LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Suez Canal: Ships
built 622 days ago
Suez Canal is 120 miles long? Well it is. An amazing fact about The Suez Canal is that about 25,000 ships pass though it every year. The maximum depth of the canal is 23 meters allowing ships a maximm drought of 62 feet. In case you don’t know what a drought is, it is the length from the bottom of a boat to the bottom of the canal. Many, many people from Asia used to have to sail all around Africa to be able to trade with Europe. The Canal connects two parts the north and south ends of the Bitter Lake.
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The Suez Canal continued to figure prominently in the conflicts between Egypt and Israel during the 1960s and ’70s. It was closed during the Six-Day War of 1967, when several vessels were sunk in the waterway, blocking the shipping lanes. The canal was reopened in June 1975, after an international task force had cleared it of obstacles. Late that year Egypt permitted nonmilitary goods to and from Israel to pass through the waterway. Unrestricted Israeli use of the canal was secured in the peace treaty with Egypt in 1979.
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In May 1967 President Nasser ordered the UN peacekeeping forces out of the Sinai Peninsula, including the Suez Canal area. Despite Israeli objections in the United Nations, the peace keepers were withdrawn and the Egyptian army took up positions on the Israeli border, and again closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. The canal itself had been closed to Israeli shipping since 1949, except for a short period in 1951-1952.
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In the summer of 1956, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser seized control of the Suez Canal, a critical shipping route, which was run by French and British interests. Nasser had acted in response to the two countries withdrawing foreign investment funds to build a dam on the Nile River.
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The geographical position of the Suez Canal makes it the shortest route between East and West as compared to the “Cape of Good Hope”. The Canal route achieves a saving in distance between the ports north and south the Canal, the matter that is translated into other savings in time, fuel consumption and ship operating costs as shown in the table below:
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Construction began on the Suez Canal in 1859 and was completed in 1867. In 1869, the canal was officially inaugurated. Then in 1888, all the major European governmental powers declared the canal neutral and guaranteed free passage to all ship in times of peace and war.
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