Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1894 — Another Great Ship Canal. [ARTICLE]

Another Great Ship Canal.

The great canal between the North and Baltic seas is fast approaching completion, and the engineers say that it will be opened without fail next year. It has no locks or sluices along its course, but at each end there are gates regulating the water level in the canal. The average level will be the same as that in the Baltic. The bed of the canal is 27 feet below normal water level and it has a bottom width of 66 yards. The slope of the sides is either two to one or three to one, and the least depth of water is to be about 16 feet deep. The Baltic trading steamers generally draw less water than this minimum and are of suoh a beam that they can easily pass in the canaL The greatest amount of curvature la made with a radius of 3,000 feet, and 63 per cent, of the canal is straight. During the summer about 5,000 men have been at work on the great ditch, and up to the present time about 100,000,000 cubic yards of excavation have been completed at an expense of about $17,500,000. The entire cost of the canal is estimated at $39,000,000, of which sum Prussia contributes $12,500,000 and the German Empire the balance.