Discoveries and Inventions of the Nineteenth Century

Like several other canals for sea going ships this last addition to the achievements of modern engineering is but the realisation of a project conceived at a long past period. The idea of a canal to connect the Baltic and the North Sea dates back into the Middle Ages, and indeed a short canal was constructed in 1389, which by uniting two secondary streams of the peninsula really did provide a waterway between the two seas. The inefficiency of this means of communication may be inferred from the fact of there having been proposed since that period no fewer than sixteen schemes of canalisation between these two seas, of which the recently completed North Sea Canal is the sixteenth, and it need hardly be said the greatest, so that in comparison with it the rest vanish into insignificance. The canal was commenced in 1887, and on the 20th of June, 1895, it was opened by the reigning Emperor of Germany, William II., with a very imposing naval pageant in which nearly a hundred ships of war from the great navies of the world took part. A glance at the accompanying sketch-map will show the great importance of this canal as a highway of commerce. The entrance to the Baltic has hitherto been round the peninsula of Denmark and through the narrow “belts” and “sounds” that divide the Danish Islands, a course beset with imminent perils to navigators, for the channels abound in rocks and dangerous reefs, to say nothing about the frequent storms and the impediments of ice floes. Yet as many as 35,000 vessels have lately had to take that course annually, these representing a total tonnage of no less than 20,000,000 tons. The figures speak for the magnitude of the Baltic shipping intercourse with the rest of the world; while the losses incurred 272in traversing these forbidding waters may be gathered from the statement that since 1858, nearly 3000 ships have been wrecked in them, and a greater number much damaged. Indeed, for large vessels, there is hardly a more dangerous piece of navigation in all Europe. The importance of this canal must not therefore be estimated solely by the saving of length in ships’ course, though that is great, as the map shows. The North Sea Canal is 61 miles long, 200 ft. wide at the surface, 85 ft. wide at the bottom, and it will admit of vessels of 10,000 tons register passing through, the average time of transit being about twelve hours. The estimated cost of this undertaking was nearly eight and a quarter million pounds sterling, and about one-third of this sum was contributed by Germany, for whom the canal is of the greatest strategic importance in case of war, for her fighting ships need not then traverse foreign waters. The construction was therefore pushed forward with unusual energy, as many as 8,600 men having been engaged on the works at one time. An important naval station already exists at Kiel, the Baltic end of the canal, where there is a splendid harbour. The engineer and designer of this water-way is Herr Otto Baensch, who has devised much ingenious machinery in connection with the immense tidal locks at the extremities of the canal, and the swing bridges by which several lines of railway are carried across it. In the construction of this canal there were no vast engineering difficulties to be overcome, and hence striking feats of mountain excavation or valley bridging are not to be met with in its course, though in places there are some deep cuttings. The methods of excavating and of steam dredging that were made use of have already been illustrated in relation to the other works described in this article. The country through which the canal passes does not present any unusually picturesque features.