140 years after its construction, the Suez canal remains one of the most impressive and important thoroughfares on the planet. And The Engineer announced its opening in a suitably triumphant tone. “The Suez Canal has been blessed; the Suez Canal has been opened; the Suez Canal is a constructive success.”
“I write now in quiet, that is to say comparative quiet,” wrote our correspondent. “Notwithstanding the Babel around me, the shouting, the music, etc, I consider myself in perfect peace, compared with the uproar and excitement to which we have lately been subjected. I suppose more gunpowder has been burned within the last eight and 40 hours than was ever burned before in salute-firing.”
Verily engineers can work wonders with this little earth of ours!
The hullabaloo soon gave way to nervousness as the first ships entered the canal. “The great day dawned anxiously,” the article continued, “we saw steamers, one after another, slowly enter the canal until far, far away to the horizon we could trace a long line of craft slowly wending their way…’
READ OUR 1869 ARCHIVE COVERAGE OF THE SUEZ CANAL HERE
The opening of the canal was not without teething problems and a number of ships ran aground, but this didn’t dampen The Engineer’s enthusiasm for the project. ‘As I conclude this letter,’ wrote the magazine’s correspondent, ‘I am looking upon the waters of Lake Timseh, in the midst of the land of Goshen. A few months ago it was dry… now it forms a magnificent sheet of salt water — an inland sea. And on its calm bosom lies over 40 ships… 40 ships in the midst of the desert — in the barren and dry land where no water was! Verily engineers can work wonders with this little earth of ours!”
What a wonderful way with words the ancestors of the present Editorial staff of our august Journal had! I wonder what they would have thought of Biscuit (That’s the Engineers and the editors!]
I agree with the above comment, wonderful words.
General Charles George Gordon who died at Khartoum in 1885 thought it to be one of the wonders of the world and central to our Empire.
Having been through the Canal many times (several decades ago in the fifties) on the way to India or Persian gulf, apart from it then being the most boring area possible to imagine: sand and yet more sand– it is truly a magnificent achievement for the time, sans mechanical assistance available to us. Anchored in the Lakes, waiting for the southbound convoy to pass one time, some used to go swimming, by letting the accomodation down to water level. Several of the lads decided to have a swim after a few drinks, one came slowly back, reached up to grasp the edge of the ladder base, only to start to blur as he sank. Automatically, I plunged my arm into the water and grabbed his hair just before he sunk beyond reach, and with lots of help, pulled him out. He was very grateful!!
The Canal’s present-day “Lake Timseh” might be converted to a high-salinity brine pool that filters out migrate biota from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, it might be converted to a LOCK using fabric lock-gates. And, of course, in America’s State of California, its putrid present-day Salton Sea might be volumetrically and areally enlarged by digging a sea-level canal from the Gulf of California and from Mexico’s Laguna Salada. Both Nations would then have vast inland seaports pre-adapted to all anticipated future sea-level rise.
Well worth repeats. Great article and responses: and, topical too.