This is the first comprehensive encyclopedia on the history of the vast and varied ways human beings have used the world's waterways for business, protection, and recreation. Seas and Waterways of the World: An Encyclopedia of History, Uses, and Issues offers a comprehensive introduction to humanity's historical reliance on the world's seas and waterways and how that reliance continues to evolve. Over the course of two volumes, this extraordinary resource describes the world's major nautical features, the wide variety of uses for those waterways, and a number of essential issues arising from water-borne commerce. The encyclopedia marks the emergence of the aquarium, cruise, energy, fishing, insurance, mining, trade, transportation, recreation, and sport industries, and includes entries on harbors, ports, and coastal development that play a part in the economics of commercial water use. Also included is coverage of a number of significant themes such as the rise and fall of the Erie Canal as the gateway to the Midwest, and the declining popularity of the Panama Canal.

Excerpt from Artificial Waterways of the World The first improvement upon the slow, tedious and costly means of transportation by beasts of burden and vehicles was accomplished by utilizing rivers, supplemented by canals, as a thoroughfare for boats and barges. These waterways determined the routes of commerce until the locomotive engine made land routes the more popular, as they were the more expeditious. Reaching in all directions, spanning waterways, tunneling mountains, and defying obstacles generally, they naturally took command of trade. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This book is devoted to the Erie Canal, the Panama canal and other American canals. Certain chapters are also devoted to the conservation of our natural resources. Statistics are given of the commerce carried by the various artificial waterways of the world. -Marine Review, Volume 45 [1915] A well-known man of affairs, Mr. A. Barton Hepburn, of New York, has made in his Artificial waterways of the world an excellent contribution to the popular literature of canals and their place in the world's system of transportation. His book deals with the chief canals and canal systems of the world, but gives the largest share of attention to the canal system of New York and to the Panama Canal. -Educational Review, Volume 50 [1915]