Diolkos
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
fun fact (that I NEVER expected to explain in english! ): there is an expression in Greek which says "pussy can pull boats". Obviously there were prostitute services along the "diodos" as is commonly found in harbors and the "joke" behind this expression was that sailors preferred the hard work of pulling the boat on land and having a chance to meet women than sailing in the sea around peloponisos.
“Don–Volga Portage (Russian: Волгодонская переволока, Volgodonskaya Perevoloka) refers to the ancient trade and military route located on the shortest distance (ca. 70 kilometers) between the major rivers Volga and Don, in today's Volgograd Oblast. The portage, where cargo and ships would be drawn over land either manually or by horse-drawn vehicles, was in use from the 1st millennium BCE to 1952 CE, when the Volga-Don Canal was opened.”
edit: i just saw that you are also Greek, so you already know that.
The general term for bringing a ship over land in English is "portage", but normally it's for things like canoes. Cambridge University has a set of "rollers" that are maybe 10m long and 2m high used for transferring punts between two sections of the river.
Bringing partially-dismantled ships over land led to one of history's stranger naval engagements on an entirely landlocked lake with no direct access to the sea: https://www.naval-encyclopedia.com/ww1/lake-tanganykas-naval...
I guess that’s because “similar parts of the world” are fairly rare. Requirements are that the shortcut is faster, safer, or cheaper (that Wikipedia page mentions an example where it was done to avoid taxes) than the detour over water, the land journey too steep (you’ll need beaches either side), and there’s a good reason to be at either side of the journey. I think that means you need population centers at either side.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbl%C4%85g_Canal#The_inclined...
Meanwhile, despite some probing attacks, the Ottoman fleet under Baltoghlu could not enter the Golden Horn due to the chain the Byzantines had previously stretched across the entrance.
Mehmed ordered the construction of a road of greased logs across Galata on the north side of the Golden Horn, and dragged his ships over the hill, directly into the Golden Horn on 22 April, bypassing the chain barrier.
This (https://www.filmfestival.gr/en/section-tdf/movie/1092/13048) was written and directed by Theodosis Tassios (https://www.ellines.com/en/achievements/39373-the-awarded-do...) who's a professor in NTUA (the most respected engineering school in Greece) and pretty knowledgeable in the area.
TUC begs to differ!
"a navigable canal through the base of the Mount Athos peninsula in Chalkidiki, northern Greece, built by king Xerxes I of Persia in the 5th century BCE. [...] The total length of the canal was two km, its width was 30 meters, and it was three meters deep, enough for a trireme to pass."