In 1950, at Poarta Albă, a brigade of prisoners breaks the Dobrogea rock with picks, for 4 cubic metres per person per day. Their canal dies in 1953; the second canal, the engineers', opens in 1984 and carries millions of tonnes today. And the first one's dead have no single number.
Research and text: Marius Comper · 20 September 2026
Pick crossed with a surveyor's chain, the page motif.Original drawing for this page
On the morning of 25 May 1949, in Bucharest, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej lays the report on a canal between the Danube and the Black Sea on the Politburo table. By evening, Petru Groza's Council of Ministers approves the start of preparations.
On 29 June the works begin. On the drawing boards, the canal is a fourth, artificial arm of the Danube, shortening the road to the sea; on the ground, Dobrogea is rock, and the machines are few and old, some brought over from the Volga–Don.
On 22 August, Ana Pauker steps up to the rostrum and gives the site its slogan: the canal is built without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie. Placards with the line go up across the site.
In October 1949 a General Directorate appears, tying the site to the camps and answering directly to the leadership. By 1952, the Securitate gains the right to intervene directly on the site.
The prisoners of the first transports come from the country's jails; after them, newly arrested people flow towards the canal in ever greater numbers. The site gathers its workforce from arrests.
II
The camp-site
Poarta Albă · Capu Midia · 1950
Camps along the route
12
Detainees at Poarta Albă
about 12,000
Daily norm
4 cubic metres
At Poarta Albă, in 1950, the brigade walks out to the ramp before dawn. The Dobrogea rock is broken with picks, hauled by wheelbarrow, and the norm is 4 cubic metres per person.
On 14 January 1950, Decree 6 allows dispatch to labour units of all those who endanger the socialist order, even if their deeds are not crimes. Without a warrant and without a trial, anyone who can be counted, in theory, an opponent ends up at the canal.
12 camps line the route: Columbia at Cernavodă, Kilometre 4, Kilometre 31 at Castelu, Poarta Albă, Galeș, Peninsula, Midia, Năvodari and the rest. Poarta Albă is the sorting centre, holding about 12,000 detainees at a time.
The target has a code name: the bourgeoisie. Under it fall the cultural and political elites, priests, soldiers, the peasants who resisted collectivisation and the disgraced workers.
Food thins out year by year, and detainees hunt mice or eat grass to round out their ration. The winter of 1951 into 1952 kills between one and three people a day at Poarta Albă alone.
III
The silence
July 1953 · trial · irrigation
Works halted
July 1953
Camps closed
mid-1954
Executed in the trials
3
In July 1953, soon after Stalin's death, the site stops without a sound. The few machines fall silent, the brigades scatter, and Dobrogea is left with an unfinished wound.
The camps live on for another year: detainees are gradually moved towards other sites in northern Dobrogea, under the same conditions. In mid-1954, the gates along the canal close.
Then comes the reckoning: in the Canal trials, three men are sentenced to death and executed, among them Nichita Dumitru. The site kills even its own bosses.
From 1959, part of what was dug is drowned under irrigation water: the Mircea Vodă complex, later the Carasu system. Another part waits 30 years and goes into the foundations of the northern branch.
For two decades, the canal is a scar crossed by flocks and rains. The second dig only starts in 1976.
IV
The second dig
26 May 1984 · Cernavodă–Agigea
Length, main branch
64.4 km
Locks
4
Tonnes in 2024, first nine months
14.48 million
In 1976, new and large machines, built in Romania, bite into the Dobrogea plateau again. The design is signed by IPTANA of Bucharest, and the Danube–Cernavodă area is drawn by ISPH.
On 26 May 1984, the main branch opens: 64.4 km from Cernavodă to Agigea, a 90-metre channel, 7 metres deep. The northern branch, Poarta Albă–Midia–Năvodari, 27.5 km long, follows in October 1987.
Four locks hold the water in check: Cernavodă at km 60.3, Agigea at km 1.9, Ovidiu and Năvodari on the northern branch. Between them, three reaches: 4.105 km, 57.991 km and 1.510 km.
Today, convoys of up to six 3,000-tonne barges cross the reaches, and 5,000-tonne ships climb up from the sea. In the first nine months of 2024, 14.48 million tonnes passed through.
Every crossing saves almost 400 km of river by way of the Delta. The twice-dug canal is finally a working waterway.
The shortcut
400km saved
64.4 km of canal instead of about 400 km of river
Each kilometre of canal stands in for six kilometres of Danube, by way of the Delta.
ACN: shortens the route by almost 400 km
One locking
310 × 25 × 7.5 m
20–30 minutes
The Cernavodă chamber swallows a whole convoy and moves it from one reach to the next in under half an hour.
ACN, the Cernavodă Lock sheet
The norm
4cubic metres a day
What fits in a small van, moved by pick every day. And at night, in turns, potatoes at the canteen.
Testimony published by the Sighet Memorial
The canal, from the Danube to the sea
A schematic profile of the water: the Danube at Cernavodă, the reaches, the four locks, the first site's camps.
Schematic positions, not topographic ones. Settlements and locks after ACN; camps after the list in the specialist literature.
The lock-keeper's console
You are at the Cernavodă lock desk. Six convoys ask for passage. The chamber is 310 × 25 m, and the maximum draught is 5.5 m on the main branch and 3.8 m on the northern one. Do you pass them or hold them?
A convoy passes if it is within 296 × 22.8 m and its draught sits under the branch limit.
The convoys are imagined from real limits: every figure is judged against the ACN thresholds.
01
“Oltenița”
Convoy on the main branch: 280 × 22 × 5 m. Do you pass it?
Do you lock it through?
Why
Pass: 280 × 22 × 5 m all sit under the limits, with the 5 m draught half a metre under 5.5.
02
“Tomis”
Ship on the main branch: 138 × 16.8 × 5.5 m. Do you pass it?
Do you lock it through?
Why
Pass, at the edge: 138 × 16.8 × 5.5 m, exactly the published maximum ship, its draught touching 5.5 m.
03
“Histria”
Convoy on the main branch: 296 × 22.8 × 6 m. Do you pass it?
Do you lock it through?
Why
Hold: length and beam touch the maximum exactly, but the 6 m draught runs past 5.5 m.
04
“Callatis”
Convoy on the northern branch: 150 × 11 × 3.5 m. Do you pass it?
Do you lock it through?
Why
Pass: 150 × 11 × 3.5 m, small for the chamber, and the 3.5 m draught sits under 3.8 m.
05
“Midia”
Convoy on the northern branch: 220 × 22 × 4.2 m. Do you pass it?
Do you lock it through?
Why
Hold: at 4.2 m of draught, it touches the northern branch limit of 3.8 m.
06
“Pontus”
Convoy on the main branch: 320 × 23 × 4 m. Do you pass it?
Do you lock it through?
Why
Hold: 320 m long and 23 m wide, both past the maximum convoy of 296 × 22.8 m.
You have 0 out of 6 right.
Failed shift The chief lock-keeper calls for a break: check the draughts in the legend and try again.
Nervous shift The shift is saved, but one convoy waited at the gate for nothing, or one too large slipped through.
Clean shift No convoy touches the chamber floor on your watch: all six calls are correct.
The numbers in short
1,949
the decision of 25 May 1949
1,953
the halt of July 1953
1,984
the opening of 26 May 1984
310
metres, the Cernavodă chamber
90
navigable metres
7
metres, the depth of the canal
How many died at the canal?
Five answers, five authors, five methods. No complete official number exists, so the page does not pick one: it shows them all, with who counts and what.
656 dead.The official 1968 report
That much the state admits in a 1968 report. Every serious count starts here and climbs.
6,355 dead.AFDPR Constanța
The former political prisoners' association counted from the death registers of the villages along the route, between 1949 and 1953, the dead entered as Canal workers.
Several thousand dead.The Tismăneanu Commission
The 2006 presidential commission speaks of several thousand dead among the political prisoners used on the site.
Considerably past 10,000.Vladimir Socor
The analyst puts the deaths considerably past ten thousand, with no register-based count.
200,000 dead.Disputed
The journalist's figure is marked as dubious at the source: it appears here only as a warning, not as a working number.
Sources
Method
Dimensions, draughts and locking times come from the canal's administrator, ACN; the 2024 traffic from the Danube Commission, also via ACN. The narrative frame (decision, halt, camps, rebuild) comes from published syntheses, always with the author beside it.
What the sources did not hold does not appear as fact: excavated volumes, cost, the act resuming works in 1976 and the detainee total are undocumented. The map is schematic, and the positions approximate.