A ship canal is a canal especially constructed to carry ocean-going ships, as opposed to barges. Ship canals can be enlarged barge canals, canalised or channelized rivers, or canals especially constructed from the start to accommodate ships.
For a canal to qualify as a ship canal, it must have a minimum depth of at least 5 metres (16.4 feet), although many are much deeper. The purpose of a ship canal is:
To create a shortcut and avoid lengthy detours.
To create a navigable shipping link between two land-locked seas or lakes.
To provide inland cities with a direct shipping link to the sea.
List of important ship canals:
White Sea-Baltic Canal in Russia, 141 miles (227 km) long, opened in 1933, is partly a canalised river, partly an artificial canal, and partly some natural lakes.
The standard used in the European Union for classifying the navigability of inland waterways is the European Agreement on Main Inland Waterways of International Importance (AGN) of 1996, adopted by The Inland Transport Committee of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), which defines the following classes. (This table is incomplete.)
The length of the canal is 61 miles, the terminus in the Baltic Sea being at the harbor of Kiel.
In this manner chain towage is operated on the summit-level pond of the St. Quentin Canal, on that of the canal connecting the Marne with the Rhine, in the tunnel of Ham, situated on a branch of the canalized Marne; and on the middle scarp in the Douai passage.
The canals from Brussels to Willebroek, from Louvain to the Rupel, from Ghent to Terneuzen, from Ghent to Bruges, from Brussels to Charleroi, and from Maestricht to Boise le Duc, the canalized Sambre, the greater part of the coal canals, and numerous canals of minor importance were constructed before 1830.
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