A grand vision. Incredible hubris. Stupidity and poor planning. Thousands of lives lost. A miracle of modern science and engineering. A doorway between oceans. The Panama Canal was–and is–all of these things.
Yesterday, I wrote my A to Z post about the country of Panama. But I mentioned the serendipity of being in Panama while it was time to write about Panama. And the first thing anyone usually thinks about Panama is The Canal.
Knowing I was planning this trip through the canal, Nan, one of my chickleball friends, recommended an excellent history of the canal: David McCullough’s The Pathway through the Seas. It earned a Pulitzer Prize 50 years ago, and for good reason. I had to speed-read the last of the 600 pages, just finishing it it in time–phew! otherwise, we would have been stuck in the locks. Spoiler: they did it. It was cray-cray. Herein, I will give you the speed version, 2000 words instead of 600 pages, the How, Why, and What the Canal was all about.
The Grand Vision
Panama as a country spans the isthmus–that neck of land between Central America’s Costa Rica & Nicaragua and South America’s Colombia. It was populated by indigenous tribes until the 16th century, then became Spanish, Colombian, American (controlling a hand-picked Panamanian government), and finally Panamanian. Except for the original natives, everybody else wanted to get from Atlantic to Pacific. The fifty miles of Panama–the shortest point in the Americas before the Canal–was in the way.
It was, after all, the grand vision of Columbus, that passage across the Atlantic straight to China. Today, going around the tip of South America still takes 8 extra days, and back then it was months, if it could be done at all. Ship throughways had been the highways for centuries. Everybody wanted it.
Ulysses Grant first sent a team of American planners, closely followed by the French, back in the 1870s. Railroads were spanning continents, the telegraph had created long-distance communication, and Jules Verne was talking about how to go around the world. The world “seemed” closer. Plenty of Europeans wanted a better throughway, though Americans might have wanted it the most, being only days away. They sent in several surveyors. Several got lost in the jungle, fell ill, and returned speaking of hell: “For love of God and love of man, don’t come this route…” (DM, 34).
Planning and Planning and …
Still, the possibility of achievement dangled in front of the world. The Americans and the French seemed the most serious about it, and they created several plans. One option was to dig through the shortest point on the isthmus, near the existing Chagres River (see dotted line on the above diagram). Despite the mountainous terrain, it was only roughly fifty miles of digging.
Another option would be through Nicaragua–much longer, but there was an existing natural lake, which could be used to create locks. Easier in the long run, but it created months of debate.
Even through Panama, there were two possibilities. One was a sea-level canal, joining the two oceans directly. Just dig, baby! The other was far more complicated, a Nicaragua-type model. Dig at sea-level from both sides, create an artificial lake with dams, then use locks to go through a smaller, above-sea-level canal, up and over Panama, like a water bridge.
The American government debated and voted, multiple times, on one plan or the other. The French government did as well. Even after they started digging, the debates would start again. Same as it ever was, but it added months and years to the process.
Meanwhile–the French jumped in first. Why the French?
The Failure
The Suez Canal. The French, under the direction of Ferdinand de Lesseps, had managed one of the greatest engineering feats of the age, connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea in a decade-long project. De Lesseps looked at Panama and decided he and his country could do it again.
De Lesseps was, it seems to me, a mash-up of Baron Pierre de Coubertin and Elon Musk. Coubertin had the grand vision of the Olympic Games and willed it into being through his eloquence, enthusiasm, and aristocratic bearing. He squeezed money out of countries like nobody’s business and made decisions that were not his to make. But the Big Idea! Musk, as we all know, has some business acumen, but his primary success has been in talking people into doing things and throwing up a lot of smoke. De Lesseps conjured similar grand visions. When people claimed it would take ten years, he said it would be two; when they said 100 million francs, he said pishtosh (in French) and said it could be done for 50. He apparently cut an elegant figure in uniform on a horse.
The French had the finest engineers in the world in 1870 and–did I mention Suez? But Suez was just sand and nearly at sea level already. Panama, as it turned out, has mountainous rock at its heart, was covered by impenetrable jungle, and was a happy paradise for two types of mosquitoes, the one that causes fatal yellow fever and the one that causes recurring and often fatal malaria.
Oh, plus the mudslides. The French went at it for nearly a decade and managed to lose hundreds of locomotives, giant dredgers, and railroad track, plus about 20,000 people dead from disease and construction accidents. They would dig in the dry season, and their equipment would be swallowed up in the rainy season.
By 1889, the French had run out of money. They tried repeatedly to raise more and succeeded in losing so much more to speculators and stock manipulators, not to mention paying bribes, that the company not only went bankrupt but the officers were put on trial for fraud. De Lesseps’ son Charles spent six years in prison. Gustav Eiffel, who had supplied some of the designs, was acquitted on the grounds that the statue of limitation had passed by the time he went to trial. The French abandoned their equipment to the jungle.
Diplomacy (Or Lack Thereof)
The Americans decided to give it a go, assuming that they could do better than the French. They began by negotiating to buy the rights to the land, remaining dredgers, and the contract that the French had with the Colombians. At the time, you see, Panama was a region of the country of Colombia, kind of like Maine, a promontory attached to a much bigger area. Imagine if Canada or Russia, say, tried to get Maine to become independent.
After years spending hammering out the specifics and getting the contract with the Colombians through a Treaty with the U.S. Congress, the Americans set about to start digging. Someone then decided that the Colombians were asking too much money, $10 million of the $40 million that was getting paid to the French to take over the contract. Teddy Roosevelt, president at the time, agreed; it doesn’t seem to have been his idea. But he was happy to ditch the Colombians. But it would have to managed…delicately.
By then Teddy, already had a reputation for acquiring things on spurious pretexts. This would be one of those things. When you read things like “the Americans successfully completed the canal…” don’t forget this part. The Americans took the land from the Colombians. Now, I could point out that the Spanish took it from the Cueva and… well, human history is full of a lot of taking.
The way the Americans did was to create la revolucion for the Panamanians. The U.S. sent multiple navy warships into the harbors at both ends, Colon on the Atlantic and Panama City at the Pacific. Then, they had a plan; the revolution was to start promptly at 5 pm, November 3, 1903.
The Colombians got wind something was up and sent their own ship full of soldiers. However, the Americans convinced the Colombian army officers that there was a reception waiting for them elsewhere and that the troops would be sent via railroad later. As my wife put it, like one of those dating scams you’re warned about, don’t ever be taken to a second location. The bayonets came out on the Colombian generals, and it was a miraculous bloodless coup. The Panamian-American group designed a new flag, set up a new government, and started a new plan for digging. But first–should it be sea-level or locks?
The Obstacle Game
The story of the entire excavation and its engineering marvel is worth the 600 pages. I will boil it down. First, they had to stop people dying of yellow fever and malaria, which meant getting rid of all the mosquitoes, which meant convincing ignorant medical people that mosquitoes were the cause.
Second, they had to agree to the locks plan. The French insistence on the sea level option helped that. They just couldn’t dig fast enough, far enough to counteract the mudslides. Third, they had to bring in better planners. The first guy, who said “just start digging” found that, without railroads to carry away the spoils, or medicine to keep people from dying, they didn’t get very far.
Teddy Roosevelt gets most of the credit, since it started under his watch. But William Howard Taft was involved in much of the original oversight, continued most of the excavation during his presidency, and made crucial decisions.
Still, Teddy’s symbolic support was key to get it going in full. TR actually went down to Panama to check on the work, and thus became the first U.S. President to leave the country while in office. In Panama, while the administrators tried to wine and dine him, he kept slipping out the back and talking to the workers, tasting their food, and trying their equipment. He was ever so happy to sit and play with the levers of a 90-ton Bucyrus shovel.
Papa Roosevelt had rather famously taught his children a game called the Obstacle Walk: “The one rule, the only rule, being that the participant must go up and over or through every obstacle, never around it.” (DM, 347) Roosevelt started the digging and hired managers–ultimately administrators from the Army Corps of Engineers–who were problem-solvers. The Americans didn’t return to the sea level plan (they discussed it), but otherwise they eradicated disease, built the railroad, brought in thousands of workers, and started to let the dirt fly.
The Cut
It took the Americans ten years of digging, starting in 1904, after they “took” Panama and got serious about planning. In the middle, in the place where the French had stalled after dashing their best against the jungle and rock, was the Culebra Cut. One particular spot was nicknamed Gold Hill because someone had told the workers gold had been discovered in hopes that they might dig harder.
In the Culebra Cut alone, they worked night and day, year after year, dynamiting, dredging, hauling. Lather, rinse repeat. Ultimately, they found a way to remove 96 million cubic yards of dirt–30 Great Pyramids’ worth. Today, you can see the terraced cuts in the rock as you float by. I took this photo from our 12th floor balcony.
The Miracle of the Flesh
While the Americans were far more successful than the French, there was still a death toll. Some 5600 people died either from dynamite blasts, mudslides, or disease. About 350 white Americans, 650 white non-Americans, and 4500 Black workers. The U.S. workers complained that the locals were lazy and unambitious, but ultimately they did the majority of the work and lived in poor conditions. During construction, one West Indian construction worker said, “The flesh of men flew in the air like birds many days.” (DM, 546) Meanwhile, he Americans were highly paid and lavishly treated in order to entice them to stay. There were still torrential rains, mud, insects, and incessant heat, even if you weren’t trying out-run the two dozen dynamite fuses you planted.
So, as we marvel at the American ingenuity and know-how with the locks, the dam, and the canal itself, the death toll should remain part of the story. Americans “got it done” along with a lot of help from Panamanians, West Indians, Colombians, Caribes, and so on.
Still, it is a marvel. Thousands of ships go through every month. Today, a second, bigger set of locks recently joined the first, although the first is still in working order. As was originally planned, locks still raise ships up into the artificially created Gatun Lake, which now covers much of this part (see my Google map). The water going through dam culverts creates enough electricity to operate the locks.
After being towed for forty miles through the twists, including the Culebra Cut, ships then enter locks on the other end until they are lowered again to leave through Panama City. On our ship, we followed a giant container ship for about five hours, making our way through the Cut and then the final set of locks. We are off to more vacation in Mazatlan. Meanwhile the ship will go on its merry way to San Francisco, Japan, or Singapore.
Just as Columbus envisioned.
