Dnieper-Bug Canal or Dnepr-Bug Canal, or Dneprovsko-Bugsky Canal is a
ship canal that connects
Dnieper river and
Western Bug river. It provides navigational access between the
Baltic Sea and
Black Sea water systems. The length of the Canal is 196 kilometers from the Bug to Dnipro Rivers.
It was built in 1775 during the reign of Stanislaw August Poniatowski (1764 - 1795), the last king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. When the canal was first built, it was called Kanal Królewski (Royal Canal), after the Polish king, since he was the initiator of the concept. Additional work was carried out starting in 1837 and completed around 1846-1848.
Navigation on the Dnieper-Bug Canal has been interrupted by a weir (dam) on the river Bug near Brest, Belarus, the border town. This dam is the single most significant obstacle for navigation of small draught vessels between Western Europe and Ukraine through inland waterways. The waterways from the German-Polish border (Warta, Notec, Kanal Bydgoski, Wisla, Narew, Bug) used to join the Belarus and Ukrainian inland waterways (Mukhavets River, Dnepro-Bugskiy Canal, Pripyat and Dnipro), thus forming an uninterrupted liaison between North-Western Europe and the Black Sea.
Recently the dam in the Bug and the impossibility for ships to pass has led to a considerable neglect of the most western part of the Mukhovets; some of the locks have been filled in and Brest Harbour can only be reached by vessels approaching from the East. (Source NoorderSoft waterways database).
