The Suez Crisis begins

I 'n early November 1956 the Suez Canal in Egypt was choked with ships. But these vessels weren't sailing down the 120-mile waterway that connected the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

In fact, they weren't capable of sailing anywhere at all: their masts were plunging at sickening angles, and water splashed over their decks. All of them had been wrecked - sealing off one of the most profitable waterways in the world.

The decision to block the canal had come from Egypt's president, Gamal Abdel Nasser. While you might assume that a waterway running through Nasser's country had always been owned by the Egyptians, it had, since its completion in 1869, belonged to the Suez Canal Company: an organisation controlled by the British and the French. To protect the canal - which was a great asset for the imperial powers, as it gave easy access to oil deposits in the Middle East - the British stationed troops along its waters.

SEIZING CONTROL

The arrangement had bred resentment among the Egyptians for decades, turning the situation into a powder keg. The spark to ignite it finally came in the summer of 1956, at the height of the Cold War. Nasser was determined to build the Aswan High Dam, which he viewed as a key step in industrialising the country, and the Americans and British had promised to pay for it. But America was displeased by Egypt's friendship with the USSR, and took US money off the table.

Nasser had to get creative. If the west wouldn't pay for it, their waterway would. In July 1956 he took control of the Suez Canal Company and announced he would charge ships for the privilege of using the route - this toll would finance the dam in five years.