The Canal through Voorne was once a lifeline for Rotterdam. On November 8, 1830, the canal was opened. More than forty years later it lost that function. The Nieuwe Waterweg became the gateway to Rotterdam and the ports for ships.
The silting up of the Maas meant that Rotterdam was difficult to reach from the sea. Bob Benschop of the Voorne-Putten Regional Archives: "Over time, even the island of Rozenburg was created as a sandbank."
Detour
Around the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Maas estuary had become so shallow that ships with a deep draft could no longer reach Rotterdam via this route. They had to make a detour through the Haringvliet, the Hollands Diep, the Dordsche Kil, the Oude Maas and finally the Nieuwe Maas.
That route took the sailing ships days. "They always had to wait for the right current and wind direction," says Benschop. Shiploads sometimes had to be transferred to smaller ships, which also cost time and money.
In 1822, the director of the Marinewerf in Rotterdam devised the plan for the construction of the ten kilometer long canal across the island of Voorne. This would shorten the distance by up to a third and reduce the sailing time to half a day.