Lesseps, Ferdinand Marie, Vicomte de

Lesseps, Ferdinand Marie, Vicomte de (1805-94), French engineer.

Ferdinand de Lesseps was the engineer in charge of the building of the Suez Canal.

He himself dug out the first spadeful of earth at a point near present-day Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea on 25 April, 1859.

The Canal, which is 101 miles (162 kilometers) long, was completed ten years later and opened on 16 September, 1869.

Sailing by way of the Suez Canal instead of by way of South Africa, the length of 1 voyage from Europe to the Far East or Australia was reduced by around 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers).

In 1881, although an old man, de Lesseps began to construct a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. Eight years later, the work came to a halt. Fifty thousand workers had died, mostly from tropical fever, and de Lesseps had used up all his money.

The Panama Canal was later completed by the United States.

Back in France, de Lesseps was sentenced to five years in prison for the way he had run the company building the canal. He was already ill and died before the sentence was carried out.

See Zachary Karabell Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal