Michael Batson

The Suez Canal is just 193kms long and one of the world’s key waterways, a strategic asset, and also a choke point, a bottle neck. The canal connects the “Med with the Red” seas and separates two continents, Africa from Asia. The canal saves maritime traffic the 8900kms journey around Africa which takes most ships on average about 10 days, quite a short cut. Officially opened in 1869, the canal took 10 years to complete with some of the work being done by forced labour. Estimates of worker fatalities during construction varies widely with some putting the figure as high as 120,000 lives. Previously owned by the British and French governments, the canal was nationalised by President Nasser in 1956, much to the chagrin of the Europeans who tried to take it back by force of arms before a humiliating withdrawal in what became known as the Suez Crisis (also known as the Second Arab Israeli War). Originally built as single lane – one vessel one way at a time - it was widened in 2014 in a huge feat of maritime engineering nearly doubling the canal’s capacity and speeding up transit times. About 12-15 percent of world trade goes through the canal, about 20,000 ships per year, including some of the world’s largest vessels, which can be a major problem if one of them gets stuck. Paradoxically, its core business can also present the greatest risk. I have crossed the canal twice both times by bus, once on its waters by car ferry and once under it by tunnel. On the first trip