100 years of the Panama Canal

INTEGRANTS: NICOLE ACOSTA

STEFANIA VARÓN

KARLA CAVIEDES

GREGORY GONZÁLEZ

Panama canal

The Panama Canal (Spanish: Canal de Panamá) is a 77.1-kilometre (48 mi) ship canal in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean (via the Caribbean Sea) to the Pacific Ocean. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a key conduit for international maritime trade. There are locks at each end to lift ships up to Gatun Lake, an artificial lake created to reduce the amount of excavation work required for the canal, 26 meters (85 ft.) above sea level. The current locks are 33.5 meters (110 ft.) wide. A third, wider lane of locks is currently under construction and is due to open in 2015.

France and the united states

France began work on the canal in 1881, but had to stop because of engineering problems and high mortality due to disease. The United States took over the project in 1904, and took a decade to complete the canal, which was officially opened on August 15, 1914. The shorter, faster, and safer route to the U.S. West Coast and to nations in and around the Pacific Ocean allowed those places to become more integrated with the world economy. It takes between 20 and 30 hours to traverse the canal

French construction

The first attempt to construct a canal through what was then Colombia's province of Panama began on 1 January 1881. The project, designed as a sea-level canal (i.e., without locks), was under the leadership of Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, with substantial financing and support from Paris. The cost and difficulty of construction in the rain-soaked tropics through unstable mountains exceeded expectations, and the French effort eventually went bankrupt after reportedly spending US$287,000,000 and losing an estimated 22,000 lives to accident and disease.

The French rushed to begin work, with insufficient prior study of the geology and hydrology of the region, and the men who started and directed the project had little or no engineering training or experience. Canals cut through mountains had to continually be widened, and their slopes reduced, to minimize landslides into the canal. Steam shovels had been invented but were still primitive. Other mechanical and electrical equipment was limited in its capabilities, and steel equipment rusted rapidly in the climate.

Health risks posed to workers in the mosquito-infested Panamanian jungle, principally malaria and yellow fever, cost thousands of lives. Public health measures were ineffective because the role of the mosquito as a disease vector was then unknown. Conditions were downplayed in France to avoid recruitment problems, but the high mortality made it difficult to maintain an experienced workforce. Beyond the health and technical difficulties, financial mismanagement and political corruption also contributed to the French failure.

By 1889 the company was bankrupt, and work was suspended on May 15. In the ensuing scandal, known as the Panama affair, various of those deemed responsible were prosecuted. Charles De Lesseps, son of Ferdinand De Lesseps, was found guilty of misappropriation of funds and sentenced to five years' imprisonment, though this was later overturned.

U.S. construction

The U.S. formally took control of the canal property on May 4, 1904, inheriting from the French a depleted workforce and a vast jumble of buildings, infrastructure and equipment, much of it in poor condition. A U.S. government commission, the Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC), was established to oversee construction and was given control of the Panama Canal Zone, over which the United States exercised sovereignty. The commission reported directly to Secretary of War William Howard Taft and was directed to avoid the inefficiency and corruption that had plagued the French 15 years earlier.

On May 6, 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed John Findlay Wallace, formerly chief engineer and finally general manager of the Illinois Central Railroad, as chief engineer of the Panama Canal Project.

characters involved in this work

Ferdinand de Lesseps Jhon Frank Stevens William Crawford Gorgas George W. Goethals