Recent South American cruise gave us the opportunity to see the Panama Canal, widely believed to be the single greatest achievement of the American people until the moon landings. In that era, the world saw monumental changes in linking the country. The transcontinental railroad completion in 1869 linked the east and west portions of the USA,Transcontinental railroad and in 1910 the Panama Canal linked the oceans. The reference book I'd gone through during the cruise Panama Fever by Matthew Parker is the most recent of the historical references on the canal and the incredible achievement it represented. Seeing the canal in person is an experience, but reading about the background set the thing into perspective. My interest had to do with the role of Dr. Walter Reed in the control of yellow fever and malaria to lower the death rate of workers to an acceptable level. In my time at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, I'd seen his painting and always wanted to explore that connection. The medical aspect is explored in a subsequent post.
Here is a tanker next to us settling into the Atlantic locks at Gatun. All electricity to operate the canal and the surrounding area is generated from the hydroelectric plant on site as the locks are filled from the Chagres river dam to lift ships and then released downstream as the locks are emptied.
For security reasons, ships are not under their own power in the locks, but pulled along by electric mules (tracks at the right of the photo) powered by local electricity.
The French effort (10 years; 1980-December 1989) was abandoned for cost considerations, corruption and the lack of confidence with the total loss of the savings of 800,000 private investors and a collapse of the Compagnie Universelle (had successfully built the much longer span of the Suez canal) that shook world financial markets similar to the economic upheavals of today. The American effort was motivated by a young country looking to protect its interests and to expand it's military power without having to maintain a two ocean navy (ability to move military ships and goods through the canal to cut cost and time for transport from east and west coasts for a country looking to expand its influence in the world). The completion of the canal marked the zenith of the rise of America to a world power. Apart from any war, the canal was the costliest project in history, as ambitious as the construction of the Great Pyramids.
The American effort between 1904-1914 cost more than $400 million dollars in a day when a working wage of several dollars a day was a good wage.
Here is a view back across the first Atlantic locks with ships lined up along the entry for the paired locks to raise them the 85 feet required to get to the Gatun lake and start the descent on the Pacific side.
The famed calebra cut, the most earth to be moved between mountains and digging defeated the French effort, and nearly defeated the American effort because of the volume of earth to be moved (233 million cubic yards of dirt, rock, sand, clay) and the unique soil composition that produced massive slides of the walls of the cut into the newly excavated area requiring redigging after months of effort. The huge loss of life in the excavations (estimates of more than 25,000 men from disease and accidents) makes sailing through the cut perched high on a super cruise ship a humbling experience (it is estimated that several thousand men died and were never recovered from this segment of the canal dig) This shot of a portion of the cut shows some recent slides but does not show the huge amount of earth that has already slid down over the past 100 years. The canal is being widened to accomodate current ships and the engineers workign today have the same challenges of moving unstable earth that the original French or American engineers did.
The Pacific Ocean and the corresponding locks on the Western side of the canal.
Thriving Panama City after nearly 100 years of growth with the canal. A great trip through the canal.
