Belgium broke off from Holland and yet still finds a way to route trade through it. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
The stamp today shows a new piece of infrastructure in 1968. As we write this, there is construction going on to replace it. The new 1968 lock was designed to handle the new big ships as displayed on the stamp. 50 years on, ships have gotten even bigger and so a new lock is needed.
The stamp today is issue A232, a 6 Belgian Franc stamp issued by Belgium on December 14th, 1968. It shows a ship at a new lock on the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.
The Netherlands has a long coast on the North Sea and is considered a seafaring nation. Belgium only as a short coastline near the port of Antwerp. The industrial region of Ghent is closer to the sea if one goes through Netherlands. So a canal was built in the early 19th century terminating at Terneuzen on the sea. This was a straightforward thing to do as at the time Belgium was part of the Netherlands which paid for the canal.
Belgium became independent of the Netherlands after a long war in the 1830s. In response, the Netherlands cut off access to the canal for a 30 year period. Eventually relations improved and the canal was reopened.
A good deal of the canal is in modern day Netherlands and most of the benefit of the canal goes to Belgium. In the post World War II era commercial ships were much larger and a deal was struck that allowed a widening and new locks for the bigger ships. The cost this time was mainly bourn by Belgium.
50 years have passed since this stamp and ship size has continued to grow. The current expansion of the capacity of the Panama Canal showed the new standard in size. In 2015, Belgium and the Netherlands agreed to jointly construct a new size lock in Terneuzen, Netherlands. The cost was projected at 920 million Euros. The Belgians have agreed to pay 80% of the cost. The Ghent port company’s contribution to the project is less than 2 %. No doubt charming taxpayers all over Euroland, Belgium and Holland have agreed to a joint application to the EU to subsidize the project. It remains to be seen if the high cost of the project will bring economic benefits or if time tables and cost projections of the project can be adhered to. Whenever completion happens, scheduled for 2021, perhaps Belgium will mark it with a new stamp.
Well my dink is empty so I will open up the conversation in the below comment section. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.