Keil canal
 

A lunch buddy was on a cruiser during the Vietnam war. He also did some sailing around on it including the Kiel Canal which cuts across the jutland peninsula (Denmark I believe). I looked it up and then wondered if it was built before or after the conversion to steam power.

My question is did sailing ships sail in canals before the age of steam? It appears they did but it also looks like that would be pretty tricky.

Traveling
 

Sounds interesting, I hope others chime in with info here .

There are episodes on canals on Modern Marvels. One was on the Atlantic Inner Coastal Canal. I think the planning went to just post Revolutionary times. Some early canals used mules to move the ships in the canals.
Indiana bet big on canals. Was going to be a transportation hub for the Midwest. Unfortunately, railroads came to be. Put Indiana in Bankruptcy.
The Inner Coastal Canal is still in use, as are others. There is a section of the Indiana canal that sees tourist usage by Metamora. Indy has vestiges of the canal.

yes, mules work if the ship is not too big. I suppose after trains were out they might have used steam engines.

Yes, there are a lot of old canals around Indiana. Within 20 miles of my home there are significant remains, including limestone block constructed remains of locks. In the Metamora area there is a bridge carrying the canal across a creek. There is remains of one which went over the Eel(?) river in Logansport. The section through Indy is well maintained and now has extensive development taking advantage of the canal's presence. One can follow canal remains all the way into Ohio, and probably more.

In general I suspect that a modest size sailing vessel might have sailed in a canal if the wind was from the aft or back of the boat. Or very close to it. Otherwise there would be issues I suspect.

Modern sail boats have much better control and abilities while under sail. Remember though that any bridges of the time if present. Meant like today you have to remove the mast to get through most canals.

They were very big projects in their day. All early canals probably have or had pulling paths. I imagine investors lost their shirts on some of them.

Some are still in service of course but not for larger vessels. With perhaps rare exceptions. Since in general the early ones were not deep even poling them along might have been used.

There even exist some spectacular ones where a bathtub of water with the vessel in it is raised or lowered mechanically still in service. The historic ship railway is only about three miles from our cottage. Two steam engines running on parallel tracks where to pull smaller ships over the land. On kind of a massive trailor with railway wheels. A substantial amount of work was completed before they stopped building it. You can look it up on the web I expect as it was kind of unique and famous.

I just had a quick look at ship railway Nova Scotia. On the web. I believe the pictures I saw are well worth looking at.

The canal and locks from rice lake to the georgian bay are really enjoyable, and I suspect you are referring to the lift lock in peterborough which I believe raised the ships 35' or so.

The lift I refer to is somewhere in Europe. Not a conventional type at all. The tub of water with the boat in it would have a counterweight. The tub of water would always have about the same amount of water in it. Something like an elevator. I suspect the only one in the world.

Check out the lift lock in Peterborough. I'm pretty sure it is very much like the one you describe. I have ridden in it.

Canals
 

Interesting thread .

I remember the remains of the (?) Erie Canal in New York state in the late 1950's & 1960's....

Thanx to all for sharing their knowledge of history .

The Erie canal is still in service, although it's mostly used by pleasure craft these days.

The technology of them is simple. They are laid out in the place best suited for a canal so I imagine may not be too expensive to maintain.

Thanx Frank ;

Is it still the original entire length ? .

I wonder what canal it was I'm remembering .

The Erie Canal is still fully functional. You may be thinking about the Delaware and Hudson canal, which cut from coal fields in northern PA and terminated on the Hudson at Kingston. Engineered by John Roebling decades before the Brooklyn Bridge. It survives as a very long ditch. There’s a Roebling bridge that carried the canal above the Delaware, at a height of about 60 ft. It still operates, mostly as a tourist attraction and has been rebuilt for car traffic. It looks like a miniature Brooklyn Bridge, but made of timber.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roebling%27s_Delaware_Aqueduct

Information
 

THANK YOU ! .

Yes, thanks!

The Robelings were very successful Engineers....famous for the Brooklyn Bridge.

I'm rusty but I believe the Kiel canal was built in the early 1900's so the Kaisers fleet could get out of the Baltic without having to go past the Royal Navy.

Looks like we're both right sort of. Parts were built in the 1700 s but was redone and widened for the Kaiser's navy.

History
The first connection between the North and Baltic Seas was constructed while the area was ruled by Denmark–Norway. It was called the Eider Canal, which used stretches of the Eider River for the link between the two seas. Completed during the reign of Christian VII of Denmark in 1784, the Eiderkanal was a 43-kilometre (27 mi) part of a 175-kilometre (109 mi) waterway from Kiel to the Eider River's mouth at Tönning on the west coast. It was only 29 metres (95 ft) wide with a depth of 3 metres (10 ft), which limited the vessels that could use the canal to 300 tonnes.[2]

After 1864 Second Schleswig War put Schleswig-Holstein under the government of Prussia (from 1871 the German Empire), a new canal was sought by merchants and by the German navy, which wanted to link its bases in the Baltic and the North Sea without the need to sail around Denmark.[2]

Construction and expansion
In June 1887, construction started at Holtenau (de), near Kiel. The canal took over 9,000 workers eight years to build. On 20 June 1895 the canal was officially opened by Kaiser Wilhelm II for transiting from Brunsbüttel to Holtenau. The next day, a ceremony was held in Holtenau, where Wilhelm II named it the Kaiser Wilhelm Kanal (after his grandfather, Kaiser Wilhelm I), and laid the final stone.[3] The opening of the canal was filmed by British director Birt Acres; surviving footage of this early film is preserved in the Science Museum in London.[4] The first vessel to pass through the canal was the aviso SMS Jagd; she was sent through in late April, before the canal officially opened, to determine if it was ready for use.

The first Trans-Atlantic sailing ship to pass through the canal was Lilly, commanded by Johan Pitka. Lilly, a barque, was a wooden sailing ship of about 390 tons built 1866 in Sunderland, U.K. She had a length of 127.5 feet (38.9 m), beam 28.7 feet (8.7 m), depth of 17.6 feet (5.4 m) and a 32-foot (9.8 m) keel.[5]

In order to meet the increasing traffic and the demands of the Imperial German Navy, between 1907 and 1914 the canal width was increased. The widening of the canal allowed the passage of a Dreadnought-sized battleship. This meant that these battleships could travel from the Baltic Sea to the North Sea without having to go around Denmark. The enlargement projects were completed by the installation of two larger canal locks in Brunsbüttel and Holtenau.[6]