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To His Excellency Admiral and Minister
of the Navy and the Colonies
Paris
At sea, 26th November, 1869
Dear Admiral,
In accordance with the indications I had the honour of giving
Your Excellency in my last official dispatch dated 13th November,
the Aigle left the port of Alexandria on 15th of the same month
and arrived in view of Port Saïd very early the next morning.
The yacht was only just in sight when the naval division under
Admiral Moulac’s orders and the British, Austrian, Prussian, Norwegian,
Danish, Italian and Egyptian squadrons, inside and outside the
pass, dressed the bulwarks and greeted the Empress with their
artillery and their cheers as she entered port and sailed between
their lines.
A few moments after anchorage, Her Majesty received His Highness
the Viceroy of Egypt, the Emperor of Austria, the Crown Prince
of Prussia and the Prince and Princess of the Netherlands.
In the afternoon, on a platform on the edge of the sea erected
by the administrators of the Suez Isthmus, a Te Deum was sung
in honour of the ceremony which was to take place the next day.
At 8 o’clock in the morning on 17th, the Aigle, at the head of
all the vessels taking part in the inauguration of the canal,
moved between the two banks and, that evening after
a difficult sailing, dropped anchor in the port of Ismailia where wonderful festivities
were put on by the Viceroy.
At midday on 19th, the Aigle left Ismailia and stopped a few hours
later in the Bitter Lakes. She set off again on 20th finally arriving
in Suez the same day at half past twelve to the cheers of her
crew, happy to have accomplished its mission without a hitch,
and to the sounds of gun shots from all the British and Egyptian
vessels greeting the entry of the Empress into the Red Sea.
Admiral Milner, Captain of the Mediterranean squadron, who had
put his flag on one of the vessels of the British flotilla, briefly
came to offer me his congratulations on the happy completion of
the Aigle’s passage through the Isthmus.
The next day, the Empress brought him and all the captains of
the British vessels in Suez together for dinner.
During the 48 hours she passed in this port, Her Majesty went
on an excursion to the Fountain of Moses and visited, with great
interest, the Hoogly liner of the Messageries Impériales (Imperial
Shipping Lines) and the Malabar, an British ship used for carrying
troops in India.
On 23rd, the Aigle was back in Port Saïd and set sail the next
evening for Messina after having stocked up on coal.
I had the honour, Admiral, of letting Your Excellency know, in
a confidential letter, what my impressions had been of the first
part of the Aigle voyage down the canal. Today, I will complete
the information I have given by placing before you a list of all
the problems the yacht had to overcome to complete here mission.
On leaving Port Saïd, the canal begins with quite a sharp curve
which makes access to it difficult. It then extends in a straight
line across Lake Menzaleh for 40 kilometres, with a width of 100
metres, a navigable channel of 22 metres and a depth of 8 metres.
You then reach Kantara where the only passing station between Port Saïd
and Ismailia is to be found.
This is where the Egyptian corvette, the Latif, gave up. This
vessel had been chosen to test the canal before the inauguration
but, after having run aground several times in the first 40 kilometres,
the Isthmus administration managed to obtain the Viceroy’s permission,
contrary to what had been decided, for the Egyptian corvette,
the Mohammed-Ali, previously chosen to take the lead, not to have
to sail in front of the Aigle.
After Kantara, the yacht did not encounter any great difficulties
other than having constantly to keep to the wider and deeper channels.
However, just before the El Ferdane curve, the passage got so
much narrower that the vessel, being in line, could not but turn
its paddles against the buoys indicating the channel.
In this place, even the engineers had noticed, in the first few
days of November, that the canal had only been dug to 4 metres.
Also collecting there were numerous dredgers which had still been
working during the morning of the inauguration.
The dredgers had been placed to the sides as much as possible
to let the Aigle and vessels that followed pass but the canal
was so narrow that, to avoid running aground, the yacht had to
pass within 50 centimetres of them.
Through someone’s inconceivable negligence, a small, wheeled tug
was berthed on the bank a little further on from the dredgers.
To avoid the opposite bank, the Aigle was forced to pass so near
the tug that the Aigle's paddle-wheel was damaged.
A few metres further on, the starboard wheel hit a post which
had been left in the canal, resulting in three paddles being broken
and some articulations being damaged.
After El Ferdane and the sill of El Guisr, the canal enters Lake
Timsah through an S-curve which is so difficult to get through
that the Company is currently working on its improvement.
The moorage at Ismailia is big enough to contain a large number
of boats but it has only been dug to 6 metres.
When leaving Lake Timsah, one enters the curve of Toussoum which
is immediately followed by the canal’s narrowest point, called
Serapeum on the map, where for 75 metres the canal is barely 4.8 metres
deep (with a rock bed).
There follow: the great basin of the Bitter Lakes where two lighthouses
indicate the right direction to take and which can be crossed
at top speed; and the small basin of the same name whose curves
and markers being as bad as everywhere else make navigation difficult.
Finally, the last section of the canal (from the sill of Chalouf
to the Red Sea) is the part furthest from completion. In this section, the
effect of the sea makes itself particularly felt, and
since it is of paramount importance for steering to be going against current, if one is travelling from Ismailia to Suez one must get through
the difficult step of the quarantine at high tide; on the other hand, if one is
coming the other way and wants avoid being exposed to the risk of being grounded for
the whole time the two seas are out, it is imperative to make
the most of the sea nearly from low tide.
Although the sea level between high and low tides was average
during our return, the Aigle constantly touched the bottom for
over a kilometre and was only able to overcome this because of
a canal bed of soft clay and from considerably increasing her
speed. Moreover, there had been numerous barrages in this section, and the
urgency of the inauguration on a set date did not allow enough
time to clear them all away. Hence on the bottom of the canal there remained of each of them a stump which was 4.75 metres long parallel with the canal and 15 metres wide.
From the above, Your Excellency can deduce the difficulties the
Aigle had to overcome in order to achieve the main aim of the
Empress’s voyage in the Orient. In fact, Your Excellency knows
that this vessel has a draught of 4.7 to 4.8 metres at the back,
measures 19 metres not including the paddle-wheels, measures 82
metres in length in the water and is consequently very slow to
respond to the wheel.
The vessels following her all ran aground several times on the
return journey just as much as on the outward one. Amongst others,
the Peluse, a Messageries Impériales liner, which had nonetheless
been made lighter, touched the bottom no less than 8 times on
the first leg of her trip so holding up the ships that came after
her for several hours.
To summarise, Sir, I do not think that, in its current state,
the canal can take ships with a draft, when full, of more than
4.5 metres at the back and even then they must be propellered
and sailed with great care.
In order to sail the canal, a Spanish frigate headed for the Philippines,
which arrived at Port Saïd, was obliged to unload its artillery,
coal, food, masts and materials and to further reduce its draught
using floats specially constructed for her by the Isthmus management
who saw it as their duty to keep the engagement taken vis-à-vis
the government of Madrid.
When the Company has carried out all the conditions of its programme,
in other words the improvement of the dangerous curves, the digging
to 8 metres of the whole length of the canal with a uniform navigable
channel of 22 metres, the ships with heavy handling will be able
to use the new route, especially if the management completes its
work by adopting a range of its own measures to facilitate navigation,
such as the increase of boathouses (to ten every 10 kilometres,
for example), the organisation of telegraphic posts through which
meetings could be planned, a lighting system to allow sailing
by night and, finally, strict rules by which employees of the
Isthmus had to take the greatest care not to leave barges adrift,
as happened in front of the Aigle.
Finally, if one wishes the canal to be completely navigable, I
think it should be doubled in width in order to allow vessels
to pass each other.
I am told the Company has this planned.
Your Excellency’s most humble and devoted servant.
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