- Modern waterway engineering
- Waterway systems
Despite modern technological advances in air and ground transportation, inland waterways continue to fill a vital role and, in many areas, to grow substantially. This article traces the history of canal building from the earliest times to the present day and describes both the constructional and operational engineering techniques used and the major inland waterways and networks throughout the world.
Transport by inland waterways may be by navigable rivers or those made navigable by canalization (dredging and bank protection) or on artificial waterways called canals. Many inland waterways are multipurpose, providing drainage, irrigation, water supply, and generation of hydroelectric power as well as navigation. The lay of the land (topography) and particularly changes in water levels require that many rivers be regulated to make them fully navigable, thus enabling vessels to proceed from one water level to another. The chief regulating method is the lock, the development of which contributed significantly to the Industrial Revolution and the development of modern industrial society.
For many types of commodities, particularly such bulk commodities as grains, coal, and ore, inland waterway transport is still more economical than any other kind of transport. Thus, it is hardly surprising that modernized inland waterways, using the latest navigational aids and traction methods and traversing the great landmasses of North America, Europe, and Asia, play an increasingly important economic role.
Most of the improvement of rivers and construction of artificial waterways in antiquity was for irrigation purposes. In the 7th century bce the Assyrian king Sennacherib built a 50-mile (80-km) stone-lined canal 66 feet (20 metres) wide to bring fresh water from Bavian to Nineveh. The work, which included a stone aqueduct 300 yards (330 metres) long, was constructed in one year and three months, according to a plaque that survives on the site. Surprisingly advanced techniques were used, including a dam with sluice gates allowing regulation of the flow of the water stored. The Phoenicians, Assyrians, Sumerians, and Egyptians all constructed elaborate canal systems. The most spectacular canal of this period was probably Nahrawān, 400 feet wide and 200 miles long, built to provide a year-round navigation channel from near Sāmarrāʾ to Al-Kūt, using water provided by damming the unevenly flowing Tigris. Many elaborate canals are known to have been built in Babylonia. In Egypt the Nile was dammed to control its floodwaters, and an extensive system of basin irrigation was established. The Persian king Darius in the 5th century bce cut a canal from the Nile River to the Red Sea. The Romans were responsible for very extensive systems of river regulation and canals in France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Great Britain for military transport. The legions in Gaul canalized one of the mouths of the Rhône to protect their overseas supply route. In the 1st century ce the Roman consul Marcus Livius Drusus dug a canal between the Rhine and Yssel to relieve the Rhine of surplus water, and the Roman general Corbulo linked the Rhine and Meuse with a canal 23 miles (37 km) long to avoid the stormy North Sea passage from Germany to the coast. Attempting to reclaim the Fens in England, the Romans connected the River Cam with the Ouse by an 8-mile canal, the Nene with the Witham by one 25 miles long, and the Witham with the Trent by the Fosse Dyke (ditch), still in use.
Outside Europe and the Middle East, between the 3rd century bce and the 1st century ce, the Chinese built impressive canals. Outstanding were the Ling Canal in Kuangsi, 90 miles long from the Han capital; Changan (Sian) to the Huang He (Yellow River); and the Pien Canal in Honan. Of later canals the most spectacular was the Grand Canal, the first 600-mile section of which was opened to navigation in 610. This waterway enabled grain to be transported from the lower Yangtze and the Huai to Kaifeng and Luoyang. These canals had easy gradients (changes in water levels); and at about three-mile intervals there were single gates of stone or timber abutments with vertical grooves up or down along which the log closure was manually hauled by ropes to hold or release the water, thus controlling the water level. A few more elaborate gates had to be raised by windlasses. Where water level changes were too great for such simple devices, double slipways were built and vessels were hauled up the inclines.