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Corinth Canal

Coordinates: 37°56′04″N 22°59′02″E / 37.93444°N 22.98389°E / 37.93444; 22.98389
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Corinth Canal
Specifications
StatusOpen
History
Principal engineerIstván Türr and Béla Gerster
Date of first useJuly 25, 1893[1]

The Corinth Canal (Greek: Διώρυγα της Κορίνθου) is a canal that connects the Gulf of Corinth with the Saronic Gulf in the Aegean Sea. It cuts through the narrow Isthmus of Corinth and separates the Peloponnesian peninsula from the Greek mainland, thus effectively making the former an island. The builders dug the canal through the Isthmus at sea level; no locks are employed. It is 6.4 kilometres (4.0 mi) in length and only 24.6 metres (81 ft) wide, and was built between 1881 and 1893.

History

Ancient attempts

Remains of Nero's canal project in 1881

Several rulers in antiquity dreamed of digging a cutting through the Isthmus. The first to propose such an undertaking was the tyrant Periander in the 7th century BC. However, the project was abandoned and Periander instead constructed a simpler and less costly overland portage road, named the Diolkos or stone carriageway, along which ships could be towed from one side of the isthmus to the other.[2][3][4][5][6] Periander's change of heart is attributed variously to the great expense of the project, a lack of labour or a fear that a canal would have robbed Corinth of its dominant role as an entrepôt for goods.[7] Remnants of the Diolkos still exist next to the modern canal.[8][9][10]

The Diadoch Demetrius Poliorcetes (336–283 BC) planned to construct a canal as a means to improve his communication lines, but dropped the plan after his surveyors, miscalculating the levels of the adjacent seas, feared heavy floods.[7][11]

The philosopher Apollonius of Tyana prophesied that ill would befall anyone who proposed to dig a Corinthian canal. Three Roman rulers considered the idea but all suffered violent deaths; the historian Suetonius tells us that the Roman dictator Julius Caesar considered digging a canal through the isthmus but was assassinated before he could commence the project.[12] Caligula, his successor as the third Roman Emperor, commissioned a study in 40 AD from Egyptian experts who claimed incorrectly that the Corinthian Gulf was higher than the Saronic. As a result, they concluded, if a canal was dug the island of Aegina would be inundated. Caligula's interest in the idea got no further as he too was assassinated.[13]

The emperor Nero was the first to actually attempt to construct the canal, personally breaking the ground with a pickaxe and removing the first basket-load of soil in 67 AD,[14] but the project was abandoned when he died shortly afterwards. The Roman workforce, consisting of 6000 Jewish prisoners of war,[15] started digging 40–50 m (130–160 ft) wide trenches from both sides, while a third group at the ridge drilled deep shafts for probing the quality of the rock (which were reused in 1881 for the same purpose). According to Suetonius, the canal was dug to a distance of four stades (approximately 700 metres (2,300 ft), in other words about a tenth of the total distance across the isthmus). A memorial of the attempt in the form of a relief of Hercules was left by Nero's workers and can still be seen in the canal cutting today.[16] Other than this, as the modern canal follows the same course as Nero's, no remains have survived.[17]

The philosopher and Roman senator Herodes Atticus is also known to have considered digging a canal in the 2nd century AD, but did not manage to get a project underway.[18] The Venetians also considered it in 1687 but likewise did not initiate a project.[19]

Construction of the modern canal

The Corinth Canal seen from the air The idea of a Corinth Canal was revived after Greece gained formal independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1830. The Greek statesman Ioannis Kapodistrias asked a French engineer to assess the feasibility of the project but had to abandon it when it was costed at some 40 million gold francs – far too expensive for the newly independent country. Fresh impetus was given by opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the following year, the government of Prime Minister Thrasyvoulos Zaimis passed a law authorising the construction of a Corinth Canal. French entrepreneurs were put in charge but failed to carry out the project. A fresh concession was granted to the Société Internationale du Canal Maritime de Corinth in 1881, which was commissioned to construct the canal and operate it for the next 99 years. Construction was formally inaugurated on 23 April 1882 in the presence of King George I of Greece.[20]

The company's initial capital was some 30,000,000 francs, but after eight years of work it ran out of money and a bid to issue 60,000 bonds of 500 francs each flopped when less than half of the bond were sold. Its head, the Hungarian István Türr, went bankrupt, as did the company itself and a bank that had agreed to raise additional funds for the project.[21] Construction resumed in 1890 when the project was transferred to a Greek company, and was finally completed on 25 July 1893 after eleven years' work.[20]

However, even after completion the canal experienced financial and operational difficulties. The narrowness of the canal makes navigation difficult; its high rock walls channel high winds down its length, and the different times of the tides in the two gulfs cause strong tidal currents in the channel. For these reasons, many ship operators did not bother to use the canal and traffic was far below what had been predicted. An annual traffic of just under 4 million net tons had been anticipated but by 1906 traffic had reached only half a million net tons annually. By 1913 the total had risen to some 1.5 million net tons, but the disruption caused by the First World War produced a major decline in traffic.[21]

Another persistent problem was the instability of the high limestone walls lining the canal. Although it was formally opened in July 1893 it was not opened to navigation until the following November, due to landslips. It was soon found that the wake from ships passing through the canal undermined the walls, causing further landslips. This required further expense in building retaining walls along the water's edge for somewhat more than half of the length of the canal, utilising some 165,000 cubic metres of masonry.[22]

Layout

The location of the Isthmus of Corinth; canal shown in light blue.

The canal consists of a single channel 8 metres (26 ft) deep, excavated at sea level (thus requiring no locks), measuring 6,346 metres (20,820 ft) long by 24.6 metres (81 ft) wide at the top and 21.3 metres (70 ft) wide at the bottom. The rock walls, which rise 90 metres (300 ft) above sea level, are at a near-vertical 80° angle.[23][24] The canal is crossed by a railway line, a road and a motorway at a height of about 45 metres (148 ft). In 1988 submersible bridges were installed at sea level at each end of the canal, by the eastern harbour of Isthmia and the western harbour of Poseidonia.[25]

Although the canal saves the 700-kilometre (430 mi) journey around the Peloponnese, it is too narrow for modern ocean freighters as it can only accommodate ships of a width of up to 16.5 metres (54 ft) and a depth of 7.3 metres (24 ft). Ships can only pass through the canal one at a time on a one-way system. Larger ships have to be towed by tugs.[25] The canal is nowadays mostly used by tourist ships; 11,000 ships per year travel through the waterway.

Geology

The canal was cut through heavily faulted sedimentary rock in an active seismic zone.[26] Between 1893 and 1940, it was closed for a total of four years for maintenance and to stabilise the walls. In 1923 alone, 41,000 cubic meters of material fell into the canal, which took two years to clear out.[27]

See also

References

  1. ^ Facaros, Dana; Theodorou, Linda (2003-05-01). Greece. New Holland Publishers. p. 172. ISBN 9781860118982. Retrieved 24 July 2011.
  2. ^ Verdelis, Nikolaos: "Le diolkos de L'Isthme", Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, Vol. 81 (1957), pp. 526–529 (526)
  3. ^ Cook, R. M.: "Archaic Greek Trade: Three Conjectures 1. The Diolkos", The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 99 (1979), pp. 152–155 (152)
  4. ^ Drijvers, J.W.: "Strabo VIII 2,1 (C335): Porthmeia and the Diolkos", Mnemosyne, Vol. 45 (1992), pp. 75–76 (75)
  5. ^ Raepsaet, G. & Tolley, M.: "Le Diolkos de l’Isthme à Corinthe: son tracé, son fonctionnement", Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, Vol. 117 (1993), pp. 233–261 (256)
  6. ^ Lewis, M. J. T., "Railways in the Greek and Roman world", in Guy, A. / Rees, J. (eds), Early Railways. A Selection of Papers from the First International Early Railways Conference (2001), pp. 8–19 (11)
  7. ^ a b Werner, Walter: "The largest ship trackway in ancient times: the Diolkos of the Isthmus of Corinth, Greece, and early attempts to build a canal", The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, Vol. 26, No. 2 (1997), pp. 98–119 (114)
  8. ^ Verdelis, Nikolaos: "Le diolkos de L'Isthme", Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique (1957, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1963)
  9. ^ Raepsaet, G. & Tolley, M.: "Le Diolkos de l’Isthme à Corinthe: son tracé, son fonctionnement", Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, Vol. 117 (1993), pp. 233–261
  10. ^ Werner, Walter: "The largest ship trackway in ancient times: the Diolkos of the Isthmus of Corinth, Greece, and early attempts to build a canal", The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, Vol. 26, No. 2 (1997), pp. 98–119
  11. ^ Gerster, Bela, "L'Isthme de Corinthe: tentatives de percement dans l'antiquité", Bulletin de correspondance hellénique (1884), Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 225–232 (227f.)
  12. ^ Suetonius "Lives of the Caesars: Julius Caesar", 44.3
  13. ^ Facaros, Dana; Theodorou, Linda (2008). Peloponnese & Athens. New Holland Publishers. p. 155-156. ISBN 9781860113963.
  14. ^ Suetonius, "Lives of the Caesars: Nero", 19.2
  15. ^ Gerster, Bela, "L'Isthme de Corinthe: tentatives de percement dans l'antiquité", Bulletin de correspondance hellénique (1884), Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 225–232 (228 & 232)
  16. ^ Arafat, K.W. (2004). Pausanias' Greece: Ancient Artists and Roman Rulers. Cambridge University Press. p. 151. ISBN 9780521604185.
  17. ^ Werner, Walter: "The largest ship trackway in ancient times: the Diolkos of the Isthmus of Corinth, Greece, and early attempts to build a canal", The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, Vol. 26, No. 2 (1997), pp. 98–119 (115f.)
  18. ^ Wiseman, James (1978). The land of the ancient Corinthians. P. Åström. p. 50. ISBN 9789185058785.
  19. ^ Setton, Kenneth Meyer (1991). Venice, Austria, and the Turks in the seventeenth century. American Philosophical Society. p. 344. ISBN 9780871691927.
  20. ^ a b "The Countdown". Retrieved 25 July 2011.
  21. ^ a b Johnson, Emory Richard (1920). Principles of Ocean Transportation. New York: D. Appleton. pp. 99–102.
  22. ^ "Corinth Canal". Johnson's universal cyclopedia: a new edition, Volume 7, p. 484. A.J. Johnson & Co., 1895
  23. ^ "Corinth Canal". Retrieved 25 July 2011.
  24. ^ Carydis, Panayotis G.; Tilford, Norman R.; Brandow, Gregg E.; Jirsa, James O. (1982). The Central Greece earthquakes of February-March 1981. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. p. 79.
  25. ^ a b Goette, Hans Rupprecht (2001). Athens, Attica, and the Megarid: an archaeological guide. Routledge. p. 322.
  26. ^ Geology and Ancient Culture Along the Corinth Canal
  27. ^ Corinth Canal History: 1923 A.C. — Nowadays

Further reading

Ancient attempts at a canal

  • Gerster, Bela, “L'Isthme de Corinthe: tentatives de percement dans l'antiquité”, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique (1884), Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 225–232
  • Werner, Walter: "The largest ship trackway in ancient times: the Diolkos of the Isthmus of Corinth, Greece, and early attempts to build a canal", The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, Vol. 26, No. 2 (1997), pp. 98–119
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Corinth Canal.

37°56′04″N 22°59′02″E / 37.93444°N 22.98389°E / 37.93444; 22.98389

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