Building the Canal: Old world failure

For centuries explorers dreamed of a canal through the jungle

From drawing board to working reality the Panama Canal took more than 40 years to build. Billions of dollars were poured into the project. Reputations were made and destroyed, and thousands of labourers succumbed to the rigours of digging a vast 50 mile-long trench through thick, disease-ridden jungle.

When it was finally completed the Panama Canal was the Apollo XI landing of its time - a triumph of New World enterprise and engineering that established the US as a 20th century superpower. The Canal as it is today was finally completed in 1914, but the dream of building a waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans goes back more than 400 years, to when European explorers first discovered Panama's Pacific coast. In 1534, Charles I of Spain ordered the first survey of a proposed canal route through the Isthmus of Panama. New World riches

Canal Zone cemeteries testify to the project's heavy human cost

At the time, Spanish explorers were beginning to uncover the riches of Peru, Ecuador and Asia, and were keen for a quicker and safer route to bring their plundered gold back to Spain. Decades earlier Christopher Columbus had searched in vain for a route through the new continent that he believed would lead him to the treasures of the Indies. Over the centuries other leaders and adventurers also toyed with the idea and in 1835 a US Army Colonel, Charles Biddle, was sent on an exploratory mission to evaluate its feasibility.

Spain's Charles I ordered one of the first surveys in 1534

Mosquitoes get so thick you get a mouthful with every breath 1880s Canal worker After four days in the sweltering, mosquito-infested jungle Biddle had made up his mind that the impracticality of building a canal through such inhospitable terrain ought to be clear to anyone, "whether of common or uncommon sense." Once again the idea was put on hold. It was to be another 40 years before construction finally began, led by the French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps. Hero of Suez

Ferdinand de Lesseps: "Science will find a

Buoyed by the phenomenal success of the Suez Canal, a project he had personally managed, de Lesseps drew up plans for a similar venture in Panama, then a republic of Colombia.

way"

Shareholders who had taken a risk with de Lesseps' Suez venture made huge fortunes when that canal opened to shipping in 1869 and were keen to back him again. A second canal would split the two American continents and complete the shipping circle around the globe that had been begun at Suez. Amid great pomp and French national pride, work on the Panama project began in 1879.

Following the Suez model, de Lesseps' plans called for a canal to be built at sea level across the Central American isthmus. The distance was half that in Egypt and, although the Panamanian climate and terrain were more challenging, de Lesseps had total faith that his team of engineers and French know-how developed and proved at Suez would find a way through.

Canal fact In total more than 27,000 died during the canal's construction

"As problems arise, men of genius will step forward to solve them," de Lesseps promised. "Science will find a way." Fighting the forest But de Lesseps - a trained diplomat - was an entrepreneur and a visionary, not a technician. The mountainous Panamanian jungle was very different from the flat, dry desert at Suez and the working conditions were horrendous.

Labourers battled against collapsing hillsides, the thundering Chagres River, a jungle full of lethal snakes, and mosquitoes carrying yellow fever and malaria. In the rainy season the soil would turn into a quagmire that swallowed men and machinery, never to be seen again. Costs spiralled and after six years of work less than a tenth of the excavations had been completed. Eventually de Lesseps altered his plans, to incorporate a single temporary lock that would raise ships up and over the continental De Lessep's canal company was declared bankrupt

divide. That, he hoped, would speed up the opening of the canal whilst dredgers would continue to slowly lower the channel to sea level. But it was too late - in 1889 his Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interoceanique was declared bankrupt and shortly afterwards de Lesseps was tried and jailed for fraud. The cost to his team of labourers was even heavier: more than 22,000 died - buried under landslides, blown up by careless dynamiting, or falling victim to the tropical diseases that thrived in the humid climate. For almost ten years the French excavations lay abandoned

Ten years after the French effort ground to a halt, America once again began to think of the benefits of an interoceanic waterway.

(Click here for part one of the canal history) The project's main advocate was the then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, who saw the canal not as a tool for commerce but for securing America's position as a major world power commanding two seas. In 1898, as America headed to war with Spain, the navy's first and only real battleship, the USS Oregon, took a full 67 days at full steam to get from San Francisco to the Carribean. By far the most important action I took in foreign affairs during the time I was president related to the Panama Canal Theodore Roosevelt

It was a long and arduous 12,000-mile journey around Cape Horn and by the time it finally reached its destination the war was practically over.

The debacle stuck in Roosevelt's mind and after ascending to the presidency in 1901 he pushed Congress to approve plans for a Central American canal. Initially the plan was to build a route through Nicaragua, but after some ferocious lobbying on the part of the French the decision was made to take up where de Lesseps had left off. A payment of $40m bought the rights to what was left of the French canal, but the constantly changing Colombian government -still the colonial power in Panama - refused to sell the land to the US. A new nation

Roosevelt is regarded by many as the father of the canal

Roosevelt, describing Colombia's leaders as a gang of "irresponsible bandits", abandoned attempts at negotiation and instead gave his implicit backing to the growing Panamanian movement for independence.

As the Panamanian revolutionaries finally made their move, Roosevelt dispatched a fleet of US warships to both coasts of Panama preventing Colombia from landing troop reinforcements - it was one of the first and most blatant examples of gunboat diplomacy.

The leaders of the newly independent nation quickly agreed to a new treaty with the United States and in 1903, in return for $10m compensation, Washington was given sovereign control over a 10-mile-wide Canal Zone.

Canal fact Each lock chamber can fit a ship the size of the Titanic with room to spare

Work began immediately, but many of the first labourers once again fell victim to the disease and harsh terrain that had been the scourge of the French effort.

Landslides continued to hamper the

A year later, in 1905, railway engineer John Stevens took over the project and immediately brought a halt to the excavations.

American construction effort

"This is no reflection on the French," he said shortly after arriving, "but I cannot conceive how they did the work they did with the plant they had." Following the advice of the project's Chief Sanitary Officer, Dr William Crawford Gorgas, Stevens began a huge public health campaign aimed at bringing disease under control and transforming Panama into "a fit place to live." Huge areas of swamp were drained, running water and sewage pipes were laid, and whole new towns were built. Back to the drawing board

Stevens also saw what he called the "impracticable futility" of trying to build a canal at sea level. Even if it could be built, he said, the result would be little more than "a narrow, tortuous ditch" constantly vulnerable to landslides.

He convinced Roosevelt that the best chances for success stood with a lock and lake canal that would harness the power of Panama's wet climate and in particular the power of the mighty Chagres River.

Canal fact Each ship transit uses 200m litres (52 m gallons) water to pass through the canal

Plans were drawn up for the damming of the Chagres creating a massive manmade reservoir that would provide the canal with an unending supply The problem is one of of water. magnitude and not miracles The simplicity of Steven's scheme was to create a self-sustaining canal that relied almost solely on gravity, creating what extra power it needed John Stevens from generators built into the dams. Backed up by an efficient railway system, also of Stevens' design, work began again in 1907 with more than 24,000 labourers shifting an average of twice the amount of earth per month that the French had managed. Deadly work

Most of the workers came from Barbados and were paid what was considered at the time an excellent salary - 10 cents an hour, for a tenhour day, six days a week. But the work was still tough and, at times, lethal. During the American construction more than 5,000 died, 4,500 of whom were black. Most effort was concentrated on the mountainous Culebra Cut, the location of the Continental Divide and the highest point on the route, where more than 300,000 tonnes of rock would have to be shifted. Giant steam shovels helped, but much of the work was heavy labour

This is one of the great works of the world Theodore Roosevelt There, in what became known as "hell's gorge", periodic landslides would often set work back by months, burying workers and equipment in the process. But the project continued and, although Steven's himself quit under the pressure of the job, thousands of labourers continued to arrive to work on the project. As the work proceeded, now under the command of an Army Colonel, George Washington Goethals, the canal's construction took on epic proportions.

The massive locks began to take shape - each one sealed with giant steel gates so perfectly balanced that they only required a 40 horsepower motor (half the power of a modern family car engine) to open them. On the Atlantic side the Gatun Locks alone used enough concrete to build a wall half a metre wide and a metre tall all the way across the United States. Each lock chamber was big enough to hold three Statue of Liberties laid end-to-end with room to spare. A jungle conquered Finally on May 20th 1913 two battered steam shovels met at the bottom The locks were the largest structures ever built

of the Culebra Cut and sounded their horns - the digging was over.

By the end of that month the last concrete had been poured and in October of that year the tug Gatun made the first transoceanic trial run. Almost unbelievably for such a massive project the canal had been finished ahead of schedule and under budget. The Panama Canal officially opened to the world's shipping on 15 August, 1915, each ship taking an average of nine hours to cross from ocean to ocean. Under American control the canal allowed American battleships easy transit between the two seas and proved the basis for realising Roosevelt's dream of turning the US from a fledgling nation into a 20th century superpower. The finished canal helped realise Roosevelt's dream of US naval dominance