The Story of the Panama Canal. 20/9/22
French experience 1881 to 1889
1513 The Darien wilderness is on the isthmus of Panama where Balboa began his crossing of only 40 miles. There is an isthmus at Techantepec, Guatemala, Honduras , British Honduras , El Salvador , Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. There were 19 possible places that a canal might be build.
1794 Paris Polytechnique This was a military collage that came out of the revolution, it was a military school and from it emerged French army engineers in the service of the state. The French became very good engineers, the American's were more adept to improvise.
1801in Haiti the black insurrection by Tousaint L'Ouveture was put down and with that accomplished the French army was to have occupied New Orleans and Louisiana but yellow fever struck and thousands of them died including General Leclerc. This was one of the reasons that Napoleon decided to sell the territory to the US in 1803.
1848 Gold found in California and to get there there were 3 routes " the Plains across , the Horn around or the Isthmus over."
1850 Panama Railroad began runs from Colon to Panama City. It took 5 years to build instead of 2 and cost 6 times beyond anyone's estimate. Workers came from far and wide to work including many Chinese. It is estimated that 6 thousand died building this railway of Cholera, dysentery , smallpox, as well as the problem of flies and mosquitos , ticks, chiggers , spiders and poisonous snakes. Many of these cadavers were pickled in large barrels and sold to medical schools. They also had to deal with marshy flats and swamps.
1854 Commodore Mathew Perry opened Japan up another reason for a need of a canal.
1870 to 1875 A total of 7 US expedition sent by Grant to research a canal.
1881 de Lesseps approached General Grant to run the Canal Organization, who replied that he would not have his name on a program that was doomed to failure.
In Panama jungle the rainfall is 10 feet per annum on the Caribbean slope and up to 6 feet per annum on the Pacific side. The Charges river stood directly in the path of the canal. Immense trees and tangled undergrowth had to be removed.
1881 many of the managers and engineers arrived with their wives. In these parts iron and steel turned yellow with rust overnight and leather grew moldy. Glued furniture fell apart.
None of the advisors, engineers, an admiral were willing or bold enough to challenge de Lesseps against the inevitable cost of a sea level canal. First residences , barracks and hospital were set up but by summer yellow fever had returned to the area and this caused the death of most people. A person had Yellow fever only once either he lived or died, but never gets it again.
1881 by the end of the year there were 2000 people at work a few from Colombia , Venezuela and Cuba but most were English speaking West Indian blacks mostly from Jamaica as well as 500 blacks from New Orleans. Most machinery arrived in parts and had to be assembled. The French bought out this railway to be able to control it and use it in the construction. An earthquake struck doing extensive damage to the railroad.
In Paris the high death toll was no longer a secret and at the Ecole des Ponts et Chausees graduates were advised not to go to Panama. but there was still no shortage of recruits and some of the best trained technicians went there.
Where they wanted to dam the Chargres River they could not find a suitable rock formation to do this.
There were no theaters, libraries or entertainment for the workers and if you wanted to read a book at night a candle drew a swarm of insects.
Excavation done in the dry season was destroyed by the rainfall the next season and panama geology is made of 17 different rock formation with 5 major cores of volcanic rocks creating and engineering nightmare.
1885 Prestan Uprising, this part of the civil war in Colombia and the main town of the canal workers was Colon which this burned down with lots of riots amongst black workers. Pedro Prestan was publicly hanged and many black workers walked off the job to return to Kingston.
1885 Jules Isodore Dingler a very capable man in charge gave up a defeated man and returned alone to France with all of his family buried in Panama. Others who followed him were younger less experience and gave up or died very soon.
1886 In NY harbor the Statue of Liberty was unveiled by Grover Cleveland. de Lesseps was present as this was a show of great French engineering.
1887 a commission convened on the possibility of a lock canal, with the idea of using dredgers instead of diggers to excavate.
1888 proposal to raise money with a lottery system. At this stage a sale of bonds did not even attract a third of investors.
1889 the Compagnie Universell du Canal Interoceanique was liquidated.
It was 3 years till the scandle broke loose. At this time Edourd Drumont brought out his anti Semitic tropes of La France Juive. He blamed Jewish bankers for the failure.
From Suez on deLesseps enjoyed the privilege of being believed with out having to prove what one affirms, he was such a popular force and thus dangerous man. The black laborer's returned home at the expense of the Jamaican government.
1892 it emerged that 150 French deputies had been bribed into voting for the allocation of financial aid to the Panama Canal Company, and in February 1893 Lesseps, his son Charles, and a number of others faced trial and were found guilty.
1894 de Lesseps died in Paris.
1896 Dryfus Affair which ended in his Presidential pardon in 1906. Dryfus had learned engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique. This is an important aspect of the problems of French society at this period. France wanted to salvage lost honor from this crises.
Americans take over 1903 till 1914
1901 Mc Kinley assassinated at Buffalo and Theodore Roosevelt become President at age 42.
Roosevelt had read the book by Alfred Mahan The influence of Sea Power on History and decided that the Panama canal was vital indispensable for American Sea Power and commercial supremacy would follow. Roosevelt had written the book the Naval War of 1812 in 1882 and had been the Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
1901 Britain was bogged down in the Boer War and was happy to leave Panama Canal to the Americans. A lot of money had gone into research of the best place to build the canal and Nicaragua was favored, it had a better climate but volcanoes. In Panama the French had left an inventory of property as well as the Panama railroad, building hospital, machinery tugs, dredges, locomotives etc. and by buying them out they would buy the right from Colombia to land across the isthmus. They also left extensive maps.
A Panama canal would need 5 locks while a Nicaragua one would need 8. Nicaragua had a better climate was closer north but a far wider crossing. 1902 Mount Pelee on Martinique exploded wiping out the city of St Pierre in 2 minutes so this put an end to the Nicaragua possibility. Panama would take half the time for a ship to transit and had better harbours.
1898The American troops were in Cuba and 13 times their number died of malaria an yellow fever compared to those who died in battle and the army had to be withdrawn.
1904 work under the American started with John F Wallace as Chief engineer, he resigned with fear of Yellow fever. Americans that came left and reported back on the terrible conditions and diseases including bubonic plague. They food workers got was bought from the locals and it was expensive and poor
Colonel William Gorgas was assigned as sanitary officer, he had had yellow fever survived and was now immune and had eradicated the plagues in Havana. The Anopheles mosquito travels widely and spread malaria. The Stegmomyla mosquito spread yellow fever but is only local and it takes 27 days incubation a persons body before the disease becomes infectious. Ronald Ross had proved the mosquito was the malaria carrier but when Gorgas came in 1904 he was not given the resources as the scientific evidence was not understood by the engineers "To spend money chasing mosquitoes"
1902 Ronald Ross had won the Nobel prize for his malaria discoveries . In 1904 he visited Panama and said Gorgas work was sound.
1903 In Paris, Walter Reeds work was an accepted fact that Yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes.
1903 Kitty Hawk with the Wright Brothers flying an heavier than air balloon also was not an accepted idea till a few years later.
1904 The 95 ton Bucyrus steam shovel started working in the Culebra Cut.
1905 John Steven the greatest railway engineer in the US took over. He had built the Great Northern Railroad to the Pacific through the Marius Pass over the Continental divide in 1889. He accepted the Panama post because this was the largest public works ever attempted.
Stevens spent a time examining the situation and them stopped the digging and gave instructions that first housing , hospitals anything needed to get rid of the diseases was priority. Just the cost of screening alone was the same as the budget that sanitary had been allocated, also ordered was fumigation material rat traps etc. Running water installed in all houses to do away with open water tanks, even the holy water in the churches had to be changed daily. In Havana Yellow fever had taken 8 months to eradicate in Panama a year and a half with 4000 workers.
Stevens now brought in experienced railway men and double tracked the Panama Railway with heavier rails. Americans were the skilled workers or Gold workers an were given housing and other perks to attract them. Later social clubs were opened baseball leagues and they were encouraged to bring their wives to stop the rapid turnover of Americans. All workers were given free medical treatment a thing that was never given in the USA.
Most unskilled workers called Silver class were black from Barbados as the Jamaica Government would not allow recruiting. 80% of these were illiterate and they were mostly cane field workers.
Stevens wanted to bring Chinese but there was the Chinese Exclusion Act. He also wanted to bring southern blacks but the Congressmen there did not want their states being deprived of cheap labour. At the canal the color line was part of daily life and not much was said about it in the press. Black women came to be with their husbands. Black labors were available in abundance but skilled white workers had to be attracted with perks. No one in Panama went hungry. Among the blacks the crime rate alcoholism , venereal disease was abnormally low. 80% of the black workers were illiterate. Initially the blacks were poor workers but once the got better food their capability improved in Barbados they had eaten a low protein diet of rice and yams.
1855 completed the Soo Canal between Lake Superior and Lake Huron the system and experience that the locks were to be based on. To build a dam the Charges River had to be tamed.
The Panama Railway now had to be moved at a cost of $9 million as well as villages that would be flooded.
1906 President and Mrs. Roosevelt visited Panama this was the first time a President in office left the USA.
1907John Steven decided to resign he was offered a top railway engineering job. He was not one who knew how to build the locks, he had no experience in the large scale use of concrete to build the Gatun Dam.\
George Washington Goethals now took over he was the top army engineer and brought other army engineers to work with him but nobody wore uniforms. The French butler who hardly spoke English worked at the chief engineers house and Goethals was the 7th and final resident.
He started a weekly paper. The locks had to be 1100 feet by95 feet to accommodate the widest warship. The Pacific lock had to be further inland so that it could not be bombarded from the sea. A lot of spoil was dumped into the pacific claiming a lot of land . The Gatun dam wall was a mile and a half across and the top was 15 times as wide as the base. During this time there were 3 passenger trains daily running in each direction.
There would be eventually 50 thousand on the payroll, of these only 3500 American workers who would get 42 days paid leave p.a. to go home. Gemstones could be found in the digging and many men spent their Sunday searching for sapphires, opals ,garnets and fossil sharks teach. No private contractors were used and the Canal Company fed, housed and gave free medicine as well as education for children of all the workers. Some Congressmen commented on the danger of socialism but it was more of a caste system with a Brahman at the top.
Goethals would travel on a small locomotive with a gasoline powered engine along the track, and stayed the 7 years till completion of the canal.
1909 Taft becomes president he had been to Panama twice as Secretary of War.
The steam shovels all worked on rails that had to be moved at one period on the Culebre Cut the steam shovel just kept cutting away and the soil kept moving up to the rails as its weight sunk and sand slid.
1910 the Gatun Dam started filling up but it would take 4 years to build the locks, with chambers of 110 to by 1000 feet. The lock gates were built of vanadium steel, and Pittsburg had 50 different mills foundries and machine shops involved in making the parts. The locks and pumps were designed to raise or lower a ship in 15 minutes.
1912The sinking of the Titanic as well as the return of Haileys Comet.
1868 The steel cable knowledge came way back from the Brooklyn bridge construction. Everything was electrical and done by General Electric corp. The first electrical run factories had just started. The towing locomotives were the first of their kind.
Dr. William Gorgas left the canal to work in S. Africa dealing with pneumonia with the black gold mine workers but had been promised the position of surgeon general of the army.
1914 Goathals became the first governor of Panama. This canal opened almost the same day as years of peace in Europe ended with WW1 A few days after the canal was finished an earthquake struck but the locks were not damaged.
1914 and 1974 the rate was 90cents a ton for any ship from all nations including the US.
Costs of the canal for US Government. $ 10million bribe to the dictators of Colombia plus $250000 rent per year. This was a totally clean project with no graft , kickbacks or payroll padding. 10 Years after it opened it had more than 5000 ships a year the same Suez.
Paid out the French $40 million the total cost around $375 million to build.
