In early 1869, a French sculptor was working on a monumental design, one that he hoped would become a world-renowned symbol for the country in which it was to be erected.
And so it came to pass … except that instead of lighting up the gateway to the Suez Canal in Egypt, his statue would eventually become the beacon that welcomed millions to America at the gateway to New York.
Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi hoped that his 27-metre high figure of an Egyptian peasant woman holding a torch, created after the style of the ancient Colossus of Rhodes and to be named Egypt Bringing Light to Asia, would serve as a lighthouse. In his mind, he saw it standing at the entrance of what was about to be one of mankind's greatest feats of engineering, the Suez Canal.
But it was not to be. Funding for the statue was never secured and instead, the design became a template for Lady Liberty in New York.
This is just one of the many stories linked to the 146-year-old artificial waterway that forever changed history, trade and the map of the world.
Over the years the canal has changed in size and ownership, with each era and leader leaving a mark. It remains an important bargaining chip on both the political and economic front, and a source of great national pride for Egypt.
This week, the canal is in the headlines again. On Thursday, a new 72-kilometre channel parallel to the original will be officially opened, allowing ships to sail in both directions at the same time and shortening the journey time from 18 hours to 11.
The UAE’s National Marine Dredging Company played a key role in building the new waterway, dubbed the “Suez Canal Axis”, which included 37km of dry digging and 35km of expansion and the deepening of the existing canal. If the opening of the original canal ushered in the first great age of globalisation, it is hoped this second chapter will lead to a renaissance for Egypt.
Like all the great ventures in history, the original canal, known as Qanat Al Suways in Arabic, began with a man who dreamt big.
“To accomplish great things we must not only act but also dream, not only plan but also believe,” said French diplomat, engineer and pioneer Ferdinand de Lesseps, who drove through this mammoth project of connecting not just the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, but also of Europe to Arabia, the Indies and the East.
“Since 1849 I have studied incessantly, under all its aspects, a question which was already in my mind since 1832. The scheme in question is the cutting of a canal through the Isthmus of Suez,” he said.
“This has been thought of from the earliest historical times, and for that very reason is looked upon as impracticable.”
As he rightly said, many before him had had the same idea, including Napoleon Bonaparte, but it was through de Lesseps’s push and his close relations with the Egyptian viceroy, Said Pasha, that the project finally materialised. Ironically, given later events, the British were vehemently opposed, fearing it would threaten their imperial possessions in India and the East.
On November 17, 1869, after 10 difficult years of mainly manual digging and dredging by tens of thousands of Egyptian peasant labourers – many of whom died – the Suez Canal was unveiled.
The grand opening was said to have cost Egypt £2 million – billions of dollars in today’s prices – and attracted statesmen and royalty from across the world. It was hosted by Ismail Pasha, then Khedive of Egypt. Among his guests were the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph, crown prince Frederick of Prussia, prince Henry of Holland and one of the event’s most honoured guests, the French empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III.
She summoned images from the Bible for her toast to mark the occasion. “Thirty-five centuries ago, the waters of the Red Sea drew back at the word of Moses. Today, at the order of the sovereign of Egypt, they return to their bed,” Eugenie proclaimed.
According to the Suez Canal Authority, the project at the time cost 200 million francs and was 164km long and 8 metres deep. Expanding over the decades, the length reached 193.3km and the depth 24m, in 2010.
It quickly became the most important communications link on the planet. Overnight, Europe and India were 7,000km nearer. The old trade routes around the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa were made almost redundant.
To this day, that has hardly changed, although until now the largest of tankers and container ships have had to take the southern route to Europe and the Americas. But the new canal should be deep enough for today’s VLCCs: the Very Large Crude Carriers.
Ten years ago, more than 8 per cent of all world trade passed through the canal every year. With today’s opening of the new sections, the traffic will only increase.
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In recent decades there have been many involved in the waterway’s expansion, including Dr Abdulrahman Makhlouf, the man behind the Abu Dhabi city master plan who also mapped a plan for the canal, one of the ports and its infrastructure.
He’s 92 now, but this Egyptian urban planner is as passionate about the project as ever. “The canal is always a work in progress,” he says. “It is like a living being. You have to accommodate it as it grows and its demands increase.”
At the northern terminus of the canal is Port Said, with Port Tewfik at the city of Suez at the southern terminus. Ismailia is on its west bank, 3km from the halfway point.
“I did a project for Port Said,” Dr Makhlouf says. “It is at the entrance of the canal. When traffic through the canal increased, it became necessary to widen and deepen the canal.
“But at the entrance, there are actually two cities, two ports. So if you widen it, you would destroy one of the two ports. One way around it was to extend a second branch beyond Port Fuad, which is on the opposite side of the canal from Port Said,” he says, pointing to a 1967 drawing.
“I wrote up a whole study of how to build this Free Zone area along the new branch extending out of the main canal, located east of the canal, and south of Port Fuad.
“From the logistics to the transport and communications needs, such as connections with the railway, I mapped out everything that had to be done along the 6km extension.”
He presented his idea to the Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser, but the Six Day War with Israel intervened and nothing happened. The project, like many others, remained shelved until the next president, Anwar El Sadat, took it up. Despite another war with Israel – the 1973 October War – it was completed in 1974 at a “very charged political” time. However, the canal remained shut until 1975 when president Sadat reopened the Suez Canal as a gesture of peace, after talks with Israel.
It took a year of hazardous work to clear the debris from the conflict from along the waterway. This ranged from sunken ships to mines strewn along the canal’s sloping banks.
Dr Makhlouf was unable to make it to the eventual reopening, as he was busy with projects in Abu Dhabi with the late Sheikh Zayed, founding father of the UAE. Four decades later, his pride and enthusiasm for the canal remains undiminished.
“The canal was there long before we came around, and so we should always look into our past to understand how to proceed into the future,” says Dr Makhlouf.
“The Suez Canal remains one of our greatest treasures and gifts to mankind.”
rghazal@thenational.ae
