Latest / Be Amazed / World’s Most Important Waterways

Transcript

World’s Most Important Waterways · Be Amazed

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you order something online, how does it get to you?
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: By road?
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's flown in.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, might not think it, but a staggering ninety percent of all globally traded goods are carried by ships, many of which rely on intricate country waterways to get for me to be.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: These often giant are sometimes surprisingly tiny waterways are used to cut down travel times so that your Amazon package gets to you faster.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that's not all they're built for.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: From providing impossible looking passageways across countries to the narrow streets, giant ships are launched in, let's take a look at some of the most important waterways and how they've changed the world around them.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Considered one of the most ambitious construction projects in history, the fifty mile long Panama Canal provides a route between the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean, significantly reducing the distance and time required for ships to pass between the two.
• 1:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: How significantly?
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well before its completion in nineteen fourteen ships had to go the long way round, all the way down to South America's Cape Horn.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: It took ten long years of drilling through solid rock with more than three and a half billion cubic feet of dirt removed, creating a trench two hundred and ninety feet wide, ten stories deep, and more than a hundred and thirty football fields in length.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this was all done with dynamite pig axes and your great granddaddy's co-powered steam shovels.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: But by providing a link through Panama, the journey between the two oceans was shortened by a whopping nine thousand miles.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: What would have been a two-month voyage over the dangerous waves and violent winds of the cape had been reduced to a ten-hour canal crossing?
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Who doesn't love a shortcut?
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It does, however, come at a price, depending on the size of the vessel it can cost between five hundred to eight hundred thousand dollars to use.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's a steep toll for sure.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the savings in distance, time, and fuel make this can now as efficiency a worthwhile expense.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Though you have to ask, why is it so expensive?
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Part of it is because the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are actually different heights.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the Panama Canal is fitted with a series of locks which are essentially tiny chambers, less than a thousand feet long and a hundred and ten feet wide.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Each has a gate that allows water in or out to lift and lower boats to different water levels.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: When the boat needs to be lifted, an inlet gate is opened and water is led into the chamber raising the vessel.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: When it needs to be lowered, the outlet gate is opened and water is released from the chamber.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: As you can imagine, there's a lot of water that needs to be shifted, and the locks need to be well maintained hence the hefty price of passage.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's thanks to this amazing feature that massive ships can make a smooth transition from one sea to the next.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: This doesn't stop larger vessels over a hundred feet wide from sometimes looking stuck though.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Use primarily for U.S.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: ships to travel to Asia, this ten-year mammoth construction project now sees thirteen to fourteen thousand ships pass through it each year, with an average two-point-six billion dollars made in traffic revenue.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can I make some sort of canal-based joke here?
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or has that ship sailed?
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back at the start of the twentieth century, Texas was home to the Buffalo Bayou, a swampy, marshy waterway which stretched from the coast to the heart of Texas.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it was so badly overgrown, only a few steamboats and shallow draftboats could navigate it.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then in nineteen-on-nine, the potential of having a waterway that could stretch from the Gulf of Mexico to Harris County, Texas suddenly dawned on the locals.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: They spent five years clearing and dredging fifty miles of the bayou until it was some five hundred feet wide and forty five feet deep.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And today the aptly named Houston ship can now as one of America's most efficient waterways, providing a link between Houston and the rest of the world.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: In twenty twenty two it set a record as fifty five million tons of cargo passed through at that year a long.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It links together hundreds of enterprises with its connected industrial complex alone valued at three billion dollars, employing some fifty five thousand people.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today it returns over eight hundred billion dollars in economic value, taking up twenty percent of Texas's total GDP.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: The impact this one channel has had on the mighty U.S.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: of A can't be ignored, especially considering that the port of Houston was the first introduced container shipping in the states.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the channel pretty much opened up the American South and networks all around the world, making the waterways one of the country's busiest.
• 5:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's so vital to Texas's ability to trade worldwide that if it had remained some swampy little by you, its likely Texas would never have experienced the growth and wealth it has done.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now it's said to undergo its eleventh major expansion with a whopping one billion dollar investment.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The project intends to win the channel further to an enormous seven hundred feet.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, just well on earth are they planning on shipping down there, the entire Alamo?
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Between the immense Panama Canal and the incredible Houston ship channel, which do you personally find more impressive?
• 6:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Panama Canal is undeniably iconic, but the effort of all those locals put into the Houston is just as amazing.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm torn.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, pop quiz time.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's the longest man made canal in the entire world?
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Bill No?
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, try this.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's the oldest man made canal in the world?
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Still no idea?
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if I told you the answer to both is the same?
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: No?
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Man, what do they teach kids in school these days?
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The answer is China's Grand Canal, which is one thousand one hundred and fourteen miles long, and was only considered complete after a staggering two thousand years.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those sections are being reconstructed and renovated to this day.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's almost impossible to believe, right?
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, let me lock you up.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, shock you even further.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the Grand Canal was considered the world's largest and most expansive engineering project.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was conceived to unify inland communication for the sweet dynasty empire, as well as descent troops, materials, and food to feed the population.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: construction on this beast began way back in four eighty six BCE.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And with sections built abandoned and rebuilt over the years, it's believed more than nine million people were involved in its construction, then including its twenty one gateways and sixty bridges.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: This waterway runs from Beijing all the way to Hongzhao and connects to a China's largest rivers.
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: The young sea and yellow, with an estimated one hundred thousand vessels passing through each year.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It also transports two hundred and sixty million tons of cargo annually, continually boosting the country's economy.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: At its peak, used during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, approximately four hundred thousand tons of grain were transported along each year.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And its earlier construction history, straw, stone, clay, and earth were all used to build elements of the waterway.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it became such an essential transport length that by nineteen fifty-eight work was underway to allow the canata carry ships that weighed up to six hundred tons each.
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now it can support medium sized barge vessels along its entire length.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whew, that's one grand history.
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It certainly lives up to its name.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, amazing maritime architecture isn't all about trade routes and cargo.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It can also be used to make your morning communities here.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead of building a bridge over the water, the Netherlands has created a bridge of water.
• 9:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: It can be found over the busy Inthrio II Road, which links the mainland to a large artificial island called Fleveland, across the bordering Lake the Louie.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back in the early two thousand engineers wanted a way of connecting Lake the Louie to the Lake Woolmer Witch, for all the maritime traffic which was separated by the road.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: A typical drawbridge wouldn't do that, because some twenty-eight thousand vehicles used the road every day, and waiting for a drawbridge to open and close would cause some serious tailbacks.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they proposed an eighty-two foot long, sixty-two foot wide, and nine feet deep, aqueduct, then would allow vessels to pass over the road, like a bridge built specially for boats.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: and it came out at a better price, too.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Compared to the sixty-one million-dollar aqueduct, a drawbridge with many moving parts can cause hundreds of millions of dollars.
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, design confirmed the Velua-Mir aqueduct was built back in two thousand two, using over seven hundred thousand cubic feet of concrete and steel to hold the water weight above the roadway.
• 10:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: With this mammoth stronghold, it's able to prevent water spilling out the sides onto the highway.
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: No one wants their cars swimming along the roads.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, large ships are unable to cross the aqueduct because they generally have an average draft that is how deep they sit in the water of thirty to fifty feet.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: With the bridge only having a nine feet depth, it's used by small to medium sized vessels only.
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Shame.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Seeing a gigantic cruise ship pass over your car would certainly make the morning commute.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, little more of Enfold.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: The aptly named Volga Dawn Canal is a ship channel that links the Russian rivers of, you guessed it, Volga, and that.
• 10:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It provides the only route through the Caspian and Azov seas to the main oceans, making it a very important shipping route.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: So important, that works initially started all the way back in the sixteenth century.
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some thirty subsequent attempts were made to connect the rivers, but all ended in failure.
• 11:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even Russians are up here to the great tried and failed to connect the two routes.
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It wouldn't be until nineteen forty-eight under Soviet rule that the canal and its facilities would be built and connected.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: and required the manpower of nine hundred thousand people in total.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: With the canal completed just four years later in nineteen fifty two sitting at two hundred sixty two feet wide twenty six feet deep and sixty two miles long.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Much like the Panama Canal the two connected rivers are at different heights so the canal possesses thirteen locks nine of which are used to ascend to the vulga and four used to descend to the dawn.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And while it was completed more than fifty years ago, it still remains one of the most world-changing waterways to this day.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not only did it serve as a symbol of power for the Soviet Union, it provided Russia with valuable links to the international market as a trade route to the Black Sea.
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: This has proved incredibly beneficial to the region's economy and continues to do so.
• 12:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It has prevented ships from sailing all the way around the Caspian Sea, and its power stations generated enough electricity to make most of the mechanisms along the canal, self-sufficient.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Waterway to make a statement.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Rotterdam is a Dutch city that's famous for its many, many, many canals.
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of these waterways called singles were built to prevent the spread of cholera in the nineteenth century.
• 12:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: They did this by cleverly flushing all infected sewage and waters out to sea.
• 12:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, the wind-shotter deep waterway and groaning in is used to release something completely different into its waters.
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ships.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Located on the banks of the canal, the Ferris Smith shipyard is one of the most famous in the world.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have built and launched four hundred and seventy ships and counting, with six to eight delivered every year.
• 13:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: One such trading giant, the Arklow Accord has been built to transport products like wheat and corn on European waterways and is a massive, three hundred and ninety feet in length.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: These ships are seriously impressive, but none is impressive as the way they're launched.
• 13:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see, these ships can reach more than four hundred feet long, but are only around fifty feet wide.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: This makes them perfect to travel the narrow canal straits.
• 13:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, the wind shudder deep is three hundred and twenty-eight feet wide on average, but these gigantic vessels are so narrow, ferrous-smit can launch them in sections that are less than a hundred feet wide.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, they still make a big impact, and because this section of the canal runs right beside a public road, when a giant ship is launched, the splash often hits the other side of it.
• 14:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this fairly thin can now may not look like much, but it can certainly take the weight of Ferris Smith's vessels, which is a feed in itself.
• 14:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the eerie can now might just be one of America's fastest money makers.
• 14:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: The waterway which opened for business in eighteen twenty one links the great lakes to the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean, making it some three hundred and fifty one miles long.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It became an instant success, used by merchant ships.
• 14:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was responsible for reducing the cost of transportation by up to a staggering ninety-five percent.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's ridiculous.
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: But how did it manage this?
• 14:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, back before railroads and water transport were their primary ways, bald goods were shipped, their reliance was on animals, like mules.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now Mules can only carry about two hundred and fifty pounds of goods on land, but they can draw a barge in the water weighing up to sixty thousand pounds, some thirty tons, along a top half.
• 15:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: To carry goods from Buffalo to New York, it cost about a hundred dollars a ton before the area was constructed.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: After its completion, the mule is now capable of hauling two hundred and forty times more cargo per trip, that cost came crashing down to just ten dollars a ton.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's a serious price drop.
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's not this canal's only remarkable legacy.
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The area is responsible for encouraging canal construction statewide after turning New York into a major commercial center.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Many engineers working on the canal went on to construct many other valuable waterways and railroads in the U.S., thanks to their work on the eerie.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Its usage kept strong into the twentieth century, becoming an indispensable shipping route that connected many cities.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nowadays, two earth ships are the main source of traffic, turning the main stretch of the canal into a destination hotspot.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Man, this waterway has had more evolutions than a Pokémon.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It put New York on the map for one, it birthed a whole network of American canal routes from its popularity, and it reduced a two-week stage coach turning to a five-day voyage by water, and saved merchants a literal time.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Consider me eerily impressed.
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now when someone says the name Clong, you may think they're trying to imitate a grandfather club.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: But actually, the clongs refer to a whole network of canals and Thailand, which remarkably predate large roads.
• 16:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's believed they were first dug into the landscape over six hundred years ago, and built by local residents to allow merchant ships to move through the country freely.
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Connected by three large rivers, Chalphria, Mechlong, and Tachin, the one thousand six hundred and eighty-two clongs collectively spanned some one thousand six hundred and eighteen miles in length, and form an impressive spider's web of shipping routes and sewer routes in the capital of Bangkok along.
• 17:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: To this day, food, textiles, pottery, and building materials are all transported to different towns via the canals, even being sold by the water and floating markets.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sounds like something from a sci-fi film, doesn't it?
• 17:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: These clums ruled Thailand's transportation scene before Europeans became increasingly frustrated at having to float everywhere.
• 17:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: With rising Western influence, road started to overtake the canals and some were sadly buried and built over.
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today they function more as a tourist route, which has saved the clongs from falling into this use entirely.
• 17:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, roads only take up a percent of the area of Bangkok, proving that these waterways are still in essential transport system.
• 17:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hector probably quicker than driving too.
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: People live historically live beside these canals, which is one of the scariest things I could think of, who wouldn't be terrified of flooding.
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: But strong embankment stills and barges keep all these homes afloat.
• 18:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tyarchitecture continues to build new flood-resistant houses that are anchored to the shores.
• 18:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fitted with steel pontoons and filled with styrofoam, they can lift the structure nine feet from the ground when water ample trades.
• 18:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whoa, now that's working smarter, not harder.
• 18:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, whatever you do on this next waterway, don't look down.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: This awe-inspiring structure is the, hang on, let me get this right.
• 18:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Pancasolte Aguaduct?
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that'll do.
• 18:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: If there are any Welsh people watching, please rate my Welsh down below.
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: The eighteen arc stone structure was built back in AT&O five and Wales, and at an amazing one hundred and twenty-six feet tall, it still stands as the highest aqueduct in the entire world today.
• 19:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: For the early nineteenth century, this kind of engineering was completely unheard of.
• 19:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was part of a very risky career move from architect Thomas Tellford, who designed this aqueduct for narrow boats carrying coal.
• 19:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Part of the Langolin Canal had made journeys between the steep valley separating northeast Wales and England much easier.
• 19:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: At the time of its completion, the structure was three times the size of existing aqueducts, making tellfords project a crown-breaking achievement.
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today, if you're brave enough, it even sports a foot bath.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The path thankfully has iron railings on one side, but on the other side, nothing.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's completely open to the air and, uh, gravity.
• 19:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even so, mini boats and even paddle borders across the Aquaduct every day.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: With only one set of railings to prevent you going over, and with the channel being only twelve feet wide, it looks more like a dangerous watery tide rope back than a typical Aquaduct voyage.
• 20:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Would you be bold enough to cross this waterway?
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now this next creation can now boast a pretty unique world record.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the deepest waterway in the entire world, at a scary, two hundred and fifty nine feet deep.
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But for all its depth, this waterway called the Corinth Canal is only eighty one feet wide, meaning ships sometimes struggle to squeeze through its slamp passageway, with vessels wider than fifty eight feet unable to cross it all together.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Its jagged walls have also been known to cause landslides blocking the canal itself.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: When ships can successfully pass through the waterway connects the Corinthian Gulf of the Ionian Sea to the Seronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea.
• 20:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: This once prevented ships from having to navigate four hundred miles around the dangerous Peloponies peninsula.
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: The underwater rocks and ragged coastline of which can cause some serious damage.
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was a problem that ships faced a long time ago, as far back as the seventh century BC-E.
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Periander, the ruler of Corinth at the time, knew the treacherous peninsula journey could be avoided by linking the two seas.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the technology needed to carve out such a waterway through more than two hundred and fifty feet of sheer rock was just not advanced enough.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Many tried throughout history, including the Roman Emperor's Nero and Julius Caesar, but none could hack it.
• 21:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Literally.
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Attempts recommenced in eighteen eighty-one, but it was so costly to cut through the rocket literally bankrupted its wannabe builders.
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was finally completed in eighteen ninety-three after countless failed attempts in more than thirty million francs.
• 21:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some hundred seventy-five million dollars today, of course.
• 21:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in long last, Perriander's vision was complete.
• 21:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: This can now might have meant easy for nineteenth century ships to pass through, but certainly not the larger models today, which can reach more than two hundred and twenty-five feet across, almost three times the width of the current.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Despite this, it's still in use since these fifteen thousand ships sailed through a per year.
• 22:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wow, this can now has a rich history that lies deep beneath those beautiful blue waters.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Really, really deep.
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember back in twenty twenty one when headlines were dominated by a global panic?
• 22:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, not about COVID-nineteen, but about a ship that had gotten stuck in the Suez Canal.
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The ship which was called the Evergiven, owned by the Evergreen Company, had drifted and run a ground in the canal holding up ships in both directions.
• 22:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: One ship blocking one can now might not seem like such a big deal, but based on the value of the goods passing through the Suez each day for the one hundred and fifty one hours it was stuck there, it's estimated to have cost a bank breaking sixty point four billion dollars in trade.
• 23:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's billion with a bee.
• 23:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: This catastrophic event made it clear just how fine all the Suez can now is to our global trade systems.
• 23:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see this waterway connects the Gulf of Suez in Egypt with the Mediterranean Sea and makes it possible for Europe to easily access these regions.
• 23:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because of the water levels on both sides are roughly equal, the sea moves freely down this route, no locks required.
• 23:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So at a hundred and twenty miles long and just over six hundred and seventy feet wide, the Suez cuts travel between Asia and Europe by a staggering four thousand three hundred miles.
• 23:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It particularly impacts those traveling from the Persian Gulf to Northern Europe, because that trip around Africa is some thirteen thousand miles and takes about twenty-four days.
• 23:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But using the Suez Canal, the trip is just seven thousand miles and takes less than two weeks.
• 24:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: All that time, gone like magic.
• 24:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it wasn't wizardry that built the Suez Canal.
• 24:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was one and a half million people.
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: When work started on this mega project back in eighteen fifty-nine, these workers were responsible for moving an estimated two thousand six hundred and thirteen million cubic feet of earth six hundred million on land and two thousand thirteen million through.
• 24:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Dredging to make this canal a reality.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And even then it took a decade to build and finally opened in eighteen sixty-nine.
• 24:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But before then, any connection between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean was considered impossible.
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: So land routes were used to trade goods across countries.
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Horschtron vehicles and trains had to be used between Britain and Africa.
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: resulting in journeys that could take at least six months.
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: This canal has continually been expanded through the years, allowing increasingly bigger cargo ships to use its waterways, making it more and more valuable to the global shipping industry.
• 25:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was enlarged in twenty-fourteen with a side channel opened to one section in twenty-sixteen.
• 25:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And modern technologies made it possible to expand it even further, with future plans promising to add more than forty-four miles of new channels and bypasses.
• 25:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: This project hopes to increase the volume of passing ships from forty-nine to ninety-seven a day, more than doubling its current annual revenue from five point three billion dollars to thirteen point two billion dollars.
• 25:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Suez is really making bank.
• 25:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I ain't talking about river banks.
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over in China, one of the most ambitious maritime projects in history is currently under construction.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: One destined to quench the country's massive thirst.
• 25:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: At present, roughly a third of China's one-point-three billion-strong population live in the north, an area much drier than the south.
• 25:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: But instead of moving an entire population further south for water, the south and north diversion project will bring water to the north.
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: The project involves building three main canals, two of them more than eight hundred miles long each.
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: These will divert water from three of the country's major rivers, the Yangxi River, the Yellow River, and the Han River.
• 26:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And not just a small amount of water, but some twelve trillion gallons every year.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's more water than there is in the entire Hoover Dam Reservoir.
• 26:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a massive undertaking, and with more than seventy-nine billion dollars poured into the project since it was launched in twenty-two, it's one of the most ambitious engineering projects to date.
• 26:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And part of that comes down to the inclusion of structures like the Shahi Aqueduct, which is the world's largest Aqueduct ever built.
• 26:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Within the Shahi four water channels run parallel to one another, seven and a half miles long, twenty-six feet wide, and twenty-four feet high.
• 26:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Each of them transporting separate water streams.
• 27:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Made from reinforced concrete, each pre-fabricated flume, that is to say each segment constructed in a factory transported and installed on site, weighs up to twelve hundred tons.
• 27:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this was no small task to construct and while the shy is now in full use, the full South The North Diversion Project hasn't estimated completion date of twenty-fifty.
• 27:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Still, China will hopefully be securing the water access and welfare of many future generations to come.
• 27:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I guess if you can't go with the flow, yeah, make the flow go with you.
• 27:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to the podcast, we'll see you again next time you'll want to be amazed.
• 27:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is gonna be the best.