3-083-069 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Opening of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal by the German Emperor: piping to dinner on board the "Tantallon Castle", 1895. 'A large party of English visitors, among whom were Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, invited guests of Sir Donald Currie, M.P., on board the Tantallon Castle, of the South African "Castle" Company's line, were conveyed to Kiel in time to witness the proceedings at that end of the Canal. Our Special Artist, Mr. Melton Prior, was with this party...The completion of a great engineering work by which the navigation of the Baltic is connected with that of the North Sea, occasionally called "the German Ocean" - though we must not allow the British and the Scandinavian shores of this "ocean" to be forgotten - is an event of much interest to Englishmen as well as to Germans...There seems now reason to expect as one of the consequences of German imperial union a large increase of traffic not only at Hamburg and Bremen, which have not ceased to flourish by their immediate access to the outer sea, but also at the ports of the Baltic coast; and it is likely that English shipowners will gain considerable advantage by the opening of the new maritime canal'. From "Illustrated London News", 1895.