I know that the canals were built in the ancient world and that Greek engineers were able to use canal locks, but I'm curious how deep a canal they were capable of building and what sorts of elevations they could traverse prior to the development of explosives.
The reason I'm asking is I was making a fantasy campaign using the area around the city of Vancouver as a base, and I wanted to have a canal connecting the Fraser River to False Creek and Burrard inlet. The idea is that riverboats could use it to navigate to the deep water harbor where the city is located. However, when I began looking at topographic maps, I realized I underestimated the height of the promontory that makes up the southern part of the city. It looks as if there's no way to do it without getting through a ridge that's about 75m above sea level, which seems like it might be a challenge for pre-industrial engineering. Am I going to have to handwave it with magic, make a non-existent depression in the land for them to follow or is this actually
feasible. The material they'd be going through is (I think) mostly till not bedrock, so maybe it could be done? Thoughts?
The reason I'm asking is I was making a fantasy campaign using the area around the city of Vancouver as a base, and I wanted to have a canal connecting the Fraser River to False Creek and Burrard inlet. The idea is that riverboats could use it to navigate to the deep water harbor where the city is located. However, when I began looking at topographic maps, I realized I underestimated the height of the promontory that makes up the southern part of the city. It looks as if there's no way to do it without getting through a ridge that's about 75m above sea level, which seems like it might be a challenge for pre-industrial engineering. Am I going to have to handwave it with magic, make a non-existent depression in the land for them to follow or is this actually
feasible. The material they'd be going through is (I think) mostly till not bedrock, so maybe it could be done? Thoughts?
