A NEW CANAL

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4220, 6 December 1939, Page 5

A NEW CANAL

GREAT SCOTTISH PROJECT. INVALUABLE IN DEFENCE. The twentieth century has often been described as the age of great highways; it is equally one of huge canals. The Panama is the one that comes most rapidly to mind, but others are under consideration which will equal it. In their advocacy of a great canal cutting through the Lowlands of Scotland and linking the Forth and i/ 'the Clyde, naval strategists are now for the fulfilment of a project they regard as vital to the safety of the British Isles. If carried through, this Forth-Clyde project would stand in the same relationship to Scotland as the Kiel Canal—which the Germans announce they intend to widen and improve. Through the Kiel Canal war ships

pass from the Baltic to the North Sea, avoiding the long and dangerous ddtour around Denmark. A ForthClyde canal would permit the passage of the British navy from the Atlantic to the North Sea, avoiding the mistracked route via the north of Scotland.

The wonderful £14,000,000 Ant-werp-Liege Canal has just been completed; the Americans have under consideration the cutting of a new Atlantic-Pacific canal through Nicaragua at a cost of about £100,000,000, to enable their fleets to pass quickly between the two oceans; and recently in France the project of by-passing Gibraltar, at a cost of from £60,000,000 to £80,000,000, by a canal across the south-west of the country has been reconsidered. This would enable the French to bring their Atlantic fleet into the! Mediterranean safely and rapidly. Like certain other spectacular engineering schemes, among them the Channel tunnel and the Severn barage, the Forth-Clyde canal is still only a project, but there is little doubt that at some future date all three will be carried through. Pressure of events will probably compel adoption of the Scottish scheme, an idea that is as old as Defoe, and, unlike the Channel tunnel suggestion, at least it seems to have few disadvantages. All those who have examined it declare that from the strategic and commercial points of view its value would be tremendous. Recently Sir lan Hamilton, the famous soldier, was advocating its claims, and Sir Edward Inglefield asserted that the only obvious reply to Germany’s modernisation of the Kiel Canal was to proceed immediately with the construction of a ship canal from the Forth to the Clyde. Want of it was a heavy handicap to fleet maintenance and naval strategy during the Great War, and with the much improved foreign armaments of the present day the canal is more than ever an essential factor in Britain’s sea power. FORTH BRIDGE DANGER. Sir Edward Inglefield states that a pressing necessity for the canal arises from the position of the Forth Bridge to seaward of the dockyard and naval base at Rosyth. During the war vital squadrons of the Grand Fleet were based at Rosyth, and though in the early days danger from the air was negligible, as time went on, and German aircraft improved in speed and range, there was an everincreasing risk that the bridge might be bombed and that its wreckage might imprison the ships at Rosyth. The powerful bombers of to-day render the safety of the Firth Bridge in war time very precarious; and an opening to the westward, from Rosyth to the sea, has now become imperative. In addition, general considerations of fleet preparedness and naval strategy also direct attention to the need for the canal. Scapa Flow—used during the Great War—is too far away from dockyards and sources of supplies, and too distant from German naval bases, to be now the best base for Britain’s main fleet in war time. The estuaries of the Forth and the Clyde, if connected by a ship canal, woqld be incomparably better from every point of view. Certainly it is not for lack of suggested schemes that the canal has not been made long before now. Daniel Defoe broached what is believed to have been the first project of the kind during-the reign of Queen Anne. The estimated cost then was £500,000, a large sum for those days. The cost now is estimated at between £25,000,000 and £30,000,000. Like the Channel tunnel, the idea has not received much Government encouragement in Britain so far, although ten years ago, yielding to the pressure of Scottish members, the then Minister of •<.>'oport set up a committee of to investigate the subject. Nothing practical came of its deliberations. PRICE OF SECURITY. A prominent supporter of the canal project has been Vice-Admiral Sir Barry Domville, who has stated he “could not conceive a work of greater national importance upon which the unemployed could expend their labours.” The British Government has always been unwilling to subsidise the scheme sufficiently to make it a commercial possibility. Once built, it is claimed, it would pay its way, but would not provide interest on the original outlay. With the great in-

dustrial basin of the Lowlands pierced for the passage of ships right through Scotland, the English Channel could be avoided, as well as the route round northern Scotland. As this naval strategist points out, ships approaching and leaving the shores of the British Islands would have a choice of passing north or south of Ireland according to circumstances. When we recall that Britain is almost entirely dependent on seaborne commerce for its existence the Forth-Clyde canal does not seem to be a very high rate of insurance to pay for greatly increased security, particularly when we remember the nation is being called upon to find more than £1,000,000,000 during the next financial year. If it becomes necessary to face the problem of closing the Port of London in a future war, the canal would assist vastly for any alternative system of supply.

It is not wide known that there is already an ancient little canal called the Forth and Clyde Canal, which runs from Grangemouth on the Forth to Bowling on the Clyde. It is about 39 miles long and is controlled by railway interests. This waterway was cut at the end of the eighteenth century and cost only £300,000. The new canal would not present any insuperable engineering and work could begin almost immediately, for the route has been surveyed. The small use Britain makes of its canals is surprising in view of the fact that Germany, France, Holland and Belgium are extending their canal systems, which are far more important commercially at the present time than before the war.