"One French guy proposed digging deep enough to eliminate the need for locks, though it was decided this would be too great a task." I think you have misinterp

"One French guy proposed digging deep enough to eliminate the need for locks, though it was decided this would be too great a task." I think you have misinterpreted the history. De Lesseps proposed a sea-level canal, and got his way. The French attempt at doing that lost a huge amount of money. For what it's worth, Godin de Lépinay proposed a lock system instead, but was ignored. Quoting from http://www.firststrikenuts.com/artman/publish/article_28.shtml http://www.firststrikenuts.com/artman/publish/article_28.sht... : > Eight years, 200 million dollars, and more than ten thousand lost lives later, de Lesseps accepted reality and switched to de Lépinay’s stair-step plan. Lock-works and gates were ordered from Gustave Eiffel. Sadly, the canal enterprise was too far gone and could not be rescued, resulting in the largest financial collapse of the nineteenth century.