One of the definitions of Navigation that gets little attention in this Institute is ‘communication by canals and rivers’ (Oxford English Dictionary), and which our French friends call La Navigation. I have always found this subject fascinating, and have previously navigated the Rivers Mekong, Irrawaddy, Hooghly, Indus, Shatt-al-Arab, Savannah and Rhône. During the middle of 1995 I travelled by barge from the North Sea to the Black Sea via the River Rhine, the Rhein—Main—Donau—Kanal (RMDK) and the River Danube, a distance of approximately 4000 km. This voyage has only recently become possible with the opening of the connecting RMDK at the end of 1992, but has been made little use of because of the civil war in the former Yugoslavia.
