Suez Canal

The Suez Canal

Normally the idea of crossing through such an iconic piece of real estate would have me up early to see us approaching the town of Suez and meeting up with our north bound convoy of ships..... but, let’s just say I was proud to make it up the stairs for a cup of tea and toast at nine. But the good news is, the breakfast buffet is at the very tippy top of the ship giving a stunning view of the sandy desert we are steaming through!

The first canal through the area was dug in the 13 century BC by the Egyptians, but over the centuries fell into disuse around the time of Christ. Napoleon had a view to build a canal here but nothing happened until the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps started in the mid 1800’s. It was officially opened in 1859 with a 99 year lease to the French Suez Canal company. The 1950’s and 60’s were a turbulent time with hostilities between Egypt (who owned the rights to the canal now) and Israel creating “the Suez Crisis”. The Egyptians sank over 40 ships to prevent anyone using the canal, and the canal was closed for years. Today the sunken ships are all gone, for the moment there is no war between Israel and Egypt, and the canal is available for ships of all nationalities. Very good for us, as it would be a very long trip around Africa to get to the Mediterranean!!

The Suez canal itself is 101 miles (160 k’s) long and accommodates around 50 ships per day, 8% of the world’s shipping movement. The canal is only wide enough for the passage of ships one way at a time, so they run scheduled convoys, of which our ship is first. Our speed is greatly reduced going through the canal to prevent the waves eroding the sides of the canal.

It is quite a surreal experience looking out on either side of the ship and seeing land. The canal is only 900 feet wide (300 mtrs) but with our big boat it sure seems narrower than that! To the right sand dunes and to the left, towns and green fields and more sand dunes..... It took us a good 10 hours to come through the canal and head out into the Mediterranean Sea, leaving the port of Suez behind and heading for Alexandria tomorrow.

Over all the kids were a bit unimpressed by watching the sand go by all day. Liam was really hoping to see how locks work. He’d been reading up on the Panama canal, which is of course famous for its locks, but alas the Mediterranean and Red Seas are at the same level and the land is quite flat, so more of a glorified ditch and not quite so interesting to my budding engineer.... Ah well, tomorrow he can figure out the building techniques of the pyramids!