page_title: Stecknitz Canal
section_title: Barges and drivers
hierarchical_section_title: Stecknitz Canal / Barges and drivers
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Hier stand vor 1904 das Stecknitzfahrer-Amtshaus in Lübeck
context_page_description: The Stecknitz Canal was an artificial waterway in northern Germany which connected Lauenburg and Lübeck on the Old Salt Route by linking the tiny rivers Stecknitz and Delvenau, thus establishing an inland water route across the drainage divide from the North Sea to the Baltic Sea. Built between 1391 and 1398, the Stecknitz Canal was the first European summit-level canal and one of the earliest artificial waterways in Europe. In the 1890s the canal was replaced by an enlarged and straightened waterway called the Elbe–Lübeck Canal, which includes some of the Stecknitz Canal's watercourse.
  The original artificial canal was 0.85 metres deep and 7.5 metres wide; the man-made segment ran for 11.5 kilometres, with a total length of 97 kilometres including the rivers it linked. The canal included seventeen wooden locks that managed the 13-metre elevation difference between its endpoints and the highest central part, the Delvenaugraben.
context_section_description: The original salt barges measured roughly 12 metres (39 ft) by 2.5 metres (8.2 ft), with a 40-centimetre (16 in) draft when loaded to capacity with around 7.5 tons of salt, and required at least ten days to make the journey one way. When traveling uphill or through chamber locks the barges had to be hauled by laborers or animals walking the towpath on the banks of the channel. By the nineteenth century newer vessel designs included rigging that eliminated the need for towing (with sufficient wind).
  In Lauenburg and Lübeck the barges were unloaded and their contents transferred to ships for export down the Elbe and Trave. Stecknitz barge drivers were only permitted to own one barge each, so they could not acquire great wealth in the trade; in the long run this ensured their dependence upon the Lübeck salt merchants, who were not bound by any such limitations and amassed great fortunes. The guild of the Stecknitzfahrer (Stecknitz barge drivers) still exists today in Lübeck and meets annually at the Kringelhöge to celebrate the guild's history.
caption: The Kringelhöge, the old Stecknitz drivers' guild-house in Lübeck
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