Egypt – Discover Dredging

The Good Side And The Bad Side Of A Statue At Port Said

Statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps in a garden at Port Said Shipyard

As you’ve probably already guessed, I am quite fond of old stuff. Especially when it has some relation to dredging. Last post on Omar’s graduation1 not only brought back my memories on the interesting lectures by professor de Koning2, it also rekindled my inspiration to write about something that I have up my sleeve for a long time already. Although, due to the current global turmoil3, the message that I want to convey has been drastically altered. It turns out to be more of an opinion than an informative perspective on the history of the Suez Canal.

It was in the early years of my career, that I was building dredge ‘10^th of Ramadan’ for the Suez Canal Authority4. We designed the dredge and prepared the components at Damen Dredging Equipment5, but the actual construction took place at Port Said Shipyard6, a subsidiary of the client. I’ve spent many hours roaming over the yard to locate components that were sent there and we needed them to inspect or install. On one of those excursions, I encountered the statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps.

Ferdinand De Lesseps was an interesting figure7, who owed his success to being the right person at the right time at the right place. In his earlier career, during a quarantine period in 1832 in Alexandria, he received a book that discussed Napoleons ideas about connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea8. Captivated by this idea, he was able to use his connections and positions to get the concession to dig the canal as we know it in 1859. In honour of this achievement a impressive statue was placed at the beginning of the Canal at the Port Said side after the opening in 1869.

As it happened in those days, the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez, claimed the canal and all involved land and business for the French government. All revenue from the Canal ended up in France and not in the country that had worked so hard for the Canal. This has been a great disappointment for Egypt. When Nasser declared the Suez Canal a national property in 1956, the statue was removed as a gesture that Egypt was independent and no European country had any business ruling it as a colony. In a careful act of historical awareness, the statue was not destroyed, but placed at the Port Side Shipyard to be taken care of until the future would find an appropriate purpose. There it is kept in honour by a select group of craftsmen, who depend for their subsistence on his legacy.

Statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps at the entrance of the Suez Canal (Credit: Google)

In 1956 it was not so much vandalism by the people that the statue was removed from public space.7 It was a statement by a public conscious government with history awareness that prevented further harm from mindless destruction. Now, over half a century later, we see more acts of iconoclasm to historical statues, and then in a so called civilized world… A lot of historical figures were children of their own time. And for sure, those times were not very civilized in hindsight. OK, I am history aware and enjoyed my history lessons. There I had to learn that the raids of the barbarians on Rome, the Crusades to occupied Jerusalem and the iconoclasm in our own Reformation era were to be condemned. So, imagine when a lot of historical figures were removed from the street by emotional destruction, would later generations not condemn us in turn? What I would find even worse, is that future generations would not be aware of the dark side of those old ages as there are no statues to remind them to it. Maybe we can reintroduce a penalty for those ‘heroes’ from their own days: ‘the pillory’9. Just as with all sentences, the penalty can only awarded by the government, or an appointed committee, not the public. If that fails, store them under the custody of people who take good care of them without reverence. And at least let the pedestal remain to remind people of their history. ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ (George Santayana)10

Possible implementation of a statue with a pillory sign?

References

Graduation Omar Karam: Rock Cutting The Egyptian Way

Egypt is a great nation when it comes to ancient engineering. No other country has such a concentration of impressive monuments and such an interesting history as over there. If you are not convinced that modern Egyptians are not capable of great engineering feats you are wrong. Last Monday, Omar Karam graduated at our R&D department of Damen Dredging Equipment1 on his thesis about ‘CSD Rock Cutting.’

Cutting processes have been extensively described by Sape Miedema in ‘The Delft Sand, Clay & Rock Cutting Model’2. Omar has been using the frame work of Miedema to make some useful tools for the estimation of the production of our dredging equipment in rock. In due time, you will find the results of his thesis in the online dredge selection tool ‘Sandy’. Omar’s curiosity and ingenuity does not end here. He will continue studying at a university, but I do hope to meet him again, as he would be a valuable asset for our dredging community. Keep an eye out for him.

Program structure diagram of cutting force calculations

His graduation brings me back to my first lessons in dredging technology at the Delft University of Technology by the illustrious professor de Koning. In a sense he was an old school engineer, who hammered it in to us that thinking is done by doing it with your hands3. Back than the Polytechnic School was just rebranded to University and he was mocking that as a university, we had to set the topics in a broader perspective. So, he started his introduction on cutting technology with some slides of the unfinished obelisk at Aswan4 as every aspect of the cutting process could be illustrated.

The story according to de Koning is: ‘Around the quarry of the obelisk, they have found diorites5. These are some sort of volcanic balls of rock. In combination with the marks and scratches all around the obelisk, archaeologists believe these stones have been used to pound the granite. The impact compresses the bedrock and the resulting stresses fracture the contact surface(1). For every hit a whiff of dust is created. Eventually the dust is collected and scooped away for the next layer. Next, trees would be planted in the trench on one side of the obelisk. The growing root system displaces volume and create shear stress underneath the obelisk that would sever the obelisk from the bed rock(2). At last the trees are removed and dry wooden dowels would have been inserted in the shear cracks. Saturating the wooden dowels will make them grow. The last strands of rock will now be broken due to tensile stresses(3). Repeated insertion of new dry dowels and saturating them will lift the whole obelisk enough to pull some ropes under and carry the obelisk away to the building site.’

Although the diorites and the scratch marks are a smoking gun, current archaeologists argue about the feasibility of this process as experiments yield a very low production and it is doubted that the obelisk could be finished in the lifetime of the client6. Even if disputed, de Koning told a story that conveys the message; I vividly remember it and makes me understand the rock cutting process.

These mysterious monolithic ornamental spires have been an inspiration for many legends and stories. When we have solved the riddle of the rock cutting with diorite balls, it may inspire the development of new rock cutting technology for the dredging community and we can put the story of the obelisks to an end.7

End of the story on the cutting of obelisks (Credit: Uderzo)

References

The Ancient History of the Cutter Suction Dredge ‘10th of Ramadan’

Last week I was away to Egypt. I have some emotional ties with Egypt. It took me the better part of seven years, to deliver the cutter suction dredge ‘10th of Ramadan’1, to the Suez Canal Authority. This all started from the qualification tender, building it at the Port Side Shipyard in cooperation with DTC, eventually all the way through the guarantee period. At a certain moment, I was so occupied with this dredge, I even prepared a paper model of the vessel in my own spare time.

Presentation of the paper model of ‘10th of Ramadan’

This nerdy pastime served a practical purpose. The specifications of the construction and the requirements for the installed equipment, were very complicated and it helped me to understand the problems in the hull construction before they arose in reality. The environment of the Suez Canal demands some specific requirements concerning tank and space division. Furthermore, the SCA is very aware of the capabilities of the crew and demands corresponding considerations on equipment and systems. To fit this all in the prescribed box, was quite a puzzle. The normal operational environment of the dredge is maintenance on the shallow shelves of the Suez Canal.

The maximum box size, that made the design so tricky was determined by a certain lock to access the irrigation system along the Suez Canal. On the west side of the canal, water from the River Nile is diverted to the fertile land over there. Already in ancient Egypt, this was a much treasured area. Joseph gave this area than called Land of Goshen to his family to live there2. Senausert III, Pharaoh of Egypt (1874 B.C.) also saw the potential of this area and used it to established a connection, between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea by linking branches of the Nile to the Bitter Lakes3. Subsequent kings renovated and expanded the canal, that eventually became known as the ‘Canal of the Pharaos’4. Unlike the international importance of the current Suez Canal, the Canal of the Pharaos was mainly used for local transport of produce of the irrigated land and construction stones from quarries on the Red Sea coast to the monuments along the Nile.

Canal of the Pharaos (Credit: Wikipedia)

In fact, the ancient Egyptians might be called the inventors of dredging canals for transportation, preceding the Chinese by about 1000 years5. Parts of the canal are still there. They are now incorporated into the irrigation system, that the Suez Canal Authority has to maintain, next to the big Suez Canal. In a way, I feel honoured, that the dredge that was once only a figment of my imagination and became a reality, will one day keep this ancient piece of Egyptian history alive and preserve it for future generations. Well, that may be a bit presumptuous, but I still feel proud over this dredge and have fond memories of the people from the Suez Canal Authority I have worked with.

OK, I may have pestered my colleagues so much with my stories about Egypt and my little dredge, they even prepared a cover for a book for me to write about it on my work anniversary.

Tag: Egypt

The Good Side And The Bad Side Of A Statue At Port Said

References

See also

Graduation Omar Karam: Rock Cutting The Egyptian Way

References

See also

The Ancient History of the Cutter Suction Dredge ‘10th of Ramadan’

References

See also