The Emperor and Empress of Russia, on Wednesday, May 27. 1885, the
second anniversary of their coronation at Moscow, opened the Maritime
Canal, in the Bay of Cronstadt, the shallow upper extremity of the Gulf
of Finland, by which great work the city of St. Petersburg is made a
seaport as much as London. St. Petersburg, indeed, stands almost on the
sea shore, at the very mouth of the Neva, though behind several low
islands which crowd the head of the Gulf; and though this is an inland
sea without saltness or tides, it is closed by ice in winter. Seventeen
miles to the west is the island of Cronstadt, a great fortress, with
naval dockyards and arsenals for the imperial fleet, and with a spacious
harbor for ships of commerce. The navigable entrance channel up the
Bay of Cronstadt to the mouth of the Neva lies under the south side of
Cronstadt, and is commanded by its batteries. As the bay eastward has a
depth not exceeding 12 ft., and the depth of the Neva at its bar is but
9 ft., all large vessels have been obliged hitherto to discharge their
cargoes at Cronstadt, to be there transferred to lighters and barges
which brought the goods up to the capital. "The delay and expense of
this process," says Mr. William Simpson, our special artist, "will be
understood by stating that a cargo might be brought from England by a
steamer in a week, but it would take three weeks at least to transport
the same cargo from Cronstadt to St. Petersburg. Of course, much of this
time was lost by custom house formalities. Sometimes it has taken even
longer than is here stated, which made the delivery of goods at St.
Petersburg a matter of great uncertainty, thus rendering time contracts
almost an impossibility. This state of things had continued from the
time of Peter the Great, and his great scheme had never been fully
realized. The increase of commerce and shipping had long made this a
crying evil; but even with all these difficulties, the trade here has
been rapidly growing. A scheme to bring the shipping direct to the
capital had thus become almost a necessity. As Manchester wishes to
bring the ocean traffic to her doors without the intervention of
Liverpool, so St. Petersburg desired to have its steamers sailing up to
the city, delivering and loading their cargoes direct at the stores and
warehouses in her streets. If Glasgow had not improved the Clyde, and
had up to the present day to bring up all goods carried by her ocean
going steamers from Port Glasgow--a place constructed for that purpose
last century, and which is twenty miles from Glasgow--she would have
been handicapped exactly as St. Petersburg has been till now in the
commercial race.
"For some years the subject was discussed at St. Petersburg, and
more than one scheme was proposed; at last the project of General N.
Pooteeloff was adopted. According to this plan, a canal has been cut
through the shallow bottom of the Gulf of Finland, all the way from
Cronstadt to St. Petersburg. The line of this canal is from northwest to
southeast; it may be said to run very nearly parallel to the coast line
on the south side of the Gulf, and about three miles distant from it.
This line brings the canal to the southwest end of St. Petersburg, where
there are a number of islands, which have formed themselves, in the
course of ages, where the Bolshaya, or Great Neva, flows into the Gulf.
It is on these islands that the new port is to be formed. It is a very
large harbor, and capable of almost any amount of extension. It will be
in connection with the whole railway system of Russia. One part of the
scheme is that of a new canal, on the south side of the city, to connect
the maritime canal, as well as the new harbor, with the Neva, so that
the large barges may pass, by a short route, to the river on the east,
and thus avoid the bridges and traffic of the city.
"The whole length of the canal is about eighteen miles. The longer
portion of it is an open channel, which is made 350 feet wide at bottom.
Its course will be marked by large iron floating buoys; these it is
proposed to light with gas by a new self-acting process which has been
very successful in other parts of the world; by this means the canal
will be navigable by night as well as by day. The original plan was to
have made the canal 20 feet deep, but this has been increased to 22
feet. The Gulf of Finland gradually deepens toward Cronstadt, so that
the dredging was less at the western end. This part was all done by
dredgers, and the earth brought up was removed to a safe distance by
means of steam hopper barges. The contract for this part of the work
was sublet to an American firm--Morris and Cummings, of New York. The
eastern portion of the work on the canal is by far the most important,
and about six miles of it is protected by large and strong embankments
on each side. These embankments were formed by the output of the
dredgers, and are all faced with granite bowlders brought from Finland;
at their outer termination the work is of a more durable kind, the
facing is made of squared blocks of granite, so that it may stand the
heavy surf which at times is raised by a west wind in the Gulf. These
embankments, as already stated, extend over a space of nearly six miles,
and represent a mass of work to which there is no counterpart in the
Suez Canal; nor does the plan of the new Manchester Canal present
anything equivalent to it. The width of this canal also far exceeds any
of those notable undertakings. The open channel is, as stated above, 350
ft. wide; within the embankments the full depth of 22 ft. extends to 280
ft., and the surface between the embankments is 700 ft. This is nearly
twice the size of the Suez Canal at the surface, which is 100 meters,
or about 320 ft., while it is only about 75 ft. at the bottom; the
Amsterdam Canal is 78 ft. wide. The new Manchester Canal is to be 100
ft. of full depth, and it boasts of this superiority over the great work
of Lesseps. The figures given above will show how far short it comes of
the dimensions of the St. Petersburg Canal. The Manchester Canal is to
be 24 ft. in depth; in that it has the advantage of 2 ft. more than the
St. Petersburg Canal; but with the ample width this one possesses, this,
or even a greater depth, can be given if it should be found necessary.
Most probably this will have ultimately to be done, for ocean going
steamers are rapidly increasing in size since the St. Petersburg Canal
was planned, and in a very few years the larger class of steamers might
have to deliver their cargoes at Cronstadt, as before, if the waterway
to St. Petersburg be not adapted to their growing dimensions.
[Illustration: THE ST. PETERSBURG AND CRONSTADT MARITIME CANAL, OPENED
BY THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA, ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 1885.]
"The dredging between the embankments of the canal was done by an
improved process, which may interest those connected with such works. It
may be remembered that the Suez Canal was mostly made by dredging, and
that the dredgers had attached to them what the French called 'long
couloirs' or spouts, into which water was pumped, and by this means the
stuff brought up by the dredgers was carried to the sides of the canal,
and there deposited. The great width of the St. Petersburg Canal was too
much for the long couloirs, hence some other plan had to be found. The
plan adopted was that invented by Mr. James Burt, and which had been
used with the greatest success on the New Amsterdam Canal. Instead of
the couloir, floating pipes, made of wood, are in this system employed;
the earth or mud brought up has a copious stream of water poured on it,
which mixes in the process of descending, and the whole becomes a thick
liquid. This, by means of a centrifugal pump, is propelled through the
floating pipes to any point required, where it can be deposited. The
couloir can only run the output a comparatively short distance, while
this system can send it a quarter of a mile, or even further, if
necessary. Its power is not limited to the level surface of the water.
I saw on my visit to the canal one of the dredgers at work, and the
floating pipes lay on the water like a veritable sea-serpent, extending
to a long distance where the stuff had to be carried. At that point the
pipe emerged from the water, and what looked very much like a vertebra
or two of the serpent crossed the embankment, went down the other side,
and there the muddy deposit was pouring out in a steady flow. Mr. Burt
pointed out to me one part of the works where his pump had sent the
stuff nearly half a mile away, and over undulating ground. This system
will not suit all soils. Hard clay, for instance, will not mix with the
water; but where the matter brought up is soft and easily diluted, this
plan possesses many advantages, and its success here affords ample
evidence of its merits.
"About five miles below St. Petersburg, a basin had been already
finished, with landing quays, sheds, and offices; and there is an
embankment connecting it with the railways of St. Petersburg, all ready
for ships to arrive. When the ships of all nations sail up to the
capital, then the ideas of Peter the Great, when he laid the foundations
of St. Petersburg, will be realized. St. Petersburg will be no longer an
inland port. It will, with its ample harbor and numerous canals among
its streets, become the Venice of the North. Its era of commercial
greatness is now about to commence. The ceremony of letting the waters
of the canal into the new docks was performed by the Emperor in October,
1883. The Empress and heir apparent, with a large number of the Court,
were present on the occasion. The works on the canal, costing about a
million and a half sterling, were begun in 1876, and have been carried
out under the direction of a committee appointed by the Government,
presided over by his Excellency, N. Sarloff. The resident engineer is M.
Phofiesky; and the contractors are Messrs. Maximovitch and Boreysha."
We heartily congratulate the Russian government and the Russian nation
upon the accomplishment of this great and useful work of peace. It will
certainly benefit English trade. The value of British imports from the
northern ports of Russia for the year 1883 was £13,799,033; British
exports, £6,459,993; while from the southern ports of Russia our trade
was: British imports, £7,177,149; British exports, £1,169,890--making a
total British commerce with European Russia of £20,976,182 imports from
Russia and £7,629,883 exports to Russia. It cannot be to the interest of
nations which are such large customers of each other to go to war
about a few miles of Afguhan frontier. The London _Chamber of Commerce
Journal_, ably edited by Mr. Kenric B. Murray, Secretary to the Chamber,
has in its May number an article upon this subject well deserving of
perusal. It points out that in case of war most of the British export
trade to Russia would go through Germany, and might possibly never again
return under British control. In spite of Russian protective duties,
this trade has been well maintained, even while the British import
of Russian commodities, wheat, flax, hemp, tallow, and timber, was
declining 40 per cent. from 1883 to 1884. The St. Petersburg Maritime
Canal will evidently give much improved facilities to the direct export
of English goods to Russia. Without reference to our own manufactures,
it should be observed that the Russian cotton mills, including those of
Poland, consume yearly 264 million pounds of cotton, most of which comes
through England. The importation of English coal to Russia has afforded
a noteworthy instance of the disadvantage hitherto occasioned by the
want of direct navigation to St. Petersburg; the freight of a ton of
coal from Newcastle to Cronstadt was six shillings and sixpence, but
from Cronstadt to St. Petersburg it cost two shillings more. It is often
said, in a tone of alarm and reproach, that Russia is very eager to get
to the sea. The more Russia gets to the sea everywhere, the better it
will be for British trade with Russia; and friendly intercourse with
an empire containing nearly a hundred millions of people is not to be
lightly rejected.--_Illustrated London News_.
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