Transit of Suez Canal – Sunday 15th April 2012

This tells us we are nearing the end of our voyage – travelling from the Red Sea into the home waters of the Med.  I was awake by 5.30 am but had already missed the start of the journey – we must have arrived at the convoy marshalling point in the port of Suez at about 4.00 am, and Queen Elizabeth was selected to lead the convoy of 27ships, so embarked the pilot and then started out immediately with two accompanying tugs.  The canal operates a one-way system with three convoys a day going south and two going north.  It is not just a straight canal – there are two lakes - called the Little and the Great Bitter Lake –  and the convoys collect to pass each other at the Great Bitter Lake which is at the Suez end and also  in the Ballah by-pass which is about half way.  There are no locks on the canal.

Al Qantarah Bridge

We didn’t have to stop at all but passed a southbound convoy in the Great Bitter Lake.  We watched from the front deck nearly all day  - it was quite exciting to be sailing through the desert.  There were regular military outposts along the length, although in parts the left bank was irrigated and there were some residential dwellings, including the town of Ismailia at the half-way point.  The right bank – or Sinai desert – was very bleak. The whole passage took about 10 hours.

French War Memorial (WW1)

A bit of history for those who want to read further (most of this is from memory, so apologies if I have got things wrong, but cost and speed of internet prevents me from looking it up!):  There were two canals built in ancient Egyptian times and they were used for a time before silting up.  The current one was completed in November 1869 after 10 years of construction work.  It was the brainchild of a French man, his statue used to stand at the entry to the canal but the Egyptians have removed it to a backwater.  The canal is 193 km long, 24m deep and 205m wide. It is crossed by a Railway Swing Bridge and a Road Bridge (called Al Qantarah Bridge).  The height of the bridge means that some of the largest container ships cannot use the canal.

When the canal was first built it was not the money spinner that was expected so the King of Egypt sold  shares to the British who snapped it up using a loan from the Rothschilds, so it was then under the control of the British and French.   In the 1950s the Americans were due to give 2.5 million dollars to Egypt to help with the building of the Aswan damn but they withdrew because they thought the Egyptians were getting too friendly with the Russians.  To raise money President Nasser decided to take control of the canal and use the revenue.  This forced the Suez crisis when the British, French and Israeli combined forces took back the canal. However international opinion was against them there was a vote of something like 65 to 5 in the UN for control to be handed over to Egypt (with the Americans teaming up with the Russians to vote against us).  There was a first use of UN peacekeeping forces in the area.  Israel was banned from using the canal and in the 1960s (6 days war) they took the Sinai desert including the coast where Sharm el Sheikh was built.  Nasser sunk ships to block the canal and it was out of use for several years – 8 cargo ships were stranded in the canal, I have no idea what became of them!

Peace was established in 1978, and the canal is now owned and maintained by the Suez Canal Authority of the Arab Republic of Egypt with an international treaty allowing its use “in time of war as in time of peace, by every vessel of commerce or of war, without distinction of flag”