The first proposals for a binational comprehensive deep waterway along the Saint Lawrence were made in the 1890s. In the following decades, developers proposed a hydropower project as inseparable from the seaway; the various governments and seaway supporters believed the deeper water to be created by the hydro project was necessary to make the seaway channels feasible for oceangoing ships. U.S. proposals for development up to and including the First World War met with little interest from the Canadian federal government. But the two national governments submitted Saint Lawrence plans to a group for study. By the early 1920s, both "The Wooten-Bowden Report" and the International Joint Commission recommended the project.