Cruising the Caribbean Sea
Transversing the Panama Canal
Cruising the Pacific Ocean
A very exciting day! We are going to cross through the Panama Canal from the Caribbean Sea (Atlantic Side) to the Pacific Ocean. The Panama Canal is one of the engineering wonders of the world. Christopher Columbus went looking for a way to the West Indies. He ended up in the Bahamas. He and many others continued the search for a short route, they stayed to rob, pillage and kill the natives throughout the Caribbean and Central America.
There were stories abounding at the time of another ocean. The explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa decided to find out and in 1513 he was the first European to cross the Isthmus of Panama. He recognized this as a fine location to dig a water passage between the two oceans: the Atlantic and the Pacific. He wasn’t looking for a “shorter” route, just a route. This was one-hundred years before the discovery of Cape Horn around the bottom of South America.
Fast forward 350 fifty years. The French had just completed the Suez Canal. It was 1869 and the French government believed if you could build the Suez Canal without too much difficulty then an apparently similar project to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans could be carried out with little difficulty. In 1876 an international company, La Société Internationale du Canal Interocéanique, was created to undertake its construction; two years later, it obtained a concession from the Colombian government (since Panama was a Colombian province) to dig a canal across the isthmus. On March 20, 1878, the Société Civile obtained an exclusive 15-year concession from the Colombian government to build a canal across the isthmus of Panama, the waterway would revert to the Colombian government after 99 years without compensation.
Ferdinand de Lesseps, who was in charge of the Suez Canal construction, headed the project. His enthusiastic leadership and his reputation as the man who had built the Suez Canal persuaded speculators and ordinary citizens to invest nearly $400 million in the project.
However, despite his previous success, Lesseps was not an engineer. The construction of the Suez Canal, essentially a ditch dug through a flat, sandy desert, presented few challenges. Although Central America's mountainous spine has a low point in Panama, it is still 110 meters (360.9 ft) above sea level at its lowest crossing point. The sea-level canal proposed by de Lesseps would require a great deal of excavation through a variety of unstable rock, rather than Suez's sand.
He didn’t understand that the Pacific Ocean is about 40 centimeters higher than the Atlantic. Other less-obvious barriers were the rivers crossing the canal, particularly the Chagres, which often floods during the rainy season. Since the water would be a hazard to shipping if it drained into the canal, a sea-level canal would require the river's diversion.
The most serious problem was tropical diseases, particularly malaria and yellow fever, whose methods of transmission were unknown at the time. The legs of hospital beds were placed in cans of water to keep insects from crawling up them, but the stagnant water was an ideal breeding place for mosquitoes (carriers of the diseases).
In May 1879, the Congrès International d'Etudes du Canal Interocéanique (International Congress for Study of an Interoceanic Canal), led by Lesseps, convened in Paris. Among the 136 delegates of 26 countries, 42 were engineers and made technical proposals before the congress. The others were speculators, politicians, and friends of Lesseps, for whom the purpose of this congress was only to launch fundraising by legitimizing Lesseps' own decision, based on the Lucien Bonaparte-Wyse and Armand Réclus plan, through a so-called international scientific approval, since he was convinced that a sea-level canal, dug through the mountainous spine of Central America, could be completed at least as easily as the Suez Canal.
In reality, only 19 engineers approved the chosen plan, and only one of those had actually visited Central America. What were these guys thinking? Never even been to Panama but are planning the path of the Canal.
American had its own plan to put a canal through Nicaragua. Interestingly the Chinese has recently revived this plan, but the people of Nicaragua objected to the use of an existing lake as part of the system for religious reasons. The Americans abstained from attending the congress because of their own plan through Nicaragua. The five delegates from the French Society of Engineers all refused. Among them were Gustave Eiffel, yes the guy with the tower in Paris, and Adolphe Godin de Lépinay, the general-secretary of the Société de Géographie, who was the only one to propose a lake-and-locks project.
Godin de Lépinay's plan was to build a dam across the Chagres River in Gatún, near the Atlantic, and another on the Rio Grande, near the Pacific, to create an artificial lake accessed by locks. It is or was once the largest manmade lake in the world. The Hover Dam over the Colorado river it bigger. Building the dams for require less digging. Logically, this makes sense, the danger of flooding was his priority. It would have the added benefit of lowering the estimated cost by $100,000,000 (equivalent to $3,032,413,793 in 2022) and it would probably save 50,000 lives by reducing the exposure to the above-mentioned diseases.
Construction of the canal began on January 1, 1881, with digging at Culebra Cut beginning on January 22. The Culebra Cut, once called the Gaillard Cut, is an artificial valley that cuts through the Continental Divided running through the center of Panama.
This is the point where you really need to think. What were they nuts thinking? Remember this was one-hundred forty-three years ago. Steam driven shovels? Really? Yet they planned the canal and began construction.
Unfortunately, by 1885 it had become clear to many that a sea-level canal was impractical, and an elevated canal with locks was preferable; de Lesseps resisted, and a lock canal plan was not adopted until October 1887.
In 1889 the company went bankrupt, and the project was suspended. After eight years the canal was about two-fifths completed, and about $234.8 million had been spent. The French has managed to remove some 14,256,000 cubic meters (18,646,000 cubic yards) of soil and rock from the cut. They had lowered the summit from 64 meters (210 feet) above sea level to 59 meters (194 feet) over a relatively narrow width.
The company's collapse was a scandal in France, and the antisemitic Edouard Drumont exploited the role of two Jewish speculators in the affair. One hundred and four legislators were found to have been involved in the corruption, and Jean Jaurès was commissioned by the French parliament to conduct an inquiry which was completed in 1893.
In an effort to recoup expenses for the stockholders a new concession was obtained from Colombia, and in 1894 the Compagnie Nouvelle du Canal de Panama was created to finish the canal. The contract required that the work began immediately. So, work so the began on the Culebra excavation again. While, at the same time, a team of engineers began a comprehensive study of the project. They eventually settled on a plan for a two-level, lock-based canal.
Unfortunately, this new effort never gained traction; mainly because of US speculation about a canal through Nicaragua, would render one through Panama useless. Only 3,600 men were employed on the new project. But it was primarily to comply with the terms of the concession and to maintain the existing excavation and equipment in saleable condition. The company had already begun looking for a buyer, with an asking price of $109 million.
In mean time, the US, a congressional Isthmian Canal Commission was established in 1899 to examine possibilities for a Central American canal and recommend a route. In November 1901, the commission reported that a US canal should be built through Nicaragua unless the French were willing to sell their holdings for $40 million. The recommendation became law on June 28, 1902, and the New Panama Canal Company was compelled to sell at that price.
The United States took control of the French property connected to the canal on May 4, 1904, when Lieutenant Mark Brooke of the United States Army was presented with the keys during a small ceremony. The new Panama Canal Zone Control was overseen by the Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC) during construction.
This is about where most American history books start talking about the Canal. But the project really began twenty-five years earlier. There are other things which aren’t so talked about. Panama was a department, similar to state, of Colombia. Well, it was until 1903 when Panama gained its independence from Colombia. Oh, and who was the first country to recognize the new state? The United States. Perhaps a little suspicious?
Anyway, by 1913 the canal was opened. And ships began transversing the canal. That was one-hundred and eleven years ago. Same locks that were built in 1913 are still used today. We went through them. Yes, new larger locks have recently been completed, but it is still specular that all of this began over one-hundred years ago.
The trip through the canal began at 7:30 in the morning as we pass under the Atlantic Bridge. The Atlantic Bridge has four lanes for traffic and two lanes one for pedestrians and one for cyclists. The bridge is in Colon, Panama and spans the Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal. Prior to the building of this bridge the only way to get across the canal was by ferry or drive to the other end of the canal. The bridge is a spectacular sight. With the approaches included the bridge is nearly two miles long and nearly 700 feet above the waterway. It was completed in 1979.
It ended about 7 hours later as as passed under the Bridge of the Americas. This bridge is part of the Pan-American highway running from Alaska to Argentina. It was completed in 1962, and it connects the north and South American land masses (hence the name).
We can see photos, read histories and listen to lectures about the work done, beauty of the area, but you can’t really understand or appreciate it until you have seen it. Like the Grand Canyon. Yes, the photos are beautiful, but until you stand on the rim of the canyon you have no idea how grand it really is.
We left the Canal entrance or exit depending on where you start and entered the Bay of Panama near Panama City. Which we could see the skyscrapers of in the distance. With a right turn we headed out of the Gulf of Panama and headed northwest towards our next stop in Puntarenas, Costa Rica about 800 km way.
Buonanotte, Ciao Enrico
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