Canals and Channels.

The English Channel is one of the world’s most extraordinary places of water. For centuries, the Channel has been Britain’s defense against invaders. It has also been the way to the Continent, a highway crowded with ships.

Sailors know it as perhaps the most dangerous sea channel in Europe. Half of all the world’s ship collisions take place between the Western End of the Channel and the Baltic.

Several armies have crossed the Channel, but none have crossed it for over last nine centuries, although some have tried more recently. The Channel stretches 350 miles, from the Atlantic Ocean to the North sea, separating England’s south coast from France’s north coast. At its widest point it measures 120 miles, at its narrowest, only 21 miles.

The Panama Canal. The history of the Panama Canal goes back to more than two centuries. The idea of joining of the two oceans through the narrow isthmus was born soon after the new world had been discovered.

The first tangible efforts to build the Panama Canal began on the 10th of January 1880, when the project was formally inaugurated by the French Canal Building Company.

But the nature’s own obstacles, inadequate machinery, insecure financial arrangements and health conditions on the isthmus contributed to the failure of the company in 1889.

A new French Canal building Company was formed in 1894 and work was continued on until 1904 when the Company’s rights and properties were purchased by the US government for 40 million.

The isthmian Canal Commission created in 1899 by the American Government reported in favour of a lock-type Canal. The president decided that the work should not be entrusted to any private contractors, but placed under the control of the US Corps of Engineers. Apart from the technical and engineering problems of the construction of the canal. The two chief difficulties were sanitation and labour. Indeed, yellow fever, plague had contributed more to the failure of the French attempt than any other factor. Innumerable difficulties had to be encountered and overcome.

To provide the labour, thousands of Negroes were brought from the West Indies and workmen were recruited from Cuba and Europe, including 8000 hard-working Basques before the Canal was opened to traffic on the 15th August, 1914 although it was not declared officially open until July, 1920.

The Canal zone is roughly ten miles wide and covers an area of 553 sq. miles.

No pumps are used in operating the locks. The water is moved by gravity. When the water is in lower chamber and that in the upper chamber is equalized, the gates ahead are opened and the ship will be towed forward by an electrically operated wagon.

The Suez Canal, which took ten years to build, was opened on 17 November 1869. It was designed by Ferdinand de Lesseps, who was a French engineer. The Canal, which is 105 miles long, joins the Mediterranean sea to the Red Sea. Although its twice as long as the Panama Canal, it cost half as much to build. This was so because the Suez is a Sea-Level Canal from end to end, therefore locks, which are expensive to build, are unnecessary. The Canal which was originally 58 metres wide at the surface and about 6 metres deep, was widened and deepened several times after it had been opened. It is now twice its original breadth and depth. Until 1956 the Canal was operated by the Suez Canal Company. Since this date it has been operated by the Egyptian government who has increased its depth to take supertankers.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-13