THE GREAT CANALS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23517, 3 June 1938, Page 14

THE GREAT CANALS

We owe the world’s great sea canals to French genius. It was Viscount de Lesseps who had the courage to organise and carry out the work of the Suez canal in the face of clever engineers, who declared it impossible. The work, begun in 1858, was completed in 1869. Ten years later de Lesseps began work on the still greater project at Panama, but in this he failed, owing to mismanagement and financial jugglery, for which he was not personally responsible, but which ruined him. The failure, however, led to the success of America in joining the two great oceans. Now' we record the astonishing figures of the traffic through these great waterways. Before the Great War some 18,000,000 tons of shipping passed through the Suez canal in a year; in 1937 the figure rose to over 36,000,000 tons. British shipping accounts for about half of this great total. Panama, too, now' returns big traffic. Last year nearly 29,000,000 tons passed through it. The Panama canal is not a sea-level waterway, and great locks have to be negotiated. At Panama, as at Suez, our British shipping is the chief user, over a fourth of the traffic of last year being British.