The first proposal to build a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth dates from the 7th century BC. This project was abandoned, and a road – along which the ships of the day could be towed – was built instead.
A further attempt was abandoned around 300 BC for fear of flooding. In later times, various Roman leaders – including Julius Caesar and Caligula – planned to build a canal through the Isthmus; Caesar's plans were abandoned following his assassination, and Caligula cancelled his project after his Egyptian experts calculated (wrongly) that the sea level on the northern side of the isthmus was significantly higher than that on the south.
The first actual attempt to construct the canal was made by Nero, in AD 67. He personally broke the ground with a pickaxe, and removed the first basket–load of soil, but the work was discontinued following Nero's death shortly afterwards.
The idea of a canal was revived after Greece gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1830, and gained momentum following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. For mainly financial reasons construction didn't actually begin until 1882, but even then the financial difficulties persisted, and the canal was only completed in 1893.
Even this was not the end of the canal's troubles. The narrowness of the canal makes navigation difficult; there are tidal currents due to the different times of the tides at each end, and traffic is restricted to one convoy at a time on a one–way system. The high limestone walls channel the wind, and have been unstable from the start – not least because the isthmus is an active seismic zone; this problem is exacerbated by the wake of the ships passing through. Consequently the anticipated traffic failed to materialise to anything like the volume expected.
The canal suffered considerable damage during World War II, when its walls and bridges were subject to both British and German attacks at different times. It reopened in 1948, having been repaired by the US Army, but it is unable to accommodate modern ocean freighters and today it is used mainly by tourist ships. In 2019, the cruise ship MS Braemar – owned by the UK–based Norwegian company Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines – became the largest ship ever to pass through the canal. (With a length of just under 200 metres and a gross tonnage of 24,344, the Braemar is relatively small by modern standards; Symphony of the Seas, the world's biggest cruise ship, is 361 metres in length and its gross tonnage is just over 228,000.)
In total around 11,000 ships a year (an average of around 30 per day) pass through the Corinth Canal today.
© Haydn Thompson 2020