Suez canal
welcome to Suez canal
The Suez Canal is considered to be the shortest link between the east and the west due to its unique geographic location; it is an important international navigation canal linking between the Mediterranean sea at Port said and the red sea at Suez. The idea of linking the Mediterranean sea with the red sea by a canal dates back to 40 centuries as it was pointed out through history starting by the pharaohs era passing by the Islamic era until it was dredged reaching its current condition today.
Stages of developing the Suez Canal
The
dredging of the canal took almost 10 years using Egyptian labor, and it
was opened for navigation for the first time in 17 November, 1869. Its
depth was about 8 meters, its water are was 304 m2 and the largest ship
load that can pass through was 5000 tons, which was typical for ships
sizes in these days. As the ships developed and increased its sizes, the
canal needed to be developed, which happened when it was still a foreign
joint venture before being publicized to take ships with depth of 35
feet and its water area to be 1100 m2 by the end of 1956 and when the
canal was publicized by the Egyptian government on the 26th of July,
1956. The Egyptian administration was keen to develop the
More Navigations on different stages
In May 1962, the water area of the canal was to reach 1800 m2 and the allowed depth to 38 feet. In June 1966, a development was to be executed on 2 stages as it was announced the depth would reach 48 and 58 feet consecutively. This program was started in February 1962, but was soon halted due to the war that erupted on the 5th of June, 1967. It was reopened for international; navigation in June 1975 after purifying it from the ships that sank in its bottom during in the 1962 and 1973 wars with the same water area and depth before it was closed. The development projects then started by the Egyptian administration in order to receive ships of a 210,000 tons load, specially after increasing the water are to 4800 m2 and a depth of 62 feet , with a length of 190.25 km, in addition to the redesign of the canal's turns so that each one has a half radius of at least 5000 m and also dredging a new verge starting from the 17th km south of port said heading directly to the Mediterranean east of port Fouad to allow the loaded ships going north to go to the sea without passing through port said port. The Suez canal is distinguished by its stable level of water which varies very slightly having the highs tide reaching 50 cm in the north while reaching up to 2 m in the south.
Vice Admiral/Ahmed Fadel has assured head of the Suez Canal port
authority, the depth will reach 66 feet by 2006 pointing out that this
stage will enable all container vessels; about 17,000 container vessels;
as well as taking all bulk vessels world
wide. His Excellency also pointed that the Canal will be able to take in
about 99 % of all methods used in world maritime transport after
reaching a depth of 72 feet in 2012, as well as taking about 99% of he
dead weight tons for the bulk vessels 82% of the petroleum tanks and a
100% of all the remaining types of ships used in maritime transport;
specially container vessels with all its future generations; in addition
to empty vessels reaching up to 560 thousand tons.