Building the Panama Canal
Carving a bridge between the seas
Alex Q. Arbuckle
1881-1914
The narrow isthmus which connects North America and South America was recognized early on as a promising shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. By the 19th century, technology and necessity had advanced to the point where serious consideration was given to the idea of cutting a canal across Panama.Inspired by the 10-year build of the Suez Canal, La Société Internationale du Canal Interocéanique obtained the rights in 1878 to build a version in Panama. The Colombian government, which controlled Panama, gave permission for the project.
Ferdinand de Lesseps headed the fundraising. His success with the Suez Canal helped him raise millions for the new project.Once engineers got to work designing the canal, it became evident that this undertaking would be far more difficult than digging a sea-level ditch through a sandy desert.Though only about 40 miles wide at its narrowest point, the terrain of the isthmus was solid, rocky and mountainous in places. The proposed canal route was intersected by powerful rivers which would need to be diverted. And most significantly, tropical diseases were a tremendous health hazard for laborers. Nevertheless, de Lesseps pushed ahead with an optimistic plan for a sea-level canal to be completed in only six years at an estimated cost of $120 million. A labor force of 40,000 men was assembled, composed almost entirely of workers from the West Indies, joined by engineers from France. In 1881, construction began.
The experience at Suez was little help. Probably they would have been better off in the long run had there been no Suez Canal in their past. - David McCullough, "The Path Between the Seas"
The project was a disaster. It quickly became obvious that a sea-level canal was impossible, and that building sets of locks leading to an elevated canal was the only workable plan. De Lesseps stubbornly stuck to the sea-level plan.Meanwhile, laborers and engineers were dying of malaria, yellow fever and dysentery, and construction was frustrated by frequent floods and mudslides. By the time the raised-locks plan was adopted, it was already too late. An estimated 22,000 workers had died. The project was years behind schedule and hundreds of millions over budget. The company went bankrupt and collapsed, ruining 800,000 investors. De Lesseps was convicted of fraud and maladministration in 1893 and died in disgrace two years later.In 1903, with covert encouragement from the United States, Panama seceded from Colombia, and rewarded the U.S. with the rights to the canal. The next year, with President Theodore Roosevelt eager to advance strategic interests in the region, the U.S. purchased the remains of the French company and got digging.
I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also. - Theodore Roosevelt
Contending with the same disease problems as the French, the Americans embarked on an aggressive mosquito extermination campaign. (The link between malaria and mosquitoes was still a very new theory.) This drastically reduced the instances of sickness and improved productivity. After a few years contending with inadequate machinery and infrastructure, excavation ramped up, and the canal began to take shape.
The Gatun Dam was built across the Changres River, creating Gatun Lake, the largest manmade lake at the time. The lake stretches across half the span of the isthmus, carrying ships 21 miles in their traversal.Massive sets of locks were constructed at the Atlantic and Pacific ends of the canal. These 110-foot-wide locks allowed ships to pass through a series of chambers with adjustable water levels, stepping up to the elevation of Gatun Lake and the canal, 85 feet above sea level.The greatest effort, though, was the Culebra Cut — a nearly eight-mile carving through the Culebra mountain ridge, which reached 210 feet above sea level. 27,000 metric tons of dynamite were used to blast apart over 100 million cubic yards of earth, which were carted away with steam shovels and trains. Due to a misjudgment of the composition of the geological strata, the excavation was plagued by unpredictable landslides, which sometimes took months to clear. By the time the cut was completed in 1913, the summit had been lowered from 210 feet above sea level to 39.
A finer body of men has never been gathered by any nation than the men who have done the work of building the Panama Canal…. They have made not only America but the whole world their debtors by what they have accomplished. - Theodore Roosevelt
My impression about the Panama Canal is that the great revolution it is going to introduce in the trade of the world is in the trade between the east and west coast of the United States. - William Howard Taft
On Dec. 10, 1913, there was finally a traversable water route between the two oceans. On Jan. 7, 1914, the French crane boat Alexandre La Valley made the first passage through the canal. Today, 4% of all world trade passes through the canal, around 15,000 ships every year. Plans are underway to build an additional set of wider locks, as well as a competing canal through Nicaragua.The largest toll ever charged for passage was $142,000 for a cruise ship. The smallest was $0.36, for adventurer Richard Halliburton, who swam the canal through the locks in 1928.
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory or defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt
