The Suez Canal, west of the Sinai Peninsula, is a 118-mile (163-kilometer) maritime canal in Egypt between Suez on the Red Sea and Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea. The canal allows two-way north-south water transport from Europe to Asia without circumnavigating Africa. Before the construction of the canal, some transport was conducted by offloading ships and carrying the goods over land between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The canal comprises two parts, north and south of the Great Bitter Lake, linking the Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf of Suez on the Red Sea. The canal has no locks because there is no sea-level difference and no hills to climb. It allows the passage of ships of up to 150,000 tons displacement, with cargo. It permits ships of up to 50 feet (15 meters) draft to pass, and improvements are planned to increase this to 72 feet (22 meters) by 2010 to allow supertanker passage. Presently supertankers can offload part of their cargo onto a canal-owned boat and reload at the other end of the canal. Some 25,000 ships pass through the canal each year, about 14% of world shipping. Giuseppe Verdi’s opera masterpiece Aida, written to commemorate the opening of the Suez Canal, was completed too late for the 1869 opening and premiered at the Cairo Opera House in 1871.
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posted by Hills @ 3:38 AM
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