As our cruise ship slipped its way from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, I made this image from just above its bow with a 24mm wideangle lens. The resulting vista offers a striking contrast in colors. The blue and white ship, dark blue water, and powder blue sky all call attention to the brown sands of the surrounding Sinai Desert. It is the limitless desert scenery that dominates the image and best tells the story here. The Suez Canal is, in effect, a ditch through a desert. 30,000 slave laborers worked for ten years under brutal conditions to build it between 1859 and 1869. Thousands of them died on the project. When it was finished, it had a dramatic effect on world trade. Combined with the American transcontinental railroad completed six months earlier, the Suez Canal allowed the entire world to be circled in record time. It accelerated European colonization of Africa, as well as making travel between India and Europe much quicker. Much later, the canal would become essential to Europe’s oil supply, and a vital strategic objective to fought over during the 20th century. It was and still is a vast undertaking. The traffic is heavy – we keep our distance, but we were never out of sight of another ship, mostly oil tankers.