Intro

Hello and Welcome to this episode of the podcast, "The Mnemonic Tree", where we add a single mnemonic leaf to our Tree of Knowledge.

I’m Jans your Mnemonic Man and today's episode will be on a man-made canal constructed in the 1800’s that now carries 12% of all global trade.

The Suez Canal is an artificial waterway that links the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea enabling trade between Europe and Asia. It was the brainchild of Ferdinand de Lesseps who organised the necessary political and financial backing, along with forming the Suez Canal company.

This crucial infrastructure of approximately 193 kilometres in length negates the need for ships to navigate around Africa, via the Cape of Good Hope saving thousands of kilometres and many days of travel.

Though Egypt owns the land it was initially controlled by European shareholders, mainly composed of British and French. When Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser decided to nationalise the Suez Canal in 1956 this sparked a war between controlling powers where Egypt won the moral victory and support from the people, and a humiliating defeat for the British with the resignation of Prime Minister Anthony Eden, with some saying that it marked the start of the decline of the British Empire.

The Suez Canal is a symbol of Egyptian sovereignty earning the country billions in revenue each year.

Today’s mnemonic will be on the top five facts about the Suez Canal.

So, with that being said, we will begin with a summary from Wikipedia.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aerial_view_of_city_of_Suez_and_Suez_Canal.jpg

Wikipedia Summary

The Suez Canal (/ˈsuː.ɛz/; Arabic: قَنَاةُ ٱلسُّوَيْسِ, Qanāt as-Suwais) is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia (and by extension, the Sinai Peninsula from the rest of Egypt). The 193.30-kilometre-long (120.11 mi) canal is a key trade route between Europe and Asia.

In 1858, French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps formed the Compagnie de Suez for the express purpose of building the canal. Construction of the canal lasted from 1859 to 1869. The canal officially opened on 17 November 1869.

It offers vessels a direct route between the North Atlantic and northern Indian oceans via the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, avoiding the South Atlantic and southern Indian Oceans and reducing the journey distance from the Arabian Sea to London by approximately 8,900 kilometres (5,500 mi), to 10 days at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) or 8 days at 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph).[1] The canal extends from the northern terminus of Port Said to the southern terminus of Port Tewfik at the city of Suez. In 2021, more than 20,600 vessels traversed the canal (an average of 56 per day).[2]

The original canal featured a single-lane waterway with passing locations in the Ballah Bypass and the Great Bitter Lake.[3] It contained, according to Alois Negrelli's plans, no locks, with seawater flowing freely through it.

The canal was the property of the Egyptian government, but European shareholders, mostly British and French, owned the concessionary company which operated it until July 1956, when President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised it—an event which led to the Suez Crisis of October–November 1956.[5]

The canal is operated and maintained by the state-owned Suez Canal Authority [6] (SCA) of Egypt. Under the Convention of Constantinople, it may be used "in time of war as in time of peace, by every vessel of commerce or of war, without distinction of flag."[7] Nevertheless, the canal has played an important military strategic role as a naval short-cut and choke point.

Navies with coastlines and bases on both the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea (Egypt and Israel) have a particular interest in the Suez Canal. After Egypt closed the Suez Canal at the beginning of the Six-Day War on 5 June 1967, the canal remained closed for eight years, reopening on 5 June 1975.[8]

The Egyptian government launched construction in 2014 to expand and widen the Ballah Bypass for 35 km (22 mi) to speed up the canal's transit time. The expansion intended to nearly double the capacity of the Suez Canal, from 49 to 97 ships per day.[9] At a cost of LE 59.4 billion (US$9 billion), this project was funded with interest-bearing investment certificates issued exclusively to Egyptian entities and individuals.

The Suez Canal Authority officially opened the new side channel in 2016.

Extracted from: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal]

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USS_America_(CV-66)_in_the_Suez_canal_1981.jpg

Mnemonic

Suez Canal – Top 5 Facts Mnemonic – Canal CLiMB

(Picture The Egyptians developing their own form of Dutch Canal Jumping but with a sprung polsstok)

1. Completed in 1869

2. Connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea

3. Length of 193.3 km

4. Major update of the Ballah Bypass completed in 2016

5. Built as a joint enterprise between the French and the Ottoman Empire

Five Fun Facts

1. The Suez Canal was built as a joint enterprise between the French and the Ottoman Empire. A French diplomat called Ferdinand de Lesseps, put the plan into motion in 1854 which was assisted with his good working relationship with the viceroy of the Ottoman Empire for Egypt and Sudan at the time. Construction began in 1859 and was completed and officially opened in 1869.

2. Fact two is an interesting one which takes us back to Nepoleon Bonaparte who once considered joining the Mediterranean and the Red Sea through a canal. This came about after the discovery of drawings of an ancient canal. This was then investigated by Nepoleon’s surveyors who came back with the fact that there was a significant height difference between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. This forced Nepoleon to abandon his plans, however these calculations were later revealed to be incorrect.

3. The Suez Canal is the first artificial sea-level waterway in the world. The original canal construction was 164 km in length with a depth of 8 metres. Workers used hand tools in the excavation in the beginning, but was finished with steam powered machinery after forced labour was banned in 1863. The canal is now, after further developments 193.3 km long, 24 metres deep, and 205 metres wide.

4. The Suez Canal was a massive project with a total of 1.5 million people from all different nationalities working on the project. With this number of people in a confined space, along with a challenging environment, and limited access to healthcare, many died. Gamal Abdel Nasser the second president of Egypt cited that 120,000 workers had died during its construction, during his nationalisation speech in 1956. This figure is contentious however with the company’s chief medical officer in 1866 reporting around 2.49 deaths per thousand, which equates to 1,500 deaths.

5. From the start the Suez Canal had issues with thousands of ships running aground within the first 15 years of operation. As a result, widening and deepening was undertaken as required from 1876 which drastically reduced the number of incidents. While in 2014 a major update took place to increase capacity with the building of a second canal parallel to the original one to allow two-way transit. This was completed one year later and thus doubled capacity.