The Suez Canal connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. This artificial waterway cuts through the Isthmus of Suez in northeastern Egypt, spanning 193.3 kilometers (about 120 miles) from Port Said on the Mediterranean coast to the port of Suez on the Red Sea. Before the canal opened in 1869, the only way to move goods between these two bodies of water was overland or by sailing all the way around Africa.
How the Canal Works
Unlike the Panama Canal, the Suez Canal has no locks. It is a sea-level waterway, meaning ships simply sail through it at water level without being raised or lowered at any point. The canal reaches a maximum depth of 24 meters (about 79 feet) and can accommodate vessels with a draft up to 66 feet. This straightforward design is possible because the Red Sea and Mediterranean Sea sit at nearly the same elevation, so water flows freely between them through the channel.
A typical transit takes between 11 and 16 hours. Ships travel in organized convoys to manage two-way traffic through sections that are still single-lane. At its widest points, the canal measures between 205 and 225 meters across.
Why It Was Built
For thousands of years, the narrow strip of land separating the Mediterranean from the Red Sea made maritime trade between Europe and Asia painfully indirect. Ships had to travel south around the entire African continent, a journey that added thousands of miles and weeks of sailing time. Ancient Egyptian rulers actually attempted smaller canal projects linking the Nile River to the Red Sea, but a direct Mediterranean-to-Red Sea passage didn’t exist until the modern canal.
Construction began on April 25, 1859, at the site of what is now Port Said. The project faced opposition from both Britain and the Ottoman Empire, but digging proceeded under the direction of the French-led Suez Canal Company. After a decade of work, the canal was completed on August 18, 1869, and the legendary inauguration ceremony took place on November 17 of that year, with a procession of ships entering the waterway for the first time.
The 2015 Expansion
Egypt completed a major expansion of the canal in August 2015, adding a parallel waterway along a 35-kilometer stretch between kilometer markers 60 and 95. Combined with deepening and widening of existing bypass sections, the total project covered 72 kilometers of the canal’s length. The goal was to allow two-way traffic through the longest possible stretches, cutting transit time from roughly 22 hours down to 11 hours and nearly doubling the canal’s capacity for ship traffic.
Global Trade Significance
The Suez Canal is one of the most important chokepoints in global shipping. In 2023, it handled approximately 12 to 15 percent of all global trade. That share is significant when you consider that roughly 80 percent of the world’s goods move by sea. Container ships, oil tankers, and bulk carriers all use the canal to shave days or weeks off routes between Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
When the canal is disrupted, the effects ripple through supply chains worldwide. Ships forced to reroute around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope add roughly 3,000 to 6,000 nautical miles to their journey depending on the route, increasing fuel costs, transit time, and shipping rates. The canal’s importance to global commerce is precisely why disruptions in the Red Sea region draw so much international attention.
Before the Canal Existed
The land separating the two seas, the Isthmus of Suez, is geologically ancient. The region’s stratigraphic record shows that a shallow arm of a prehistoric ocean (the Tethys Sea) existed in the area since at least the Carboniferous period, over 300 million years ago. Over geological time, tectonic shifts and sediment deposits created the low, flat desert strip that ultimately separated the Mediterranean basin from the Red Sea. The terrain is mostly sand and sediment rather than rock, which made digging feasible in the 19th century but also means the canal requires ongoing maintenance to prevent shifting sands from narrowing the channel.
The isthmus itself is only about 125 kilometers wide at its narrowest point, making it one of the thinnest land barriers between any two major bodies of water on Earth. That geographic quirk is what made the canal possible and why it remains, over 150 years later, one of the most consequential pieces of infrastructure ever built.