Building the Panama Canal

BUILDING THE PANAMA CANAL

The Choice of Panama

The Panama Canal was one of the great engineering triumphs of its era. For decades shipping interests had dreamed of shortening the trip from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which until the canal was completed required an arduous journey around South America's Cape Horn. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the United States contemplated building a canal across Nicaragua but after much debate settled on the Isthmus of Panama as the best site. A railroad constructed by a New York firm had been completed there in 1855, and its existence and profitability were major factors in the choice of Panama. A French firm that had begun digging a canal at the site in 1881 had abandoned its efforts in 1889—in large part because of the horrendous death toll to its workers caused by malaria.

Political Maneuvering

On 22 January 1903 representatives from the United States and Colombia signed the Hay-Herrán Treaty, but the Colombian Senate refused to ratify it. On 3 November 1903 a group of Colombians living near the canal site declared their independence from Colombia. Within three days the Roosevelt administration, eager to complete the canal project, recognized the sovereignty of Panama. A week later Panama's minister to the United States signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty giving the United States the right to operate a canal in the new nation. The treaty also granted control of land on either side of the canal for five miles, the Canal Zone, to the United States,

Work Begins

Construction on the canal began in 1904. The decade-long project was a massive undertaking. A railroad system to haul equipment to the site and earth from the dig had to be constructed; and terminals, wharves, coaling stations, dry docks, machine shops, and warehouses had to be built. The builders encountered many obstacles, among the worst of which was the high death rate caused by yellow fever. Walter Reed, William Gorgas, and other doctors and researchers, having identified the mosquito as the main carrier of the deadly illness, were able to triumph over yellow fever, reducing the death rate from 17.6 percent to 0.6 percent. In the torrential rains common in the Canal Zone—in some years during construction over ten feet of rain fell annually—mud slides and rock avalanches were commonplace. Repeated avalanches, which could bury shovels, railroad tracks, locomotives, and men under tons of rock and dirt, were especially worrisome on the east bank of the Culebra Cut. As one observer noted, "No one could say when the sun went down at night what the condition of the Cut would be when the sun arose the next morning.…The work of months and years might be blotted out by an avalanche of earth or the toppling over of a small mountain of rock." Temperatures at the bottom of the Culebra Cut were seldom under 100 degrees and sometimes reached 130 degrees.

Engineering Triumph

The canal was completed under the able leadership of George Washington Goethals, who headed the project from 1907 to its completion. Goethals engineered a series of canal locks and a reservoir system by which ships were raised and lowered through the canal. The amount of earth removed from the fifty miles of the construction site would have been enough to construct sixty-three pyramids the size of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Formed into a shaft with a base the size of a city block, the column of earth removed from the canal would tower nineteen miles into the air. Through his personable management style, Goethals inspired camaraderie and motivated workers to finish the canal nearly a year ahead of schedule. Asked by a journalist how he had achieved results where those before him had failed, Goethals replied, "The pride everyone feels in the work."

Early Years

The fifty-one-mile canal opened to shipping on 14 August 1914, though formal ceremonies opening the canal were not held until 12 July 1915. With World War I consuming Europe, traffic on the canal remained relatively light. During its first three years of operation only four or five ships a day passed through the canal. With the war's end, however, the canal came into heavy use. In July 1919, for example, an armada of thirty U.S. ships returning from the war zone traveled through the canal in just two days. A trip around South America's Cape Horn would have delayed their journey by weeks.

Source:

David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal: 1870-1914 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977).