Champs Neufs Lock on the Basse-Loire maritime canal

The Champs Neufs lock is located on the Martinière canal, built between 1882 and 1892 to move boats assembled in Nantes to the Atlantic Ocean. With the increase in the tonnage of boats, the industry moved to Saint-Nazaire, directly on the ocean and the canal lost its usefulness.

Today, the lock is still used for leisure activities (line fishing, boating) in parallel with the Loire.

This lock of the Champs-Neufs halfway of the channel was also equipped with a siphon, allowing a differentiated water regulation between the moats of Vue marshes and those of the canal itself.
Two other locks control the access to the canal: the Martinière (in the east), the Carnet (in the west). This canal runs along the south shore of the Loire Estuary for 15 kilometers, leaving at most 5 to 6 kilometers from the river.
Proposed by engineer Adolphe Radiguel in 1861 to allow transatlantic ships to reach Nantes, the canal was started in 1882 and operational in 1892 after 10 years of pharaonic work. Some of the machinery and equipment was previously used for the construction of the Suez Canal.
Two "boat parks" allow large vessels to cross at the "Teignouse" in Pellerin, and between Roche and Carnet Frossay.
The canal has an intense period of activity with the great navigation which lasts 20 years until 1913, with approximately 10,000 passages during these 20 years, then the fluvial watercraft circulates until 1943. It becomes a cemetery of the tall ships between 1921 and 1927. During the Second World War, the Germans occupy it, then the Americans, from 1957 to 1967, will stock NATO material there. The sea canal is closed to navigation in 1959.
In the 1960s, the canal became the hydraulic control tool of the Pays de Retz. Its devastation began in the 1990s, using small dredges. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_de_la_Martini%C3%A8re

Bucolic and peaceful, almost without traffic.