The Panama Canal
The choices available in most American markets are overwhelming. The biggest reason for this is the freedom that capitalism brings. There is also another reason. In today’s world, the ability to move products from one side of the world to the other creates a global marketplace. Technology and shipping methods continue to improve and as more societies embrace freedom, the world economy continues to grow. It took a lot to get to this point. Often taken for granted is a feat of engineering that occurred in the early 20th century. A canal dug through the country of Panama – The Panama Canal.
The idea of connecting the world’s two biggest oceans, the Atlantic and Pacific, without having to go around the tip of South America is one that was many years in the making. Back in 1534, Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor, ordered a survey to be conducted across the Isthmus of Panama to determine if linking the two oceans was possible. The technology of the time did not allow it. It was not until the 1880s that the idea began to take shape again. A French effort led by Ferdinand de Lesseps, the developer behind the Suez Canal, was started. Gustave Eiffel, who designed the Eiffel Tower, was later hired to aid in the construction of a canal. The project ended in bankruptcy and disaster. Diseases, primarily Malaria and yellow fever, ended up killing approximately 20,000 people.
Enter the United States and President Theodore Roosevelt. Following the failed French project in Panama, America decided to restart the project and bought the remaining French assets in the area for $40 million. This followed a debate about whether a canal was more feasible in Panama or in the neighboring country of Nicaragua. It was determined by engineers and others that Panama was the best choice. Along with the engineering difficulties a canal in Nicaragua would face, it was also argued that volcanoes in Nicaragua made it unsafe for construction.
One major issue needed to be resolved before construction could begin. At the time, Panama was controlled by Columbia and the Columbian government rejected the proposed treaty to build the canal through Panama. President Roosevelt backed an independence movement in Panama and sent United States warships to assist in its success. An independent Panama negotiated a treaty with the United States that gave the U.S. rights in the canal zone in perpetuity. The newly independent country of Panama received a one-time payment of $10 million as well as an annual annuity of $250,000. The United States agreed to guarantee Panama’s independence.
The United States construction of the Panama Canal began with a brief ceremony on May 4, 1904. The first year did not go well. The same diseases that had a tragic impact on the French construction attempt were still present, making recruitment of workers difficult. The French equipment was found to be ineffective and in need of repair.
Construction turned around after a railroad engineer named John Stevens was appointed to lead the project in July 1905. Along with chief sanitary officer Dr. William Gorgas, a massive effort was made to kill the disease-carrying mosquitoes in the area. The effort paid off, as there were no further reported cases of yellow fever after November 1905, and cases of malaria dropped significantly. Stevens recruited West Indian laborers and ordered new equipment. Within six months of leadership by Stevens, whole communities equipped with housing, hospitals, schools, and churches were created to accommodate the roughly 24,000-man workforce and their families.
Stevens’ other important contribution was to convince Roosevelt that the canal needed to be built using a lock system that raised ships up and down rather than at sea level as the French had tried. A sea-level canal could have taken as long as ten more years to build, was fraught with problems, including landslides from the surrounding terrain, was far costlier, and likely would have caused the project to fail. In the summer of 1906, Congress voted for the lock canal.
Theodore Roosevelt at the Panama Canal in November 1906.
For President Theodore Roosevelt, the canal was not only commercially important but also a military necessity after the United States waited sixty-seven days to get warships to Cuba from the Pacific coast during the Spanish-American War of 1898. Wanting to boost American prestige around the world, as well as to silence critics skeptical of the canal’s success, Roosevelt was active in the canal project from the beginning. As the first U.S. president to leave the continental United States while in office, Roosevelt paid a visit to the canal site in November of 1906. There he gave a speech to several hundred of the approximately five thousand American workers in which he likened the construction of the canal to a great military struggle:
“…whoever you are, if you are doing your duty, the balance of the country is placed under obligation to you, just as it is to a soldier in a great war…As I have looked at you and seen you work, seen what you have done and are doing, I have felt just exactly as I would feel to see big men of our country carrying on a great war…This is one of the great works of the world. It is a greater work than you yourselves at the moment realize.”
A few months after President Roosevelt’s visit, John Stevens resigned, and Roosevelt named Army Corps of Engineers Lieutenant Colonel George Washington Goethals as the chief engineer of the project. Goethals, known as a great organizer, continued the progress made by Stevens and focused construction on a nine-mile stretch of the mountain range known as the “Culebra Cut.” This was a particularly dangerous point in the construction as casualties mounted from landslides and dynamite explosions. Construction of the locking system began in August 1909. Three locking systems were built that lifted ships 85 feet above sea level to the man-made Gatun Lake in the middle of the canal. The locks were powered by electric motors manufactured by a new American company named General Electric.
The Culebra Cut
By 1913, construction was almost completed. In March, the number of effective workers reached its peak at nearly 45,000. In October, President Woodrow Wilson operated a telegraph from the White House that triggered an explosion that flooded a final stretch of a passageway in the Culebra Cut.
The Panama Canal officially opened on August 15, 1914. Another world event, the outbreak of World War I, overshadowed the opening of the canal. Its final cost was more than $350 million, the most expensive U.S. project to that point in history. The canal was dug over 50 miles of rugged hills and jungle and over 240 million cubic yards of earth was moved.
It was not just money that was lost. Over the course of the entire construction, 5,600 men were reported killed from the difficult and dangerous work, as well as from disease. One untimely explosion killed 23 men at one time.
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed a treaty with Panama that transferred full control over the canal from the United States to the Panama Canal Authority starting on December 31, 1999. Today, a little less than $2 billion is collected in tolls and fees annually for ships to undertake the 8-to-10-hour trip through the canal. A specially trained canal pilot takes control of each vessel as it passes through the waterway.
In 1994, the American Society of Civil Engineers recognized the Panama Canal as one of the seven wonders of the modern world. Between 13,000 and 14,000 ships cross every year. In September 2010, the one-millionth ship crossed the canal. It remains a great symbol of human achievement and one which all Americans should be proud of.