History of the North Sea the North Sea though they saw little action. The Austro-Prussian War (1866) resulted in Prussia's gaining full control of the Kiel Canal, allowing their Baltic ports access to the North Sea. France declared war on Prussia 19 July 1870 which initiated the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). The French Navy was, at the time far larger and superior to the North German Federal Navy, the Navy of the North German Confederation. Though the French did take a number of merchant ships bound to and from North Germany, shortages of manpower and coal, as well as conflicting orders, made the attempted blockade of
White Sea–Baltic Canal the canal over the first 75 years of its operation (1933–2008). The canal makes it possible to ship heavy and bulky items from Russia's industrial centers to the White Sea, and then by sea-going vessels to Siberia's northern ports. For example, in the summer of 2007, a large piece of equipment for Rosneft's Siberian Vankor Oil Field was delivered by the "Amur-1516" from Dzerzhinsk on the Oka River, via the Volga–Baltic Waterway and the White Sea Canal to Arkhangelsk, and then from there by the ocean-going SA-15 class Arctic cargo ship "Kapitan Danilkin" to Dudinka on the Yenisei River. In