Wednesday, July 21, 2021

1893 Corinth Canal, Greece

(Satellite)

Bresilda Quinto posted
Tight Squeeze  Corinth Canal, Greece.
Rose Smith shared
[There are some comments implying the ships have side thrusters.]
Highway Engineering Discoveries posted
Michael Gibson: When I went through in 89 HMS Sheffield F96 it was rattan and pneumatic fenders and believe it or not bamboo poles .
Bridge and Bridge roof plus tiller flats manned to steer through .

You can see tow lines in the photo above. But this photo explicitly shows that the bigger ships are towed through the canal. Through the truss we can see another ship coming. Because the canal is obviously one way, they convoy ships through it.
Florela Petculescu, Mar 2021
Wonderful Engineering Discoveries posted
Corinth Canal, Greece
 
Greeker than the Greeks posted
The Corinth Canal, a man-made wonder, is a waterway across the Isthmus of Corinth, connecting the Gulf of Corinth in the northwest with the Saronic Gulf in the southeast.
Before the canal was built, ships were forced to make the long journey around the peloponnese Peninsula, adding an extra 320 kilometres to their journey.
In around 600 BC, Periander, the founder of the Cypselid Dynasty of Corinth, had the brilliant idea of taking ships out of the water and pulling them overland, on a type of railroad track; the diolkos (parts of which are still visible today), on which ships were hauled on wheeled wagons across the Isthmus.
This practice was used until about the 9th century, when ships had become too large for this system.
In 1882 work began on digging out, mostly by hand, the Corinth Canal, which opened 11 years later, in 1893.
The canal walls are more than 240 feet (80m) high, with an in-water depth of 24 feet (8m) and just over 3.7 miles (6km) long.
The Canal is a popular tourist attraction; large ships being pulled through the canal by small tugboats, a sight worth seeing.
Photo by DronEye
[The comments offer several more photos.]

It is just 70' wide at sea level. It is 81' wide at the top of its rock walls that go up to 300'. The 70' width limits the width of ships to 58'. The canal is also used for bungee jumping from a height of 256'.

The canal is 3.9 miles long and has a draft of 26'. [britannica]

Does the rock slope change because they know there was a different type of rock or because there was a previous rock slide?
Randolfo Santos, Jan 2020

Street View

Street View from the other side of the Old Bridge

The canal is currently [Summer of 2021] closed because of a rockslide that happened in Jan 2021. (source)

From the beginning, the canal was prone to rockslides because the sedimentary rock has been weakened by the extensive seismic activity in the area. A lot of work has been done over the decades to stabilize the canal walls. Unfortunately, some of that work is now failing.

"According to the studies carried out so far by the Ministry of Infrastructure & Transport, moisture and erosion caused the loss of the stone piers that supported and protected the ground from falling into the canal. The preliminary work on the studies is expected to be completed in September. Then the construction for the project will go up for bid, and the preliminary works on the sides of the Canal will begin subsequently." [GreekReporter]

A satellite image caught a freighter in the canal. This is rare because most freighters are now too big to use the canal. It is used mainly by tourist ships.
Satellite


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