The Nieuwe Waterweg, which opened in 1872 and has a length of approximately 20.5 kilometres (12.7 mi), was constructed to keep the city and port of Rotterdam accessible to seafaring vessels as the natural Meuse-Rhine branches silted up.

By the middle of the 19th century, Rotterdam was already one of the largest port cities in the world, mainly because of transshipment of goods from Germany to Great Britain.

The increase in shipping traffic created a capacity problem: there were too many branches in the river delta, making the port difficult to reach.

In 1863, a law was passed that allowed for the provision of a new canal for large ocean-going ships from Rotterdam to the North Sea.

Hydraulic engineer Pieter Caland was commissioned to design a canal cutting through the "Hook of Holland” and to extend the Mouth of Rhine to the sea.

The designs for this were already done back in 1731 by Nicolaas Samuelsz Cruquius but the implementation could no longer be postponed to prevent the decline of the harbour of Rotterdam.

[1] This dredged channel in the North Sea is being widened to 840 metres (2,760 ft) to facilitate the largest container vessels for the new Maasvlakte 2 that opened in 2013.