. At a cost of 59.4 billion Egyptian pounds (9,000 million dollars), this project was financed with interest-bearing investment certificates issued exclusively to Egyptian entities and individuals. The "New Suez Canal", as the extension was called, was inaugurated in a ceremony on August 6, 2015.
The Suez Canal Authority officially opened the new side canal in 2016. Situated on the north side of the eastern extension of the Suez Canal, this side canal serves the East Terminal for the berthing and disembarkation of ships of the Suez Canal. terminal. As the Eastern Container Terminal is located in the Canal itself, prior to the construction of the new side canal it was not possible to dock or undock ships at the terminal while a convoy was under way.
Precursors
The ancient west-east canals were built to facilitate travel from the Nile River to the Red Sea. A smaller canal is believed to have been built under the auspices of Senusret II or Ramses II. Another canal, probably incorporating a part of the first, was built under Necho II, but the only fully functional canal was designed and completed by Darius I.
II millennium BC. c
It is possible that the legendary Sesostris (probably Pharaoh Sesostris II or Sesostris III of the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt) began work on an ancient canal, the Canal of the Pharaohs, which linked the Nile to the Red Sea (1897-1839 BCE), when an irrigation canal was built around 1848 BCE. It was navigable during the flood season and emptied into a dry river valley east of the Nile River delta called Wadi Tumilat. (In ancient times the Red Sea is said to have reached as far north as the Bitter Lakes. and Lake Timsah.).
In his Meteorology, Aristotle wrote
One of his kings tried to make a channel to him (for it would not have been unprofitable for them that the whole region was navigable; it is said that Sesostris was the first of the ancient kings to try), but found that the sea was higher than the earth. So he first, and Darius later, stopped making the canal, so that the sea would not mix with the water of the river and spoil it..
Strabo wrote that Sesostris began to build a canal, and Pliny the Elder wrote
165. Then the Tyre tribe and the port of the Daneoi, from which Sesostris, king of Egypt, intended to carry a channel for ships to where the Nile flows into what is known as the Delta; it is a distance of more than 60 miles. Later, the Persian king Darius had the same idea, and also Ptolemy II, who made a ditch of 100 feet wide, 30 feet deep and about 35 miles long, to the Lakes Amargos.
In the XX century, the northern extension of the later Darío I channel was discovered, which extended from the Lake Timsah to the Ballah Lakes, and which was dated to Middle Kingdom Egypt by extrapolating the dates of the ancient sites along its path.
The reliefs of the expedition to Punt under the command of Hatshepsut, in the year 1470 BC. C., show maritime vessels carrying the expeditionary force returning from Punt. This suggests that a navigable link existed between the Red Sea and the Nile. Recent excavations at Wadi Gawasis may indicate that Egypt's maritime trade originated from the Red Sea and did not require a canal. The evidence seems to indicate its existence in the s. XIII a. C., in the time of Ramses II.
Canals dug by Necho, Darío I and Ptolemy
The remains of an ancient west-east canal through the ancient Egyptian cities of Bubastis, Avaris, and Heroonpolis were discovered by Napoleon Bonaparte and his engineers and cartographers in 1799.
According to the Histories of the Greek historian Herodotus, around 600 B.C. Necho II undertook the excavation of a west-east canal through the Wadi Tumilat between Bubastis and Heroonpolis, and perhaps continued it as far as the Heroopolitan Gulf and the Red Sea, however Necho is said never to have completed his project..
According to Herodotus, 120,000 men perished in this undertaking, but this number is doubtless exaggerated. According to Pliny the Elder, the extent of Necho's canal was about 57 English miles, equal to the total distance between Bubastis and the Great Bitter Lake, taking into account winding through the valleys. 183 kilometers (114 mi), should be understood to include the entire distance between the Nile and the Red Sea at that time.
With the death of Neco, the works were interrupted. Herodotus tells that the reason the project was abandoned was warning received from an oracle that others would benefit from its successful completion. Neco's war with Nebuchadnezzar II probably prevented the continuation of the canal.
Neco's project was completed by Darius I of Persia, who ruled Ancient Egypt after it had been conquered by his predecessor Cambyses II. It is possible that in Darius's time there was a natural passage between the gulf Heroopolitan and the Red Sea in the vicinity of the Egyptian city of Shaluf, located just south of the Great Bitter Lake, had become so clogged with silt that Darius had to clear it to allow navigation again. According to Herodotus, Darius' channel was wide enough for two triremes to pass each other with outstretched oars, and it required four days to traverse. Darius commemorated his feat with a series of granite stelae that he installed on the banks of the Nile, including one near Kabret, and another a few miles north of Suez. Darius the Great's inscriptions at Suez read:
King Darius says: I am Persian. From Persia, I conquered Egypt. I ordered this channel to be dug from the river called Nile, which flows in Egypt, to the sea that is born in Persia. When the channel was excavated as I ordered it, the ships went from Egypt to Persia through this channel, as I had foreseen.- Registration of Darius
The canal left the Nile at Bubastis. An inscription on a Pithom pillar records that in 270 or 269 B.C. It was reopened again, by Ptolemy II Philadelphus. At Arsinoe, Ptolemy built a navigable lock, in the Heroopolitan Gulf of the Red Sea, which allowed the passage of boats but prevented the salty water of the Red Sea from mixing with the fresh water of the canal.
In the second half of the 19th century, French cartographers discovered the remains of an ancient north-south canal running through along the eastern side of Lake Timsah and ended near the northern end of the Great Bitter Lake, which turned out to be the canal made by Darius I, since his commemorative stele of its construction was found at the site. This ancient second channel may have followed a course along the Red Sea coast as it extended north to Lake Timsah.)
The receding of the Red Sea and the shrinking of the Nile
Some historians believe that the Red Sea gradually receded over the centuries, its shoreline gradually receding south of Lake Timsah and the Great Bitter Lake. Along with the persistent With silt accumulations from the Nile, the maintenance and repair of the Ptolemy Canal became more and more cumbersome over the centuries.
Two hundred years after the construction of the Ptolemaic canal, Cleopatra appears to have had no west-east river passage, because the hairy branch of the Nile, which fed the Ptolemy west-east canal, had narrowed by then, being drowned by the slime.
From Old Cairo to the Red Sea
In the s. VIII d. A navigable canal already existed between Old Cairo and the Red Sea, but accounts vary as to who ordered its construction, be it Trajan, Amr ibn al-As, or Umar. This canal was supposedly linked to the the Nile River in ancient Cairo[13] and ended near present-day Suez. A treatise on geography De Mensura Orbis Terrae written by the Irish monk Dicuil, born in the late s. VIII d. C., recounts a conversation with another monk, Fidelis, who had navigated the channel from the Nile to the Red Sea during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the first half of the s. VIII d. C..
It is said that the Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur ordered this canal closed in 767 to prevent supplies from reaching Arab detractors.
Reparation for al-Ḥākim
Al-Hakim bi-Amrillah is claimed to have repaired the passage between Cairo and the Red Sea, but only briefly, around AD 1000, as he was soon "choked with sand". some parts of this channel continued to fill during the annual floods of the Nile.
Conception by Venice
Bartolomé Díaz's successful navigation through southern Africa in 1488 opened a direct maritime trade route to India and the Spice Islands, forever changing the balance of Mediterranean trade. One of the main losers of the new order, as a former middleman, was the former center of the spice trade of Venice.
The Venetian leaders, led to desperation, contemplated the possibility of excavating a river path between the Red Sea and the Nile – emerging from the Suez Canal in almost 400 years – so that the luxury trade would resurface its doors. But this was still a dream.-
Despite entering into negotiations with Egypt's ruling Mamluks, the Venetian plan to build the canal was quickly cut short by the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517, led by Sultan Selim I.
Ottoman attempts
In the 16th century, the Ottoman Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmet Pasha attempted to build a canal connecting the Red and Mediterranean Seas. The motive was the desire to connect Constantinople with the Indian Ocean pilgrimage and trade routes, as well as strategic reasons: the European presence in the Indian Ocean was growing, Ottoman mercantile and strategic interests were increasingly threatened, and the Sublime Puerta was under increasing pressure to assert his position. A navigable channel would allow the Ottoman navy to connect its Red Sea, Black Sea, and Mediterranean fleets. However, this project was deemed too expensive and was never carried out.
Discovery of an ancient canal by Napoleon
During the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt and Syria in late 1798, Napoleon expressed interest in finding the remains of an ancient river pass. This led a group of archaeologists, scientists, cartographers and engineers to tour northern Egypt. Their findings, recorded in the Description de l'Égypte, include detailed maps showing the discovery of an ancient canal that stretched north from the Red Sea and then west to the Nile.
Later, Napoleon, who became Emperor of France in 1804, contemplated building a north-south canal to connect the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. But the plan was abandoned because he mistakenly concluded that the waterway would need locks to function, which would be costly and time consuming to build. The belief in the need for locks was based on the erroneous assumption that the Red Sea was 8.5 m higher than the Mediterranean. This estimate was the result of using fragmentary topographical measurements made in wartime during Napoleon's Egyptian Expedition.
In 1861, the ancient non-navigable route discovered by Napoleon from Bubastis to the Red Sea continued to channel water as far east as Kassassin.
History
Background
Since Pharaonic times, around the 19th and XX a. C., there was a desire to create a connection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. The first steps were aimed at uniting the Nile River with the Red Sea. The Achaemenids, at the time of Darius I, designed the so-called Canal de los Pharaohs.
To facilitate the navigable journey between the Nile River and the Red Sea, ancient canals were built. It is estimated that a small canal was built under the auspices of Senusert II or Ramses II. Another canal, probably incorporating a part of the former, it was built under the reign of Necho II, but the only fully functional canal was designed and completed by Darius I.
Channel construction
The canal excavation works officially began on April 10, 1859, commissioned by the Pasha Mehmet Said to the Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps, his friend. It was inaugurated in 1869. At the time it was one of the engineering works largest in the world, carried out by tens of thousands of peasants forcibly taken from all regions of Egypt. At first no machinery was available and everything had to be done by hand in unhealthy climate. According to official figures, 20,000 workers died. More realistic estimates put the figure at 125,000 deaths. Work accelerated with the introduction of bucket dredgers.
The construction of the Suez Canal marked a milestone in the history of technology since, for the first time, specially designed excavation machines were used for these works, with performance unknown until that time. In just over two years, more than 50 million cubic meters were excavated, out of the 75 million of the total work.
On February 17, 1867, the first ship crossed the canal,[citation needed], although the official inauguration took place on November 17, 1869 with the presence of Empress Eugenia de Montijo.
In 1875 the Pasha of Egypt, because of the country's foreign debt, put his share of the canal's shares up for sale. In a quick move, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, at the time Benjamin Disraeli, convinced Queen Victoria of the need to buy them in order to take control of the route to British India, the United Kingdom's richest colony. A Disraeli envoy secured a large loan from the Rothschild banking house, and in this way the United Kingdom secured control of the interoceanic waterway.
The Constantinople Convention of 1888 declared the canal a neutral zone under British protection. By ratifying this treaty, the Ottoman Empire agreed to allow free international navigation through the canal, both in times of peace and war.
A great beneficiary of the construction of this canal was Spain, to reach the Philippines more quickly by ship.
Nationalization
On July 26, 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser decided to nationalize the canal with the aim of facilitating the financing of the construction of the Aswan Dam and, as a response to the refusal of the United States and the United Kingdom to finance said construction site. The measure was received with indignation by France and the United Kingdom, the main shareholders of the Suez Canal, and the main beneficiaries of the oil that circulated through it. On October 29 of that same year, the Sinai War began for these reasons. Egypt, in retaliation, sank forty ships in the canal, causing a complete blockade.
In 1966 Professor Roger Fisher was a speaker and Vicente Blanco Gaspar was a researcher on the Suez Canal crisis of 1956 for its analysis by the working group on the relevance of international law in the decisions of governments in matters of war and peace, at the American Society of International Law. This 120-page work on the Suez Canal crisis of 1956 analyzes the position of the parties present in the conflict and the references to international law in their decisions. It is argued that the United States followed a legal model governed by the general principles and purposes of the United Nations. Consequently, the attitude of the USA before the nationalization of the canal was to preserve the system, applying the principle of freedom of passage. This principle was said to stem from the national interest enshrined in the Constantinople Convention. John Foster Dulles noted that it was not for the national interest of the United States but above all for the good of the nations most directly involved.
In early 1957, after the intervention of the UN, the withdrawal of the European powers and Israel was completed. The canal was reopened in the same year.
Since then, it was administered by Nasser until a new blockade in 1967, due to the hostilities between Egypt and Israel in the Six Day War. The closure occurred, as in 1956, due to the blockade caused by the sinking of several ships inside the canal. It was reopened to international traffic in June 1975.
Yellow Fleet
2021 lockdown
On March 23, 2021, at approximately 05:40 UTC (07:40 local time), the Suez Canal was blocked in both directions by the Ever Given, a ship container ship Golden-Class. which caused it to drift towards the shore. After making landfall, the ship turned and entered a position perpendicular to the watercourse, completely blocking the channel. This occurred in a section of the channel that was not adapted to this type of event. and, therefore, the possibility of making a secondary connection that would allow the obstruction to be bypassed was immediately ruled out.
In the context of the incident, numerous economists and trade experts commented on the possible effects of the blockade, citing the importance of the canal for global trade. Among the products affected, crude oil shipments represent the largest immediate loss. At the time of the blockade, an estimated 10% of world maritime trade passed through the Suez Canal. In addition, the estimates made at the time of the blockade estimated the losses for Egypt at 15 million dollars per day.
After many efforts and taking advantage of a tide of syzygies, at dawn on March 29 the ship was partially freed, marking the end of the most difficult part of the crisis. That same day, at 13:05 UTC (15:05 local time), it would be possible to unlock the container ship, allowing the reopening of the channel. This was done by transposing the sand on which the boat was stranded and the action of 13 tugboats, which used the tides in their favor to free the Ever Given by traction. According to the Egyptian authorities, the normal flow would be restored within three days, but experts affirm that the accumulation of cargoes in the pass would mean a delay of several weeks until normal maritime traffic in the area is restored.
Capacity
The canal allows the passage of ships of up to 20 meters draft or 240,000 tons span> of dead weight and a maximum height of 68 meters above the water level. The maximum light that it allows is 77.5 meters under a series of conditions. These dimensions limit the size of the new container ships built, so that they can transit it. The limitations imposed by the Egyptian canal are less restrictive than those of the Panama canal, which had led the latter to fall behind in the struggle to become the preferred route for ships. In some cases, ships must be unloaded in order to transit.
Ships that meet the appropriate parameters for navigating the canal in terms of draft, width and height are classified as Suezmax type ships.
Environmental impact
The opening of the canal in 1869 created the first saltwater passage from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. Despite the fact that the level of the Red Sea is located approximately 1.2 meters above the level of the Mediterranean, the current between the Mediterranean and the center of the channel, in the Bitter Lakes, natural lakes with hypersaline water and that are part of the of the canal, it flows north in winter and south in summer. The current south of the Bitter Lakes is a tidal flow, varying with the tide at Suez. The Bitter Lakes somewhat blocked the migration of species from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean for a few decades. However, as the salinity of the water became equal to that of the Red Sea, the barrier to species migration broke down, so Red Sea animals and plants began to colonize parts of the eastern Mediterranean. The Red Sea is, in general, saltier and more scarce in nutrients than the Atlantic; and the direction of flow to the channel is generally in the same direction; that is, from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. In this way, the Red Sea species have more advantages over the Atlantic species in the Mediterranean, also saltier and deficient in nutrients. In practice, most Red Sea species invade the Mediterranean and only a few Atlantic species do the same. This migratory phenomenon is known by the name of Lessepsian migration (after Fernando de Lesseps). The construction of the Aswan Dam on the Nile in the 1960s reduced the flow of freshwater accompanied by nutrient-rich silt discharged by this river into the eastern Mediterranean, causing sea conditions to become even closer to those of the sea. Red Sea, aggravating the impact of invasive species.
Invasive species originating from the Red Sea and introduced into the Mediterranean with the construction of the canal have become an important component of the Mediterranean ecosystem and have a serious impact on its ecology, endangering some local and endemic species of this area. Some 300 Red Sea species have been identified in the Mediterranean. Attempts by the Egyptian government to widen the canal have been criticized by marine biologists, warning that widening the canal could worsen the invasion of species from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. Studies indicate that there are between 700 and 1,000 invasive species that have been introduced.
The construction of the Suez Canal was preceded by the diversion of a small freshwater canal, called the Freshwater Canal, from the Nile Delta to the future Suez Canal, with a northern branch to Port Said and a southern branch to Suez. It was completed in 1863, bringing fresh water to arid areas, initially for the construction of the canal, and later facilitating agriculture and the establishment of settlements around this canal.
Suez Canal Economic Zone
The Suez Canal Economic Zone, sometimes abbreviated as the Suez Canal Zone, refers to the areas neighboring the canal, where tariffs have been removed to attract investment. The zone comprises 600 km² of the governorates of Port Said, Ismailia and Suez. The projects in the area are collectively described as the Suez Canal Area Development Project.
The plan focuses on the development of the Port Said East area and the port of Ain Sokhna, and is expected to be extended to four other ports: Port Said West, El-Adabiya, El Arish and El Tor. The region comprises the three Qualified Industrial Zones of Port Said, Ismailia and Suez, a 1996 US initiative to promote economic collaboration between Israel and its neighbors.