KAISER-WILHELM-KANAL -

Betriebs-Ordnung für den Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal nebst Anlagen [...] Traffic Regulations for the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal with Appendices.

Kiel, Schmidt & Klaunig, 1895 4to. Bound the original wrappers in contemporary half cloth. Stamp to end-papers and front wrapper. Internally fine and clean. 56 pp (8 pp. with coloured signals codes).

Rare first publication of the traffic regulations of the then newly opned Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal, now known as the Kiel Canal (or Nord-Ostsee-Kanal).

The canal was finished in 1895, but later widened, and links the North Sea at Brunsbüttel to the Baltic Sea at Kiel-Holtenau. An average of 250 nautical miles (460 km) is saved by using the Kiel Canal instead of going around the Jutland Peninsula. This not only saves time but also avoids storm-prone seas and having to pass through the Sound or Belts.

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. Completed during the reign of Christian VII of Denmark in 1784, the Eiderkanal was a 43-kilometre (27 mi) part of a 175-kilometre (109 mi) waterway from Kiel to the Eider River's mouth at Tönning on the west coast. It was only 29 metres (95 ft) wide with a depth of 3 metres (10 ft), which limited the vessels that could use the canal to 300 tonnes.

After 1864 Second Schleswig War put Schleswig-Holstein under the government of Prussia (from 1871 the German Empire), a new canal was sought by merchants and by the German navy, which wanted to link its bases in the Baltic and the North Sea without the need to sail around Denmark.

After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles required the canal to be open to vessels of commerce and of war of any nation at peace with Germany, while leaving it under German administration.(The United States opposed this proposal to avoid setting a precedent for similar concessions on the Panama Canal. The government under Adolf Hitler repudiated its international status in 1936, but the canal was reopened to all traffic after World War II. In 1948, the current name was adopted.

Order-nr.: 58906