Tag Archives: canal

August 28, 2014 · 6:51 pm

Before the Americans Built the Panama Canal

Before it became a republic, Panama was a department within the country of Colombia. Before the Americans built the Panama Canal, the French attempted to build one. And before the French attempted to build a canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific, the French and the Egyptians built the sea-level Suez Canal, which on November 17, 1869, knocked six thousand miles off the nautical journey from Western Europe to India.

As a young diplomat and entrepreneur, but not an engineer, Ferdinand de Lesseps achieved great fame for orchestrating what many said could not be done – constructing a canal between the Mediterranean and Red Seas. His role was that of promoter extraordinaire, convincing the Egyptian viceroy of the merits of the massive engineering project. Egypt put up half of the money and 25,000 Frenchmen put up the other half. Upon completion of the canal, de Lesseps was honored as the world’s greatest living Frenchman. [Parker, Panama Fever, Doubleday Edition, pp. 50-51 (first published in the United Kingdom by Hutchinson in 2007)]

Ferdinand de Lesseps (Source: kids.britannica.com)

Ferdinand de Lesseps (Source: kids.britannica.com)

De Lesseps was 64 years old when the Suez Canal opened. One might think he would have rested on his laurels. But men had dreamed of a nautical passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific since 1513, when Balboa laid eyes on the Pacific after crossing the Isthmus of Panama. De Lesseps thought he was just the man to turn the dream into reality.

When an international group to study the prospects for an interoceanic canal assembled in Paris in 1879, the Suez Canal was paying investors 14% annual dividends. De Lessep’s primary opponent to the sea-level concept was a French civil engineer, Godin de Lepinay. De Lepinay recommended constructing a series of locks on either end of the canal, the approach the Americans ultimately would adopt after conceding the futility of a sea-level canal.

Panama presented a host of problems that Egypt did not: a complex mountain chain, a tropical jungle, 105 inches of annual rainfall, and endemic diseases for which the real culprit (mosquitoes) had not been identified. But hubris is a terrible fault. Virtually all of Western Civilization had spent the past ten years extolling de Lesseps as the man who had accomplished what most men had said was impossible.

Construction of the Suez Canal (Source: Wikipedia.org)

Construction of the Suez Canal (Source: Wikipedia.org)

Blinded by praise, convinced that he could accomplish what others could not, de Lesseps led 800,000 French investors to financial disaster and over 20,000 men to their deaths in yellow fever- and malaria-ridden Panama. His insistence on a sea-level canal doomed the project from the start. When he finally brought Gustav Eiffel into the project to build a lock-system canal, it was too late. Too much money had disappeared. The company had spent one billion francs and had accumulated three billion francs in debt. (At the time one U.S. dollar traded for five francs.)

Along the way, the canal company had lined the pockets of French politicians, money-men, newspaper men, and foreign companies. De Lesseps’ son, Charles, went to prison after an 1893 corruption trial. The father escaped prison only because of his failing health. Eiffel was among those prosecuted; his company had made a seven-million-franc profit on work it had barely started. (Convicted, Eiffel’s conviction was reversed by the French Supreme Court.) Ferdinand de Lesseps died in 1894, remembered for the great Panama failure and the accompanying corruption scandal rather than the great Suez achievement.

SIDE NOTE: Last week, I noted the Panama Canal’s expansion plan, which is nearing completion. The Egyptian government has announced plans for expanding the Suez Canal. Egypt contends that upon completion of the expansion, the Suez Canal will accommodate double the number of ships it currently handles and will afford a speedier route than the Panama Canal for container ships travelling from Shanghai to the East Coast of the United States (26 days rather than 28 days).

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August 22, 2014 · 12:29 am

Panama Canal Turns 100

Panama Canal toy (Source: Ebay.com)

Panama Canal toy (Source: Ebay.com)

When I was five years old, I inherited a plastic Panama Canal play-set. I could not have been happier.

But the toy contained a crack – in the wall of the literally man-made lake – through which little toy ships had to be floated between the two sets of elevators. The crack required me to constantly refill the lake. On one summer weekday morning, I filled a glass jar for probably the twelfth time, and, as I carefully poured the water into the plastic lake, I dropped the jar on the concrete sidewalk. Shards of glass went everywhere, of course, but most significantly, one shard lodged in my neck.

All ended well, obviously, but the attending physician told me the glass had come within an inch of my windpipe. When I responded with a confused expression, he said, “Son, you came within an inch of losing your life.”

Another photo of the Panama Canal toy (Source: Ebay.com)

Another photo of the Panama Canal toy (Source: Ebay.com)

At the tender age of five, I had survived a near-death experience. None of my five-year-old pals could claim such notoriety. Even better, I retained a tiny scar even after the stitches were removed. That meant that in the never-ending show-and-tell game of battle scars played by young boys, my battle story outshone all the rest.

So, what’s the point? The Panama Canal opened for operation on August 15, 1914. That 100-year anniversary reminded me of my childhood encounter with a smaller version of the real thing. The Panama Canal is often cited as one of the engineering wonders of the twentieth century.

Much like the 1950’s toy, the real canal is divided into essentially three parts. A series of locks on each end of the canal allows the ship to rise to the level of fresh-water lakes before descending to sea level on the other end. The canal extends approximately 50 miles between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Just like the toy, the locks are built in pairs to accommodate two-way traffic.

Many of the newer freight carriers are too large to pass through the current canal. The larger cargo ships sailing from Asia, which otherwise would transport cargo to the United States East Coast, currently have to drop their cargo at Long Beach, California, where freight trains carry the cargo to its ultimate destination. The Panama Canal is nearing completion of an expansion project that will double the canal’s capacity and thereby allow those cargo ships to bypass West Coast ports. The Canal will have to further expand its capacity, however, because shipbuilding companies continue to build even larger ships.

Happy (belated) 100th birthday to the man-made wonder that has captivated my attention from 5 years old until now at the ripe old age of…well we’ll leave it at ripe old age!

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