November 24 - Red Sea

It’s time to play catch up now. After leaving Rhodes on Tuesday evening we had a full day sailing south to the Mediterranean entrance of the Suez Canal.  It was a sunny day with calm seas. Now that the port intensive part of the cruise is over, we have many more activities going on during the day. There are two art instructors, a bridge instructor and several lecturers talking about everything from birds and other wildlife in this part of the world to all things historical, from Egyptian to modern day politics and events in the middle east. There are enough things going on that the days seem to zip by and I can feel exhausted in good kind of way.

Just a few of the ships waiting to transit the canal with us

By late afternoon Wednesday we had arrived at the anchorage for the canal.  I should tell a little about the Suez Canal.  Over the millennia small canals were dug by civilizations occupying this area including Egyptians and Persians. None of those connected the Med to the Red Sea which is what the modern Suez Canal does.  The prime mover behind getting this one built was a Frenchman named Ferdinand de Lesseps in the mid-19th century. Prior to its construction trade between India, the Spice islands and other parts of Asia had to either go overland or go around Africa, De Lesseps envisioned a sea level canal with no locks which reduced the transit between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean by approximately 5500 miles.  He had a cousin who was well-connected, Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III and she helped him to persuade some of the authorities to give permission for the project and to get investors to help fund it.  Interestingly, the British government was fundamentally against building a canal.  In part it was due to traditional rivalries between France and England and in part because the British with their large colonial empire in  south Asia  (India, e.g.) had a monopoly on trade even if it took longer. Egypt at the time was part of the Ottoman Empire with a local sultan acting as a representative for the overall ruler in Istanbul. De Lesseps befriended the local sultan Sa’id and got his approval.  Only around the time that construction was beginning was the man in Istanbul told about it.

Construction was begun in 1859 and carried on until 1869. The canal was officially opened in November 1869.  As I mentioned earlier the Suez Canal is a sea level passageway with no locks. Consequently, it didn’t present the challenges that building a canal across Panama did years later.  It was initially a one-lane passageway with a place for  south and north bound ships to pass in the Great Bitter Lake, which is sort of at the mid-point. The canal was owned by the Egyptian government but the operation was owned by a concessionary company owned by mainly French and British shareholders. The Suez Canal is about 120 miles long and divided Africa from Asia, specifically the Sinai Peninsula.  In 2014 the Egyptian government under el-Sisi began construction of a 22-mile bypass section in the northern part of the canal so that two-way traffic can occur and the capacity of the canal has been increased to nearly 100 ships per day.

In 1888 a treaty called the Convention of Constantinople was signed which essentially granted all countries the right of passage through the Canal in times of peace and war. Without going into a whole lot more history of events in this part of the world, Britain maintained a military presence here from about 1882 to 1956.  As a result during WWI and WWII it denied access to its opponents in those wars. (So much for treaties.)  In 1956 Gamal Abdel Nasser, the president of Egypt, nationalized the Suez Canal, causing what the world knew as the Suez Canal Crisis. For a period of nearly  a year the canal was closed and you can imagine what a monkey wrench that threw into world trade.

In the subsequent years conflicts between Israel and the Arab countries have caused some problems but for the most part the canal has remained open.  A couple of years ago a container ship called the Ever Given ran aground and blocked traffic in both directions for six days.  Can you imagine the back up that created?  Lawsuits are still flying because of that.

So what do you see as you sail through the canal?  The first time I came through nearly 10 years ago we saw sand, sand, and more sand.  The last time I went through on Al’s and my last cruise there was a lot of construction going on on the Sinai side which is the one we faced.  A large city was being built.  This time I’m on the Sinai side again and the city looks well-populated.  Apparently the other side is also grown up and ferries run back and forth. About midway along the northern half of the canal is a big bridge officially known as the Egyptian-Japanese Friendship Bridge. We passed under it as we made our transit and I couldn’t see many cars on it but it was impressive.

A little compound along the canal

This city was under construction last time I came this way

Looks pretty lived in now. See the laundry hanging. I wonder what happens ina sand storm.

The man in the archway was watching us intently and making a shrill whistle which at first I though was some kind of eagle calling

One of the many ferries taking people, cars and trucks across

A statue commemorating something along the shoreline

More bridge pictures than you ever wanted to see

And another one

And then there was sand, but no Lawrence and no camels

About our transit.  We were supposed to begin at 4 AM on Thursday, the 23rd.  We finally got underway around 11:30 AM on that day.  The official story is that the northbound convoy (ships go through in convoys) was delayed.  I’m going to be a little of a conspiracy theorist here and say that I think maybe we were delayed because the friendly Houthis down in Yemen fired 8 attack drones at ships in the Red Sea and one of our US Navy ships took the drones out.  That sounds far more exciting than that someone feel asleep at the switch on a freighter heading north.  Whatever, we did as a result do most of our transit in daylight.  

I’ve always loved the movie Lawrence of Arabia and I can remember how disappointed I was the first time we sailed through here because I fully expected that on the Sinai side I would see white-robed men riding along on camels with their rolling walk.  No Lawrence, no white floaty robed men at all and not a single camel was in sight. So much for girlish dreams.

I guess I’ve bored you enough.  I’ve been to a couple of lectures and I’ve played trivia.  I’ve danced in the evening and those have been my accomplishments for the last few days.  We’re in the Red Sea now heading to Safaga, Egypt.   That’s all for now.