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The Kiel Canal is a long freshwater canal in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. The canal was finished in 1914 and links the North Sea at Brunsbüttel to the Baltic Sea at Kiel-Holtenau. An average of is saved by using the Kiel Canal instead of going around the Jutland Peninsula. This not only saves time but also avoids potentially dangerous storm-prone seas. Besides its two sea entrances, the Kiel Canal is linked, at Oldenbüttel, to the navigable River Eider by the short Gieselau Canal. ==History== The first connection between the North and Baltic Seas was constructed while the area was ruled by Denmark-Norway. It was called the Eider Canal, which used stretches of the Eider River for the link between the two seas. The ''Eiderkanal'' was completed during the reign of Christian VII of Denmark in 1784 and was a part of a long waterway from Kiel to the Eider River's mouth at Tönning on the west coast. It was only wide with a depth of , which limited the vessels that could use the canal to 300 tonnes displacement. During the 19th century, after Schleswig-Holstein had come under the government of Prussia (from 1871 the German Empire) following the Second Schleswig War in 1864, a combination of naval interests—the German navy wanted to link its bases in the Baltic and the North Sea without the need to sail around Denmark—and commercial pressure encouraged the development of a new canal. In June 1887, construction started at Holtenau, near Kiel. The canal took over 9,000 workers eight years to build. On June 20, 1895, the canal was officially opened by Kaiser Wilhelm II for transiting from Brunsbüttel to Holtenau. The next day, a ceremony was held in Holtenau where Wilhelm II named it the Kaiser Wilhelm Kanal (after his grandfather, Kaiser Wilhelm I), and laid the final stone.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Kiel-Canal History )〕 The opening of the canal was filmed by British director Birt Acres and surviving footage of this early film is preserved in the Science Museum in London. The first Trans-Atlantic sailing ship to pass through the canal was ''Lilly'', commanded by Johan Pitka. ''Lilly''. a barque, was a wooden sailing ship of about 390 tons displacement built 1866 in Sunderland, U.K. She had a length of 127.5 ft., beam 28.7 ft., depth of 17.6 ft and a 32-ft keel.〔Pitka, J., Minu Mälestused II, Laevandus, pp 149-156, Tallinn, Ilutrükk, Tartu, 1938.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kiel Canal」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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