page_title: Suez Canal Company
section_title: Mechanical Dredging (1864-1869)
hierarchical_section_title: Suez Canal Company / History / Construction (1859-1869) / Mechanical Dredging (1864-1869)
caption_attribution_description: Eröffnung des Suezkanal 1869
context_page_description: The Universal Company of the Maritime Canal of Suez was the concessionary company that constructed the Suez Canal between 1859 and 1869 and operated it until the 1956 Suez Crisis. It was formed by Ferdinand de Lesseps in 1858, and it owned and operated the canal for many years thereafter. Initially, French private investors were the majority of the shareholders, with Egypt also having a significant stake.
  When Isma'il Pasha became Wāli of Egypt and Sudan in 1863, he refused to adhere to portions of the concessions to the Canal company made by his predecessor Said. The problem was referred during 1864 to the arbitration of Napoleon III, who awarded £3,800,000 to the company as compensation for the losses they would incur by the changes to the original grant which Ismail demanded. During 1875, a financial crisis forced Isma'il to sell his shares to the government of the United Kingdom for only £3,976,582.
  The company operated the canal until its nationalization by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956, which led to the Suez Crisis. In 1962, Egypt made its final payments for the canal to the Universal Suez Ship Canal Company and took full control of the Suez Canal.
context_section_description: After Napoleon III's decree in Summer of 1864, the use of corvée labor was restricted. The use of large mechanical dredging machines began to excavate the main canal. In December 1863, Voisin hired Paul Borel and Alexandre Lavalley's company, Borel, Lavalley, and Company, to design, build, and operate the dredging and excavation machines to finish the canal. Borel and Lavalley, like many of the engineers working on the project, were École Polytechnique alumni. These machines were powered by steam from coal in an era before the mass production of machines and machine tools. The men had prior railroad experience and Lavalley, in particular, had customised locomotives, designed lighthouses on the Black Sea, created a tunnel boring machine in Lithuania, and created a machine to dredge ports in Russia. Railroad tracks were laid along the canal route to accommodate some of the machines, whereas others were mounted on barges. The varying soil type necessitated more than a dozen different types of excavation machinery. Nearly 300 of these machines were used in this 5 year dredging period. Their subcontractor excavation price was determined on a price-per-unit basis - francs per cubic meter - which was further varied depending upon the soil type they excavated. Ultimately, Borel, Lavalley, and Company removed 75% of the 74 million cubic meters excavated from the main canal. And most of that work was done between 1867 and 1869. Another French contractor, Alphonse Couvreux, who is credited with the first documented use of a bucket chain excavator on land, employed seven of his excavators to dig about 8 million cubic yards of material from 1863 to 1868.
  During this same period, the jetties for Port Said were also constructed by the Dussaud brothers. They created two jetty structures, one at 1.5 miles in length, and the other at 2 miles in length, by dumping 20-ton concrete blocks in the Mediterranean Sea. The blocks were produced in an assembly line with mechanical elevators to pour in cement, lime, and water. After curing for two months in wooden frames, they were lifted on to barges that dropped them into the sea. 30,000 blocks were used in the jetties.
  In 1867, the company began to develop its fee structure in preparation for opening. During this same year the company had already started to charge fees for transport of goods across the northern almost-completed portion to the separate southern access canal, garnering millions of francs in annual revenue. The company estimated that of the 10 million tons of annual goods shipped around the Cape of Good Hope, half would pass through the canal. After some complaints, a figure of 10 francs per ton and 10 francs per passenger was announced.
  Politically during this period, company workers experienced a cholera outbreak in 1865 that caused the deaths of several hundred Europeans, including Voisin's wife, and more than 1,500 Arabs and Egyptians. The Ottoman sultan approved of the French reconciliation framework in 1866. By 1866 there were about 8,000 Europeans and 10,000 Arab and Egyptians that had settled in the canal region. By 1867 and 1868 the total population in the canal region would grow to 26,000 and 34,000, respectively. As the diversity and number of settlers in the canal region rose, Ismail directed Nubar to begin his decade-long journey of revising the judicial system from a system of capitulations to a system of mixed tribunals. The company made an appeal at the 1867 Universal Exposition of Art and Industry to attempt to sell an additional 100 million francs (4 million pounds) worth of debt in the form of bonds - maturing in 50 years - to finish the project. Remaining unsold bonds were sold in lotteries approved by the French government.
  Two dams prevented the filling of the Great Bitter Lake and thus the completion of the canal, one to the north and one to the south. Rocky terrain was cleared on the Serapeum ridge to the north of the lake for a lake filling ceremony witnessed by Ismail in early 1869. The prince of Wales visited in the Spring of 1869 shortly after the initial
caption: 1869 Inauguration
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