Shipping Canal: Kiel Canal

Connecting the Baltic Sea at Kiel Holtenau and the North Sea at Brunsbuttel, the Kiel Canal opened in 1895. This 98 km long canal helps ships save more time on their route. About 460 km (250 nautical miles) can be saved instead of going all the way around Denmark (Jutland Peninsula).

The canal is currently 160 meters wide and 11 meters deep and has been widened twice. It was spanned by seven high-level bridges with a clearance of approximately 43 meters for the ships below. With the 327 meters long and 45 meters wide locks, this canal is the shortest, safest, cheapest, and most convenient shipping route between the Baltic and North Seas.

Fascinating History of Kiel Canal

The construction and operation of this canal have come to a long journey and through some interesting facts. Here are some of them:

• Built between 1887 – 1895 and involved nine thousand workers to dig, the canal’s original function was to help the German military shorten detours around the Danish peninsula.
• From 1907 to 1914, the canal was widened, straightened, and deepened—cutting the distance from the Baltic to the English Channel by several hundred miles—to accommodate their new generation of battleships or larger naval vessels.
• Formerly known as the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal, the Treaty of Versailles designated it an international shipping route, but Adolph Hitler closed it in 1936. The canal reopened after World War II and was renamed Kiel Canal.
• Birt Acres, a British director, documented the opening of the canal. The film footage is still kept at the Science Museum in London.
• The aviso SMS Jagd was the first ship sent to cross thecanal before opening for trial.
• The transatlantic sailing ship named Lilly was the first bark class ship to pass through the canal. Lilly was built in Sunderland, England, in 1866 and weighed 390 tons, a beam of 8.7 meters, a length of 38.9 meters, a depth of 5.4 meters, and a keel as high as 9.8 meters.

Fascinating Facts

This world’s busiest man-made waterway has outdated technology and requires urgent modernization. Here are some facts:

• Large and luxury cruises like the Norwegian Dream can even pass through this canal. The Norwegian Dream measures 230 m x 29 m x 45 m.
• The technology is outdated. Two large lock chambers at Brunsbuttel were failed in March 2013; only vessels less than 125 meters long could access the canal.
• The damage to the locks led to disputes and neglect of channel funding. The government is accused of delaying restoring the canal. New locks will take years and cost hundreds of millions of euros.
• The canal also needs other renovations, such as renovating bridges, deepening shipping routes, and modernizing other locks.
• The Minister of Transport appealed to the government to develop a master plan to completely modernize the Kiel Canal.

It is recorded that every year more than 40,000 ships are passing through the Kiel Canal, and every day around 100 ships move 300 thousand tons of goods. On the highway, that’s 15,000 trucks – per day! Channels exist for this practicality and convenience.