Panama Canal

Panama Canal, the canal cut through the Isthmus of Panama in order to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This shortened by many thousands of kilometres the previous route round Cape Horn or though the Magellan Straits, which, until then, was the only ice-free means of passing from one ocean to the other.

The length of the canal is 68 kilometres (42 mls.), and was a massive civil engineering problem to build. Since the mean levels of the two oceans lie at different heights, it was necessary to raise the canal to a height of 26 kilometres (85 ft) above sea level and at places, Lake Gatun in particular, this meant building a series of locks which had to be large enough to take the largest ocean-going vessels. This also entailed, since ships were unable to use their engines while in the locks, the provision of electric locomotives along the sides to tow the ships within them.

Interest in building a canal dates back to the 16th century when the Isthmus of Panama became known to Spanish explorers. Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had constructed the Suez Canal, formed a company to build one but in 1889 it ran out of money. A fillip to the possibility of constructing one came in 1898 when, during the Spanish–American War, the battleship Oregon was ordered from San Francisco to Cuba and took some weeks to negotiate the route round Cape Horn. This highlighted the strategic naval value of such a canal to the USA, then in the throes of building a navy large enough to control the two oceans that bounded her eastern and western shores. President Theodore Roosevelt, always a strong advocate of a Panama Canal, used the length of the Oregon's voyage to great advantage in his political campaign to sanction the construction of the canal, and the acquisition of the necessary strip of land so that it would remain under the USA's political and operational control.

Preliminary work was begun in 1904, but it was not until 1908, when the construction was entrusted to the US Corps of Army Engineers, that real progress was made. The work proceeded under great difficulties because of the unhealthy conditions, mainly yellow fever and malarial diseases, in which it was carried out. However, eventually, all difficulties were overcome and the canal was opened to navigation in 1914. The largest merchant ships able to transit the Panama Canal, that is, those with a maximum beam of 32.5 metres (106 ft), are given the designation PANAMAX.