This 120 -kilometer canal is completely dug by hand

Around seven thousand men, women and children have been having a hand, kick, wheelbarrow and basket for each other. The first part of this water connection opened in 1825 and at the 200th anniversary, the Weeshuisjes Foundation is extensively stood still this Saturday.

The waterway between Brabant, Limburg and Belgian-Limburg is the realization of a king’s dream. And not just one. It is the dream of Willem I, the very first Dutch king, who is also in charge of Luxembourg and Belgium. He wants to drive the mutual trade between his countries and therefore opts for a channel. Transport over a channel is the cheapest at that time and the Maas appears to be rather unreliable as waters.

In 1818 the Royal Decree follows, four years later the construction begins in which 21 locks are applied to bridge the height difference, which is around forty meters in total. Labor migrants are called in. Men, women and children (at the time they didn’t look that closely and was very normal) from, among others, the Belgian Wallonia, Drenthe and Holland report. They find shelter in rickety, wooden huts that have been built along the route.

Glad residents of the places where the route visits are not with their arrival. Just like today, these labor migrants are looked at with the neck, so told Cees Verhagen from Someren during a lecture about the book he wrote about the channel. During their church services, the pastors go loose about ‘this wild people’ and speak shame of how they behave. Directors call in the help of the Marechaussee to help you to monitor order in some places.

Examples of how things go wrong, often under the influence of a big drink, are in the archives find. On June 11, 1825, Joannes buys Tindemans in Gemert 39 sheep. Along the way he meets four men who raise him with clubs because he refuses to give up a copy. They take a black sheep with them, but that escapes.

The robbers return, give Joannes a pack of rattle again and leave with a white sheep. Marchaussees find that, tied to a pole at a lock of the channel. Soon they have caught the perpetrators. They are canal workers from Rotterdam, Gorinchem, Den Bosch and Heusden. The drunken men wanted to roast and pick up the sheep, according to their statements.

Habbreats
Although it goes wrong every now and then, the workers turn out to be hard workers. In just four years they dig the channel, against often just a wage of wages. That is also the most important reason that the costs of the construction are extremely low: only 4.5 million guilders. Converted, that comes down to roughly 45 million euros today.

The ships that are about the channel for the first hundred years make largely use of horsepower. You have to take that very literally. The boats are pulled by a horse that effortlessly keeps a 50,000 kilos ship moving. However, poor skippers fall back on the old -fashioned handicraft and tension their wife or children for their ‘cart’.

Weeshuisjes Foundation
The Weeshuisjes Foundation will consider extensively this Saturday in the 200th anniversary of the Zuid-Willemsvaart. The foundation has adopted eight bridge keeper houses along the canal between Den Bosch and Helmond and in those places it is a party all day. More information about the program can be found on their website.