In good naval tradition, the crew tested themselves to see if they could row the equivalent length of the canal on a rowing machine whilst the ship completed the actual transit through the canal.
The distance of the transit was 120 miles and the ship would cover that in over 15 hours. Rowing was broken up into 20-minute slots and would require a minimum of 45 people to row an average of 4.3km each to cover both the distance and time.