Shipping canal projects in the Alps
Up until the 20th century, shipping canal projects in the Alps were an attempt to make it easier for goods to cross the Alps . Due to the expansion of the road and rail network and the subordinate importance of inland navigation in the Alpine region, such efforts are largely forgotten today.
Historical significance of inland shipping in the Alpine region
Up until the 20th century, shipping in the Alps was far more important than it is today.
The large lakes in particular, some of which extend far into the Alps from the edge of the Alps, were an important stage in Alpine traffic until well into the 20th century. Unlike the sometimes adventurous and dangerous overland routes, the routes across the water were comparatively safe, comfortable and were always popular. The Alps were of great importance as a supplier of wood: large areas of Europe were deforested ; the need for wood for heating, shipbuilding, house building, mining and much more was great; in many places there was a lack of wood . Even relatively small rivers were used to transport wood “downhill”.
River navigation was also of greater importance in the past. Even the Romans towed on the Rhine to Chur , where goods were loaded onto carts and wagons and travelers mounted horses or wagons. The Save and the Drava were also important waterways.
In the Middle Ages and early modern times, the rivers were not only used for simple timber rafting , but were also used by barges deep into the Alps . For example, a large part of the traffic on the Brenner route was handled with barges that carried the Inn to Hall and the Adige to Bozen . Around the year 1300, the citizens of Hall emphasized that their main source of income was precisely this river navigation. Hall was the end point for the ships called 'Hohenauerinnen', which with a length of 40 m could hold up to 800 quintals - which corresponded to about 30 wagon loads. These ships were hauled by 20 horses on their journey uphill from Kufstein to Hall, with the road conditions at that time more than six times as many horses were needed for land transport. In addition, there was greater comfort for travelers and the time saved, especially when traveling downhill, where the Hall – Kufstein route only took six hours. Also from Verona is reported that the city benefited greatly from the Adige. Spacious barges came from Venice , if the Etsch allowed it, to Bozen. They transported travelers and a variety of goods.
With the advent of the railway, this river navigation disappeared quite quickly (see history of the Swiss railway , -in Austria , -in Germany ). The mountain rivers carry too little and irregular water, obstacles in the watercourse and the steep gradient made the rivers navigable only for barges with very shallow drafts and small dimensions. Water management and canalization of the Alpine rivers in the last 100 years have given the rivers a relatively stable and in some cases even sufficient water level in an obstacle-free bed, which, from a purely technical point of view, would allow limited river navigation. On the Tyrolean Inn, for example, shipping was again operated from 1998 to 2011, but this only served tourist purposes. Overall, the importance of river navigation in the Alpine region is negligible today; only a few sections of waterways, mostly navigable to a limited extent, reach into the peripheral regions of the Alps.
Importance of canals in the Alps
Shipping canal projects were important as the Alpine passes created large gaps in the network of navigable rivers that had to be crossed by land. Due to the height of these passes and the resulting problems, however, these projects could never be carried out.
A whole series of canals were planned and even built in the Alps. However, these mostly served the purpose of draining or irrigating landscapes or lakes, such as the Waale in Vinschgau , and in fact never that of river navigation and were mostly too small for that.
The Canal du Stockalper
One of the few exceptions is the Canal du Stockalper , which flows into Lake Geneva . This channel goes back to the Swiss entrepreneur Kaspar Stockalper (1609–1691) and was primarily intended to serve the Stockalper trading empire with its route across the Simplon . Stockalper planned to use the canal, which was barely two meters wide, to peg goods on flat barges in order to reload them onto larger ships in Lake Geneva. But Stockalper was probably planning to widen the canal at a later date to make it accessible to the ships on Lake Geneva. However, the canal was never completed, in the years 1651-1659 only eight kilometers between Collombey and Vouvry could be completed. As a result, the structure was hardly used and was abandoned twenty years later.
Transhelvetic Channel
Strictly speaking, the project of a Trans-Helvetic Canal does not go through the Alps, but only affects them - in the north. It was to cut through the low mountain range between the Alps and the Jura and connect the river systems of the Rhine and Rhone .
A first attempt at this can be seen in the Canal d'Entreroches , which the Dutch saw in the 17th century as a shortcut waterway on the way to the Mediterranean Sea and on to India . For the Dutch, the route so far has led across the Atlantic past hostile English, French and Spanish. As if that weren't enough, there were plenty of pirates and buccaneers. On the continent, the canals and also the roads led through Burgundy and Belgium, which were also ruled by Spain . Holland planned and built a trans-European connection through Switzerland . Although the construction of the canals over the watershed and it was only a good 20 km to Lake Geneva, construction had to be stopped for lack of money.
In the shadow of the construction of the Main-Danube Canal and the expansion and construction of further trans-European connections, the discussion about a Trans-Helvetic Canal , which would in fact be identical to the Canal d'Entreroches, got underway again. Of the 400 km long canal stretch, 100 km over the already existing Zihl Canal as well as other small canals and river sections of the Aare are navigable, plus the many lakes on the route. The top of the canal would have been 443 m and would have crossed under the watershed in a short tunnel. First of all, the old canal was opened up with a hiking trail, which partly includes the never-finished canal route to Lake Geneva. In 2006 the plan for a Trans-Helvetic Canal was abandoned.
Alpine cross-channel projects
Maloja Inn Canal
The idea of a canal crossing the Alps was first raised in 1713. The Austrian line of the Habsburgs had just received the former Spanish Lombardy and was now looking for an efficient and direct connection from Vienna to Milan . The project of an “Inn-Maloja Canal” was born, which should enable ships to travel from Vienna via the Danube and Inn to Tyrol, through the Engadine and across the Malojapass to Lake Como . From Lake Como canal connections to the Po and its tributaries would have been possible without any problems , so this canal would also have provided access to the Adriatic Sea . In times when even lowland canals presented engineers with great difficulties and the very few roads in the Alps could be made passable, a canal over the Malojapass was hardly to be seriously considered.
Splügen Canal
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Italian engineer Pietro Caminada planned a transalpine waterway from the Mediterranean to Lake Constance . The port city of Genoa had reckoned with the opening of the Suez Canal that there would be a sharp increase in throughput, a calculation that was only marginally successful. In order to divert trade in southern Germany nonetheless, a canal was planned that would have offered southern Germany much shorter access to the Mediterranean than the previously existing connections across the Rhine. The canal was supposed to cross the main Alpine ridge at one of the Bündner passes by means of a tunnel. The beginning of the canal would have been near Genoa, from there it would have risen along the Polcevera to the Ligurian Giovipass . After this would have been crossed with a tunnel, it should descend along the Scrivia to the Po. The planners wanted the canal to reach Lake Como via Milan and Lecco , at the end of which the ascent of the Alps would begin. Along the valleys of the Mera and Liro rivers , the Splügen should be reached, which should be crossed under with a longer tunnel. The northern continuation of this Alpine cross channel was to take place along the Rhine valley via Chur into Lake Constance, for which access to the navigable Rhine was planned. Another shipping route out of Lake Constance, which was already planned at the time, was the Danube Side Canal , which was supposed to connect Lake Constance with the Danube.
Greina or San Bernardino Canal
The project attracted a lot of attention and the canton of Ticino proposed changes that would have led the Alpine Cross Canal into its territory. In 1906, Ticino proposed that the canal should flow into Lake Maggiore instead of Lake Como . The Greina Pass was to be reached along the Ticino and Brenno rivers, and a longer tunnel was also planned to pass under it. North of the Greina Pass, the canal was supposed to flow into the Vorderrhein in order to use the originally planned route from Chur in the further course. An alternative variant of the Ticino wanted to reach the San Bernardino via the rivers Ticino and Moësa , which should also be crossed with a longer tunnel. The north ramp of the alternative proposal would then inevitably have used the already planned route to Lake Constance.
Gotthard Canal
Alternatively, the Gotthard Pass was also considered as a route to cross the Alps. In this case, the route would have run from Lake Maggiore via Lake Lucerne to Basel . In 1905 a corresponding project was presented by the Italian engineer Caminada.
Technical problems and possible solutions
In view of the larger canals of the lowlands, which with their huge lock stairs and ship lifts only overcome a height difference of a few dozen meters, the effort that a cross-alpine canal would have required with climbs of hundreds of meters becomes clear. Conventional chamber locks are inadequate for such a project; For the ascent between Milan and the southern tunnel portal alone, well over 100 locks would have been necessary. Ship lifts are also not very practical with the height difference to be overcome, a few dozen such structures would have had to be built.
However, the project's engineer, the Italian Caminada, had come up with a different solution: the enormous differences in height were to be overcome by inclined tunnels. These were planned as double tunnels, which would have enabled one-way traffic. While in one tunnel a ship descended into the valley on a column of water to be drained, the drained water from one tunnel was to be pumped into the other tunnel. With additional water let in from the mountain side, the water column there would have risen and a ship would have taken hundreds of meters to higher altitudes. The extremely enormous water pressure and demand, which would have made such a pipe system necessary, could have been reduced with several 'intermediate' gates.
The construction of inclined ship lifts was not suggested by Caminada, but was better tested at the time. Large troughs would have been pulled up the mountain or down into the valley via tracks and cables, similar to a normal ship lift. A double system would have saved a lot of energy here, this variant would have saved a lot of water anyway, and a tunnel system would not have been absolutely necessary, as Caminada's project absolutely required. A 15-kilometer-long double tunnel with a top height of 1247 meters was planned for the crossing under the Splügen Pass. Large parts of the canal would have been built on a slope, which would have required a variety of viaducts, similar to the Lötschbergsüdrampe . The enormous water requirement of such a canal could have been regulated with the construction of reservoirs and drainage channels, just as the enormous energy requirement of the lock systems could have been obtained to a large extent from the energy of the water flowing down the valley. With certain adaptations, the sewer could even have generated more energy than it would have consumed itself, which would have opened up another source to recoup the costs of building the sewer.
The interest in the project and the construction of a transverse Alpine canal was not only great in upper Italy and Ticino, but also in Germany . The Berlin Royal Building Councilor Max Contag certified the feasibility of Caminada's project in a report. The costs would probably have been financially viable, even if at 400 to 550 million lire they would have been considerably higher than those of an additional Alpine railway. Since the canal should only have a maximum height of less than 1,300 m, it would have been usable for a large part of the year. In view of the enormous importance of inland shipping at the time and the extremely large catchment area of such an Alpine cross channel, it could have counted on good utilization. It would have shortened the route from the Rhenish ports to the Mediterranean and beyond that to the Indian Ocean a lot; on the other hand, the route from the Danube ports to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic would also have been considerably shortened; the canal would have given the whole of European inland navigation a degree of vitality that would have continued to this day. In view of today's extensive, if only half-hearted, efforts to revitalize inland navigation, and in view of the enormous labor demand that the construction of a cross-Alpine canal would entail, Caminada's project could well be discussed again after a century or more.
swell
- ↑ Paul Gleirscher: Immersed History. To the beginnings of fishing and shipping in the Alpine region . Ed .: State Museum of Carinthia. Provincial Museum of Carinthia, Klagenfurt 2006, ISBN 3-900575-33-9 (catalog for the special exhibition "Submerged History" in the Provincial Museum of Carinthia, May 5 to September 3, 2006).
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated November 13, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Inn shipping finally discontinued tirol.orf.at on November 9, 2011
- ↑ Hans-Ulrich Schiedt: Waterways. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- ↑ The Transhelvetic Canal: Freight Ships Across Switzerland? schlossmuseumnidau.ch, Vision Seenland> Exhibition Texts, 2008, p. 15., accessed February 1, 2020.
- ↑ a b c Steffan Bruns: Alpine passes - from the mule track to the base tunnel. Vol. 5.
- ↑ Steffan Bruns: Alpine passes - from the mule track to the base tunnel. P. 5.
- ↑ http://www.nzzfolio.ch/www/d80bd71b-b264-4db4-afd0-277884b93470/showarticle/1258d936-7ce6-42e3-bb21-124bb3b32616.aspx
Regarding the project of the Alpine Cross Canal: from the report of the building council Contag, which can be viewed in the Berlin State Library and provides many other details.
Another link: Trans-Helvetic Channel on memreg.ch
literature
- Matthias Daum: Splügen is by the sea . In: The time . No. 31/2015 . Zeitverlag Gerd Bucerius, July 30, 2015, ISSN 0044-2070 .
- Andreas Teuscher: Switzerland by the Sea - Plans for the “Central Harbor” of Europe including the crossing of the Alps in the 20th century . Limmat Verlag, Zurich 2014, ISBN 978-3-85791-740-0 .
- Kurt Wanner: Pietro Caminada and his “via d'acqua transalpina” - a little-known chapter in the history of the Splügen Pass. In: Bündner Monatsblatt , 2/2005.