The Suez Canal is a man-made waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea. It enables a more direct route for shipping between Europe and Asia, effectively allowing for passage from the North Atlantic to the Indian Ocean without having to circumnavigate the African continent.

The original canal was a single-lane waterway with passing locations in the Ballah Bypass and the Great Bitter Lake. It had no lock systems with seawater flowing freely through it.


Construction of canal in modern era

The idea of a large canal providing a direct route between the two bodies of water was first discussed in the 1830s. A French explorer and engineer Linant de Bellefonds, who specialized in Egypt, performed a survey of the Isthmus of Suez and confirmed that the Mediterranean and Red seas were, contrary to popular belief, at the same level of altitude. This meant a canal without locks could be built, making construction significantly easier.

By the 1850s, seeing an opportunity for Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, which governed the country at the time, Khedive Said Pasha (who oversaw Egypt and the Sudan for the Ottomans) had granted French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps permission to create a company to construct a canal. That company eventually became known as the Suez Canal Company, and it was given a 99-year lease over the waterway and surrounding area.

Construction began, at the northernmost Port Said end of the canal, in early 1859. The excavation work took 10 years, and an estimated 1.5 million people worked on the project.
On November 17, 1869, Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egypt and the Sudan, formally opened the Suez Canal

Alternate proposals

According to the 1963 memorandum, which was declassified in 1996, the plan would have relied on 520 nuclear bombs to carve out the waterway. The memo called for the "use of nuclear explosives for excavation of Dead Sea canal across the Negev desert."

The plan never came to fruition, but having an alternative waterway to the Suez Canal could have been useful today, with a cargo ship stuck in the narrow path and blocking one of the world's most vital shipping routes.




Beginnings


When the sea-level canal was first opened in 1869, it was 164 kilometres (102 miles) long and eight metres (26 feet) deep.

It could accommodate ships of up to 5,000 tons to a depth 6.7 metres, which constituted the bulk of the world's fleet at the time, according to the Suez Canal Authority.

In 1887, the canal was modernised to allow navigation at night, which doubled its capacity.




Growth in the 1950s

It was not until the 1950s that the waterway was substantially expanded, deepened and lengthened, following demands from shipping companies.

By the time it was nationalised by Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956, it was 175 kilometres long and 14 metres deep, and could take tankers with a capacity of 30,000 tons to a depth of 10.7 metres.

21st century



A major expansion in 2015 took the length of the waterway to 193.30 kilometres and its depth to 24 metres. It meant that the canal could handle supertankers with a capacity of 240,000 tons, some of the biggest in the world, that went up to 20.1 metres deep in the water. In 2019 around 50 ships used the canal daily, compared with three in 1869. Traffic is expected to almost double by 2023, with two-way circulation also reducing waiting times, the authority says.

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