Corbulo's Canal
About
The general Corbulo put his idle legions to work in 47 CE cutting a 23-mile channel between the Rhine and the Meuse, sparing troop convoys the storms of the open North Sea. Tacitus recorded it three meters deep and wide enough for two ships abreast, dug as much for discipline as for transport. Forum Hadriani, the Cananefates' Roman town at modern Voorburg, grew up along its banks with its own inland harbor and timber quays. Hadrian had the channel repaired on his visit in 121 CE, proof it still carried traffic decades after Corbulo dug it.
What happened here
Cut to shorten a journey, to bypass a river mouth that silts, or to drain ground that floods. Digging is done by soldiers or by contracted labour in seasons when the water is low, and the spoil is banked along the sides to make a towpath. Barges are hauled by men or oxen, moving grain, stone, timber and wine at a fraction of the cost of the same distance by road. Sluices control the level where the canal meets a tidal river. Maintenance is endless — silt, weed and collapsed banks — and a canal that is not dredged returns to marsh within a generation. Towns along it grow fast, and the tolls charged at each end are worth having.
Sources
Nearby
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