The Panama Canal. The greatest Engineering feat ever

 It’s perhaps the most effective shortcutin the world. Slicing through the dense jungles of CentralAmerica, the Panama Canal bisects the continent, carving an 80km path that joins the Atlanticto the Pacific. For ships that pass through its intricatesystem of locks, it can chop up to 12,500 km off their journey - a time saving thatputs even Egypt’s Suez Canal to shame. When construction was finally completed in1914, it was the most expensive infrastructure project ever undertaken, and is still oneof the engineering wonders of the modern world. Yet the tale of the Panama Canal is more thanjust the tale of a whole bunch of guys getting together to decide how to get boats from portA to port B in record time. It’s also a tale of a dream. 

Of a dream so big - so unimaginably vast - thatit persisted for centuries; and of the nightmares that were unleashed in pursuit of that dream. In the video today, we take a look at theepic story that is the history of the Panama Canal, a story stuffed with conquest, war,revolution… and the birth of the modern world. The Deathless DreamIf the story of the Panama Canal is the story of a dream, then the sandman responsible forthat dream must be Vasco Nuñez de Balboa. A conquistador who left Spain at the dawnof the 16th Century, Balboa had one goal: to find as much gold as possible and impressthe crap out of the king back home. But it wasn’t gold Balboa ultimately foundamid the jungles of Panama. It was something much more precious. He found the Pacific Ocean. 

Before Balboa sighted it in 1513, no Europeanhad ever set eyes on the Pacific. No-one even knew Panama was just a narrowisthmus separating two mighty oceans. But now Balboa had seen this vast sea withhis own eyes, the world would never be the same. The first to recognize the value of Balboa’sdiscovery was Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who, just to be confusing, was also CharlesI of Spain. Realizing the new vistas of trade that couldbe opened up, Charles Doubleking ordered the Panama regional governor to figure out a shippingroute between the isthmus’s coasts. It was a visionary idea.

 Unfortunately, just a little too visionary. The Panama governor went out, dutifully pokedaround the dense rainforest, measured the foreboding mountains and declared:“There is not a prince in the world with the power to accomplish this.” And that was that. But here’s the thing about dreams. Although they fade, the brightest never vanishentirely. And while Charles the Numerically Confusingwouldn’t live to see it, his dream of a shipping route across Panama would resurfacetime and time again. In the following centuries, life on the isthmusunderwent dramatic changes. 

In the South American Wars of Independence,Panama first backed Spain, before realizing Simon Bolivar was serious about this wholeliberation thing and joining his new state of Gran Colombia. Unfortunately, Gran Colombia lasted a not-sogrand total of 11 years before Venezuela and Ecuador split, leaving a rump state that wasessentially modern-day Panama and Colombia. 

At first, the two nations got on fine. But then, in 1843, the government in Bogotarevoked Panama’s joint status, transforming the isthmus into just another province ofColombia. Needless to say, the Panamanians were notimpressed. But what could they do? Colombia was a huge country with an army and,like, proper cities and stuff. What did little Panama have that could competewith that? Eventually, the answer to that question wouldbecome “very powerful friends.” But first, they’d have to meet those friends. In 1846, not long after Panama was reducedto a mere Colombian province, officials in Bogota began to worry about British activityin the Caribbean. Not wanting to be subsumed into the ever-growingBritish Empire, they turned for protection to the only big kid in the American playground. Uncle Sam heard the Colombian pleas with whatwe like to imagine was a smug smile, before effectively holding up his hand and sayingsomething like: “Sure, I’ll guarantee your neutralityfrom those limeys. 

But you’ve gotta do something for ol’Uncle Sam in return.” “Like what?” “See that Panama of yours? Well, I’d like ta move my ships across therefrom one ocean to the other. All you gotta do is give me exclusive transitrights.” In our imaginary scenario, this would be thepoint the American giant stuck out his hand. “Whaddya say, son? We got a deal?” What could the Colombians do? They agreed, signing the Bidlack Treaty in1864. If Bogota’s leaders had known this wouldend with the disintegration of their country, they might have thought twice. First AttemptsThe realization of old Charles’s dream of crossing Panama began as most major projectsdo: with the prospect of making lots of money. In 1848, gold was discovered in California. 

The only trouble was, crossing America in1848 wasn’t simple. You either had to head overland, a journeyyou might well end inside a coffin, or you went by sea, which involved taking a boatall the way around Tierra del Fuego. So the idea of sailing down to Panama, skippingacross the narrowest point, and sailing back up to California suddenly seemed mighty attractive. Between 1848 and 1855, Uncle Sam poured moneyinto an overland crossing in Panama. 

Unfortunately, the finished railroad was bothcontroversial, and kind of crappy. Let’s tackle the latter point first, throughthe eyes of Ulysses S. Grant. In 1852, Grant was sent down to cross Panamaat the head of the Fourth Infantry. Unfortunately, it was rainy season. The railroad flooded out, and cholera sweptthrough the troops. By the time the Fourth Infantry reached thePacific, they’d lost 150 men. 

For the rest of his life, Grant would be hauntedby nightmares of the journey. But what about the controversial part? Well, the presence of endless American soldierscrossing Panama sent the whole of Colombia into a nationalist spin. In 1856, anti-railroad riots paralyzed Panama. In the chaos that surrounded construction,20 governors were deposed. Perhaps its no wonder that, even before therailroad was finished, people were muttering about replacing it with a canal. But it would be another 13 years before anyonepushed the project forward. 

Come 1869, Ulysses S. Grant had graduatedto the White House. Still haunted by memories of his 1852 journey,Grant commissioned teams to go out and find if there was a way to spare others from thatterrible ordeal. For five years, the US Navy surveyed CentralAmerica. Finally, in 1875, they returned with theirrecommendations. 

The US should build a canal…...through Nicaragua. Yep, the original plan wasn’t to build inPanama at all. The only reason the canal ever came so farsouth is due to two men. The first was French diplomat Ferdinand deLesseps. When de Lesseps saw the yanks focusing onNicaragua, he swept in and offered Bogota his expertise to build a canal through Panama. That offer wasn’t nothing. De Lesseps was the guy behind the Suez Canal,the waterway joining the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. If anyone could build a huge, continent bisectingcanal, it was him. 

In 1880, Bogota gave de Lesseps the go ahead. The Frenchman secured millions in backingand brought over the greatest engineers he could find. One of them just happened to be our secondman. Philippe Banua-Varilla was an engineer hiredby de Lesseps. Although he would spend the next decade inthe shadows, he would soon become very important. But only after he’d helped de Lesseps wastemillions of dollars. That’s right, waste. De Lesseps’ idea was to build the canalat sea level, negating the need for locks. 

Unfortunately, this created a constructionsite that was prone to flash floods and landslides, and filled with mosquitoes carrying malaria. Ground was broken on the French canal in 1880. By 1888, 20,000 workers were dead and thecanal nowhere near finished. In a desperate last move, de Lesseps broughtin Gustav Eiffel - of Eiffel Tower fame - to help design locks for the canal. But it was too late. In 1889, funding was pulled on the project. De Lesseps, Eiffel, and others wound up incourt back in France on charges of fraud. But one man escaped the wave of arrests andstayed on in Panama. Philippe Bunau-Varilla refused to accept thedream of a trans-Panama canal had died. If no-one else was going to make that dreama reality, then he would. 

One Thousand Days of HorrorWe’ve all met people who are great at wearing others down. Who can just keep grinding away until everyoneis too tired to do anything but agree and hope they’ll go away. Philippe Bunau-Varilla was that guy on steroids. Starting in 1890, Bunau-Varilla launched anall out lobbying campaign to convince the US to abandon its Nicaragua plans and completethe canal in Panama. At first, Washington was all like, “nah. Thanks, but we’ve got our own canal.” Then they were like, “yeah, OK, we get yourpoint about Panama, but we already invested!” Finally, after years of Bunau-Varilla’swhining, they were all “OK! Godamnit, OK! We’ll open a new commission to look intothe Panama idea. 

Yeesh.” The U.S. Isthmian Canal Commission openedin 1899, tasked with reexamining the possibility of a Panama Canal. But it wasn’t this commission or even Bunau-Varillawho would eventually decide the issue. It was events in Colombia. The same year the new commission opened, 1899,a slump in coffee prices hammered the Colombian economy. It came at a time when the country’s Liberalsand Conservatives were already at loggerheads and looking for an excuse to annihilate oneanother. So when unrest exploded in the coffee regions,both parties used it as cover to spark a civil war. 

The Thousand Days’ War devastated Colombia. Between 1899 and 1902, it’s estimated 130,000people died in Liberal and Conservative violence. In the closing days, Panama was transformedinto a battlefield, while Panamanian locals were dragooned into the two armies. By the time the war finally ended with a pyrrhicvictory for the Conservatives, Panama was home to an angry and growing independencemovement. Not coincidentally, 1902 was also the yearWashington finally caved in to Bunau-Varilla’s cajoling and authorized the US purchase ofFrench land in Panama. Sensing the wind in his sails, Bunau-Varillaturned his impressive powers of persuasion onto the Colombians, pressuring Bogota intosigning the Hey-Herran Treaty in 1903. In return for building the Panama Canal, thetreaty not only ceded control of the canal itself to the US, but also an 8km strip ofland either side. Known as the Panama Canal Zone, this stripof land would cover 1,432 sq km of Panama, effectively creating a US colony within Colombia. 

For Bogota, this was simply too much. The Colombian senate rejected the treaty,citing loss of sovereignty. But that was fine with Bunau-Varilla ,whoalready had a plan B. In fall, 1903, Bunau-Varilla began siphoningfunds from the Panama Canal Company into Panama’s pro-independence movements. Up north, he successfully convinced PresidentRoosevelt that American interests were best served by removing Bogota from the equationaltogether. Then, he simply sat back and watched the fireworks. On November 3, 1903, the Panama independencemovement seized control. 

They proclaimed a revolutionary junta andunilaterally seceded from Colombia. By the time the Colombians realized what washappening, the seas were crawling with American warships and the rail lines into Panama hadbeen disabled. Still weak from the Thousand Days’ War,Bogota had no choice but to surrender Panama without a fight. On November 6, the US recognized Panama asan independent state. Days later, Bunau-Varilla was made the newnation’s ambassador. He immediately signed the Hay-Bunau-VarillaTreaty, granting the US everything it had asked for. 

That December, French lands and equipmentpassed into American hands, while the 16km wide Canal Zone became American property. When the majority of Panamanians figured outwhat was going on, they were outraged. They’d just declared independence from onepushy nation and now another was already violating their sovereignty! But by then it was too late. The treaty was signed. The Americans were coming. And nothing in the world was gonna stop them. Building the DreamThe construction of the Panama Canal over the next 12 years was a miracle of human ingenuity. 

It was also an extremely depressing exampleof just how awful ingenious humans are capable of being to one another. Work officially began on May 4, 1904, onlyto almost grind to a halt as workers refused to, well, work. There was too much danger. Too much disease. No American was gonna risk his life buildinga canal through some malaria-ridden jungle. The problem persisted until July, 1905 whenrailroad specialist John Stevens came in with a simple solution. That same year, the sugar market had crashed,throwing many in the Caribbean out of work. 

So Stevens hired them, thousands of West Indianswho couldn’t say no to even the most abysmal conditions. And “abysmal” was exactly what Stevenshad in mind. The Zone existed under its own Jim Crow-stylesegregation laws, but even more stratified according to class and perceived morality. 

For example, men who were married were entitledto homes, while bachelors were stuck in grimy bunkhouses. On the class side, workers were divided into“gold” and “silver” rolls. Gold roll workers, who were mostly but notexclusively white, lived in decent conditions and were treated well. Silver roll workers, who were mostly non-white,were treated more like slave labor. There were long hours. Almost no health and safety laws. 

At Culebra Cut, 13km of canal had to be carvedthrough mountainous terrain, using equipment like pickaxes, steam shovels, and dynamite. Work took place around the clock, in the drivingrain and in temperatures topping 30C. 6,000 workers were onsite at any given time. Unsurprisingly, there were accidents. While the Panama Canal Company had a contractwith an American company to supply artificial limbs to injured workers, that only appliedif you were physically working when you were hurt. If you just happened to be taking a break…if you just happened to be on a company train that derailed en route to the site… Well. No compensation for you.

 For the true horrors of working on the PanamaCanal, you only have to look at the death toll. Officially, 5,609 workers were killed duringconstruction, although many historians think the true total is higher. Of those thousands dead, only 350 were valuable“gold roll” workers. The rest were the poor, the non-white, andthe desperate the company treated as expendable. Yet there was more to building the Canal thanmerely a tale of exploitation. Take Dr. William Gorgas, the Zone’s chiefsanitation officer. 

Gorgas was the one who realized all the yellowfever and malaria wracking the project was caused by mosquitoes. So he and his team embarked on a vast exterminationcampaign, fumigating houses, draining swamps, and cleaning stagnant pools of water. By 1905, the Canal Zone had recorded its lastcase of yellow fever. Over the next decade, malaria rates plummeted. There were also the engineering miracles. After John Stevens quit and was replaced withLt. Col. George Washington Goethals, the work took off.

 A series of 12 locks was created that wouldraise each ship 25 meters above sea level during its journey. What was then the world’s largest dam wasbuilt across the Chagres River, creating the vast Gatún Lake. In the Zone itself, hospitals, schools, andpolice stations all sprang up from land that had once been only rainforest. It was the Panama wilderness tamed. The great American continent sliced in two. The dream of Charles V - or should that beCharles I? - finally realized. 

In May, 1913, two steam shovels moving inopposite directions met in the middle of the Canal, signifying the end was near. Five months later, in October, 1913, WoodrowWilson sat down in the Oval Office and pressed a button on a telegraph that sent a signalto a bundle of dynamite in Gamboa dike. When it exploded, it flooded the last sectionof Culebra Cut. To all intents and purposes, the Canal wasfinished. But while construction might be over, thestory wasn’t. 

There was still the thorny question of whoreally owned it. Making the NightmareHere’s a quick quiz for all you trivia fans: what was the first ship to sail the lengthof the Panama Canal? If you guessed the SS Ancon, we hate to tellyou but your history books lied. On January 7, 1914, the beat-up old Frenchcrane boat Alexandre La Valley became the first vessel to traverse the Canal, a feattoday remembered by almost no-one. But it was still a historic milestone. More to the point, it allowed the Panama CanalCompany to start planning a grand opening ceremony, one that would see dignitaries fromacross the world converge on this tiny, new nation to marvel at US engineering.

 Or at least it would have, had the organizersnot scheduled the ceremony for August, 1914. One month beforehand, WWI erupted and that,well, was that. On August 15, 1914, the Canal officially openednot with festivities, but with the SS Ancon slowly making its way through the 12 locksunder the command of John Constantine. No, we never expected to publish a Geographics/DCComics crossover either, but apparently here we are. After Hellblazer himself had piloted throughthe canal, the first transport ships started appearing. 

With the company charging by the weight, themoney was soon rolling in. As it did so, life in the Panama Canal Zonegot better and better. For the Zonians, as they were known, it wasthe American dream transplanted to Panama. There were high wages. Restaurants serving American food. Theaters offering the latest Hollywood movies. 

In effect, the Zone was America. It certainly felt that way to residents. High schools flew the US flag and taught inEnglish. There were neighborhood bake sales and PTAmeetings. At its height, some 100,000 US citizens, mostlysoldiers and their families, were stationed in the Zone, equivalent in modern populationterms to the US Virgin Islands. But the success and prosperity in the Zonewere in stark contrast to the country surrounding it. Little by little, Panamanians started to noticethat they were unwelcome in the Zone. That Zonians never came to Panama City tospend their money. That they rarely mingled. Slowly, resentment started to build. 

By 1951, the organization of the Zone hadbeen moved into two entities: the Panama Canal Company for the canal itself, and the CanalZone government for everything else. Despite this, the governor of the Zone wasalso head of the Company, meaning all power over this 1,432 sq km stretch of land wasconcentrated in the hands of one man. In the late 1950s, that man decided to dosomething very divisive. He decided to build a wall. Well, more accurately, it was a fence atopa small wall. And there were practical reasons behind it. But visually? It looked like the Americans were trying tokeep the Panamanians out. 

The Colombian ambassador even later referredto it as another Berlin Wall. Whatever the truth, for many Panamanians itwas the last straw. For too long, they’d watched the Americanslord it over a chunk of their country on the basis of an unpopular treaty signed in theheat of revolution. Now they were gonna claim that land back. Waking UpThe end of American involvement in the Panama Canal began on January 9, 1964. That day, students from Panama’s InstitutoNacional marched into the Zone and demanded the Panama flag be raised alongside the Americanone. 

When the Zonians refused, the students rioted. The riots lasted three days. In that time, shops, homes, and cars in theZone were torched. 24 Panamanians and 4 US servicemen were killed. It was the start of a diplomatic crisis thatwould last a quarter of a century. By 1977, it was clear the riots had awokenPanamanian nationalism as effectively as the Thousand Days’ War. That year, Jimmy Carter signed two treatieswith Panama’s leader, Omar Torrijos, that would eventually place the Canal in Panamanianhands. The first treaty came into force on October1, 1979. That day, the Zone was officially abolished,although in practice it continued to exist, only now under Panamanian civilian control.

 At the same time, the Panama Canal Companymoved to joint US-Panama ownership. Yet US soldiers still remained in Panama,guarding the Canal. Many Panamanians continued to resent them. It would take one last, bloody catastropheto finally settle things once and for all. In 1989, Panama ran elections under the dictatorManuel Noriega to pick a new president. But when Noriega’s guy lost, the dictatorannulled the election and declared the US had interfered. In an atmosphere of heightened anti-Americanism,four US soldiers left the Zone and ventured into Panama City. There, on December 15, they were attackedby a pro-government mob. Three were badly injured, the fourth was killed. The result? The US invasion of Panama. 

On December 20, 1989, 26,000 US troops descendedon Panama. Although the fighting was fiercest aroundgovernment-held areas, it spilled over onto the streets of Panama City. In the carnage that followed, anywhere between516 and over 1,000 Panamanian civilians were killed. Whole neighborhoods were reduced to rubble. Noriega finally surrendered on January 31,1990, after almost a month in hiding at the Vatican embassy. As the American soldiers led him away, itmarked the last time the US would get involved in Panama. 

Nearly 8 years later, at noon on December31, 1999, full control of the Canal and Zone was handed over to the Panamanians. After nearly a century, the US presence wasover. In the years since, the Panama Canal has hita number of milestones. In 2006, Panamanians voted in a referendumto double its size, work for which is still ongoing. In 2010, the millionth ship passed throughsince the Alexandre La Valley’s historical first. From a dream once dreamed by a long-dead emperor,traversing the isthmus of Panama in a boat has become utterly routine. Even banal. Yet the miracle of engineering that is thePanama Canal has lost none of its lustre. Today, the Canal remains the premier crossingpoint for ships going from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with some 14,000 passing throughits locks per year. 

Of these, the majority are American. But Chinese, Chilean, Japanese, and Colombianvessels are also represented. But the Panama Canal is something more thanjust a popular shortcut. In the walls and locks of the canal, we cansee not just engineering ingenuity, but also stories. Stories of the humans involved in the canal’shistory, of the thousands who died building it; of the thousands more who lived alongsideit for decades. The tale of the Panama Canal may be the taleof a dream that refused to die. But it’s also a tale of the tens of thousandsof ordinary people who risked their lives to make that dream a reality.