The Suez Canal

1 · POSITION

The Suez Canal opened on 17 November 1869: 193 kilometres of water joining the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, dug between 1859 and 1869 by Ferdinand de Lesseps’s Compagnie de Suez. It cut the voyage between London and the Arabian Sea by about 8,900 kilometres. The register holds it as a road because it put Egypt on every route east, and a country on the route becomes a country that receives travellers. [1]

2 · AN OPENING AS AN EVENT

Digging began on 25 April 1859 at what became Port Said. The opening was staged for crowned guests: the Empress Eugénie arrived in the imperial yacht L’Aigle, with the Emperor Franz Joseph, the Crown Prince of Prussia and Prince Louis of Hesse among the company. Thomas Cook was there too — in November of the same year in which he began leading tour groups to Egypt and the Holy Land. [1, 2]

3 · THE TOURIST FOLLOWS THE SHIP

A writer marking the 150th anniversary of Cook’s first Egyptian tours called 1869 the beginning of modern Western organised tourism in the Middle East. The Nile steamers that followed carried the season up the river; the register files them, the cruise and the river corridor under their own codes. [2, 3]

4 · OWNERSHIP

The canal opened under French control. In 1875 the Khedive Isma’il, in debt, sold his 44 per cent share to the British government for £4,000,000. [1]

5 · ⚑ CANDOUR

⚑ Checked on 22 October 2026. Cook’s first tours to Egypt began in the year the canal opened, and the note keeps that. Cairo’s grand hotel did not come after the canal: Shepheard’s dates from 1841. The note no longer dates the hotel or the Egyptian season to the decade after 1869. Cook’s presence at the opening comes from a quoted social-media post, not from Cook’s own records. [1–4]