SIP CANAL

The full index of our ship stamp archive
Post Reply
aukepalmhof
Posts: 7771
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:28 am

SIP CANAL

Post by aukepalmhof » Wed Dec 28, 2016 7:48 pm

The stamp shows the Sip Canal with a steam locomotive pulling a paddlesteamer through the canal. I have not more info on the ship.
The Iron Gates are, in Romanian Porțile de Fier, in Serbian Gvozdena Vrata, also Djerdap.

"Gerdap", in Turkish, means a place dangerous for navigation, a whirlpool. The Djerdap gorge, which is some 100 kilometers long (from Golubac to Tekija), is actually a compound river valley made up of four gorges (Gornja klisura, Gospodjin vir, Veliki and Mali kazan and Sipska klisura)

The part of the Iron Gates gorge of the Danube River in which the canal was constructed, Sipska klisura, is 2 mi (3.2 km) long and 550 ft (170 m) wide, on the Serbian and Romanian border between Orşova and Drobeta-Turnu Severin. There the river narrows and swiftly flows through a gap between the Carpathian and Balkan mountains.

Near the town of Sip a large rock reef (called Perigrada) obstructed nearly the whole width of the river until the construction of the Sip Canal in 1896.

The Iron Gates, formerly an obstacle to shipping, was cleared of many rock obstructions in the 1860s; the Sip Canal (opened 1896) permitted large river craft to get past the gorge. The water gushed at eight meters per second, 15.6 knots, through the Sip Canal, two kilometers long and 80 metres wide. After the completion of the Djerdap dam in 1976, the canal constructed with such expense and labour is now 50 metres underwater.
To pull the ships upstream sometimes three steam locomotives were used to pull the vessel through the canal.

The canal was part of a larger project to clear some 80 kilometres of the Iron Gates of rapids and shallows. The canal, designed in one report to be two hundred feet wide and ten feet deep, was cut through five dykes crossing the bed of the river.

Text above adapted from: http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/world/A0825502.html and http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9042801

Yugoslavia 1981 13d sg2002, scott?
Attachments
1981 paddlesteamer 1 maxi card.jpg
1981 paddlesteamer.jpg

Post Reply