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Source: RAVNOPLOV Published: 31.05.2018 Link: https://www.ravnoplov.rs/veliki-backi-kanal/ HISTORY, HORIZONS OF THE PAST, PLAIN PALL ET, NATURE OF THE PL AIN GREAT BAČKA CANAL 31/05/2018 The digging of the Great Bačka Canal was one of the most significant endeavours in the history of Sombor, as well as of Bačka. The canal was particularly important for regulating water levels in the urban area, especially in arable land, pastures and meadows. Its excavation significantly reduced the number of ponds, marshes, oxbow lakes, small lakes and small rivers that, occasionally or permanently, threatened the land in the area of the town and surrounding settlements. As a result, the continuing threats of malaria infectious diseases that had often devastated the local population and domestic animals for decades and centuries were significantly diminished. At the same time, the canal was also used to irrigate the surrounding land area during dry periods. The canal was of particular importance to the economy of the town because agricultural products were transported far easier, faster, safer and cheaper than before. By 1918, the canal officially bore the name of the Austrian Emperor Franz I, by whose approval it was dug. Later, between the two world wars, it was named after King Peter I, and after World War II the official name was the Great Bačka Canal. The first idea to excavate the canal and connect it to the Mostonga River near Sombor with the Danube to shorten navigation came from Sombor Senator and Mayor Josip Jozo Marković, who in 1768 proposed to the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce to dig a canal from the Danube riverbed to Mostonga near Sombor. The Mostonga River was at that time navigable during the summer months, especially in June and July, but from mid-18th century it has dried up in the summer months. Although he had pointed out all the benefits of this endeavour, the Chamber's administration did not accept Marković's proposal. What the Sombor Senator didn't manage to succeed in was accomplished a quarter of the century later, and to a much greater extent, by the brothers József and Gábor Kiss. The Kiss brothers were descended from a Hungarian-speaking noble family of officers. They attended the Military Academy of Engineering in Vienna, after which, during 1768, they went on a study visit to England. József Kiss soon left the army and became an inventor of the Royal Chamber. He worked on the regulation of the Danube near Pozsony (Bratislava) and Mohács, as well as in the Vienna Chamber of Commerce. In the late 70s of the 18th century, as a royal chamber engineer, mathematician and hydraulic engineer, he moved to Bačka and settled in Apatin. He became an official of the Bačka Chamber Administration, whose headquarters were in Sombor. At the beginning of the 80s of the 18 century, Kiss worked on the colonization of the German population (land parceling and construction of typical settlements). His engineering office was located in Sombor, from where he travelled to Bačka to maintain the waterways and produce maps. At the same time, he designed churches, mills, inns, warehouses, roads, bridges, dykes and smaller navigable sewers and drains, and drafted a new building for Sombor Town Hall, which remained unfulfilled. From 1788 he was appointed Chief Engineer of the Bačka Chamber Administration. József Kiss, engineer, designer of the Great Bačka Canal On 12 December 1791, the Kiss Brothers submitted to the Emperor Leopold II a detailed proposal for the excavation of the canal between the Danube and Tisa, with an overview of costs and sketches. As the Emperor Leopold passed away the following year, his successor, Emperor Franz I agreed to entrust the construction of the canal to a privileged joint stock company at the end of March 1793, and the first works began already in May the same year. The Kiss brothers signed a contract with a joint stock company, were appointed canal directors, which was to remain in the Kiss' family inheritance, and were promised one-third of the net profit as well as ten first-class shares each worth 5,000 forints. Sombor was designated as the seat of the Privileged Hungarian Royal Shipping Company, which was the official name of the joint stock company, which had a fixed capital of 800,000 forints. The shareholders of this company were some of the most affluent people in Hungary at the time. The plan of the route of the would be canal, made by the Kiss brothers in 1792 Map of the Franz (Great Bačka) Canal made by the brothers József and Gábor Kiss in the mid-90s of the 18th century The 110-kilometer-long canal, according to the Kiss brothers’ plan, was to connect the Danube and Tisa, from Monostor to Feldwar (Backo Gradište). The original plan of the Kiss brothers envisaged that the canal would run from the Danube at Apatin, but this idea was abandoned. With this canal the water route would have been shortened by 158 km from Monostor to Feldwar and the travelling time downstream reduced by ten days and upstream by twenty days. Plan of the initial part of the canal with the old lock near Monoštor (1822) The construction of the canal was the largest construction effort in Europe at the time, with between two and four thousand workers constantly working on excavation, which occasionally included prisoners of war from the Austrian wars with France as well as county prisoners. The excavation, especially near Sombor, encountered great difficulties because of the underwater terrain. For part of the canal route near Sombor (between Apatin Bridge and Bukovac Vodice) the old Mostonga River bed was also used, which was four to six meters deep. Due to considerable difficulties, the construction costs soon exceeded the original plans, so the project managers, engineers József and Gábor Kiss, were therefore dismissed from duty in 1797, as well as due to several of their poor decisions and estimates (by the end of construction the costs had more than tripled the originally projected 902,000 Viennese forints). Nine years after the construction began, the canal was ceremoniously handed over for use in early May 1802 (the designer of the canal, engineer József Kiss, was not even invited to the opening ceremony). The Austrian Emperor Franz I, whose name the canal bore, visited it five years later (in 1807) when he boarded a decorated boat in Sombor which took him to Vrbas via the canal. Sombor 1818 For the further economic development of Sombor and a greater part of Bačka, the Franz Canal had immeasurable importance. According to Antal Mindszenti, who visited Sombor around 1830, the goods were transported via the Franz Canal, using ships coming from the north, with the help of which Sombor merchants were selling grain at a considerable profit because, apart from the possible rental cost of the barns, they did not have any transport costs and customers would come 'to their feet'. Mindszenti also said that there were few cities across the country that could have traded with such profits as Sombor, and stated that the Franz Canal contributed greatly to the development of the town. The town, he said, had planned to dig another smaller canal, which would lead from the Franz Canal to the interior of the town so that boats could transport grain to larger merchant ships, which would be moored in the Franz Canal. This would have further reduced the cost of transporting grain, which was then transported for about half an hour by truck. This canal was to enter the town at the town's gate on Sivac Road, from where it would pass along the fair next to the County building (where the main dock was to be built), and then go via Venac to the Royal Chamber of Commerce grain warehouse behind Grassalkovich Palace, and from there, along Apatin Road (then Canal Street), to the Franz Canal. The canal in the town was to be ten grabs wide (around 19 meters), and 14 grabs (around 27 meters) outside the town, and for its dig it was necessary to provide around 120,000 forints. Although the town accepted this idea, Mindszenti noted that during his stay in Sombor he saw not even the slightest preparations for the realization of this intent. Earlier, according to Mindszenti, the county's authorities had drawn up a plan to drain the wetlands in the north of Sombor village settlement, which extended all the way to Gakovo, and thus increase the water level in the Franz Canal. The Franz (Great Bačka) Canal near Sombor, near the bridge on the Apatin road in 1903 (above) and in 1906 (below) Through the canal, during the first decades of its existence, between 70 and 80 thousand tons of goods (cereals, hay, cattle, salt, wine, tobacco, food, groceries, wood and coal, sand, construction material, metals, convenience goods, etc) were transported annually on about one thousand ships. Between 1826 and 1839, 6,766 loaded and 5,159 empty ships were transported by the canal near Sombor, and the weight of the goods transported was 18 million Viennese cents (weight measure 56 kg) i.e. over one million tons, which best illustrates the economic importance of this waterway. (Thirty years later, between 1856 and 1868, 8,262 loaded and 6273 empty ships sailed through the canal, as well as 3985 rafts, and 27.7 million of Viennese cents worth of goods were transported). The ships and longboats were towed by the horses that went along the canal coast, i.e. the dirt track by the canal, and the horse stables were located along certain parts of the waterway, starting at the sluice ('slajza') near Monostor (later from Bezdan).