movable weirs between Brest and Pinsk reached 22. As a result, the canal became navigable for bigger vessels, in particular steamers, at any time from spring till autumn. In 1847, the Kanał Królewski was renamed the Dneprovo-Bugski Canal. Decline and abandonment After the construction of the railway along the canal in the late 19th century the canal was used mostly for rafting lumber, exported to western countries. During World War I, the canal was not in use. Reconstruction During the 1920s, it was partly rebuilt anew for the Riverine Flotilla of the Polish Navy (), better known as the Pinsk Flotilla. The Flotilla was the inland branch of the Polish Navy operating in the area of the Pinsk Marshes between the Polish-Bolshevik War and World War II. During the 1920s, two locks were built. In 1940, the Soviet authorities initiated a large-scale reconstruction of the canal. A long stretch of the canal was built near Kobrin to straighten the old canal. Eight locks were built replacing movable weirs. Navigation on the Dnieper–Bug Canal is interrupted by weirs on the rivers Mukhavets and Bug near Brest, Belarus, the border town. That is the only place that, for the time being, makes the navigation from Western Europe to Belarus and Ukraine through inland waterways impossible. The waterways from the German-Polish border (Oder River, through the Warta, Brda and Noteć rivers, Bydgoszcz Canal, Vistula River, Narew River, Bug River) once used to link the Belarus and Ukrainian inland waterways via Mukhavets River, Dnieper–Bug Canal, Pripyat River and Dnieper River), thus connecting north-western Europe with the Black Sea. Decline and renewal Recently the dam in the Bug, making it impossible for ships to pass, has led to considerable neglect of the most western part of the Mukhavets; some of the locks have been filled in and Brest Harbor can only be reached by vessels approaching from the east. More recently efforts have been undertaken to restore the canal to a class IV inland waterway of international importance. In 2003 the Government of the Republic of Belarus adopted an inland water transport and sea transport development program to rebuild the Dnieper–Bug Canal shipping locks to meet the standards of a class Va European waterway. According to the Belarus government, four sluice dams and one shipping lock have been rebuilt which allow for the passage of vessels long, wide with a draught of . It is