The Panama Canal

www.PDHcenter.com www.PDHonline.org Table of Contents Slide/s Part Description 1N/ATitle The 2 N/A Table of Contents 3~41 1 A Place of Many Fishes 42~172 2 The French Era Pana 173~372 3 Essayons 373~547 4 Gatun 548~631 5 Making the Cut ma 632~680 6 On to the Pacific 681~722 7 A Path Between the Seas 723~823 8 Strategically & Otherwise 824~853 9 Something Must Be Done Canal 854~900 10 A Canal for the 21st Century A Land Divided, A World1 2 United In1494–twoyearsafterhe set out for the East-Indies by sailing westward, master mariner and navigator Cristobol Colon (a.k.a. Part 1 Christopher Columbus), in service to the Spanish crown, announced his discovery of a “New World.” His four voyages (1492– A Place of Many Fishes 1493, 1493–1496, 1498–1500 and 1502–1504) would open the way for European exploration, exploitation, and colonization. 3 4 “…On September 25, 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa “…From where Balboa stood his new ocean lay directly climbed the peaks of the Continental Divide and south, because of the S-shaped twist of the Isthmus…When discovered the Pacific Balboa’s report of his discovery reached Spain, it was Ocean, which he named ‘The accompanied by the recommendation that a canal be South Sea…’” immediately dug across the Isthmus. What the explorer had Popular Mechanics, Dec. 1913 RE: the idea of digging a water in mind was a sea-level canal, for although Leonardo Da passage across the Isthmus of Vinci, the great Italian painter-engineer, had recently invented Panama to connect the Atlantic the hydraulic lock now generally used for lifting vessels over and PifiPacific O/Ocean/s emerged in the early 16th century, when elevations, it had not become widely known. However, Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed alluring as it seemed, the canal project was dismissed. the Isthmus in 1513. Balboa According to some historians its rejection was due mainly to discovered that only a narrow strip of land separated the two the influence of the church. To the simple faith of that day it oceans. The Emperor Charles V appeared clear that if God had intended the waters to flow of the Holy Roman Empire (who across the Isthmus, he would have created a channel was also Carlos I of Spain), began a movement to build a there…” passage through the Isthmus. Popular Mechanics, December 1913 Left: Vasco Nunez de Balboa 5 6 © J.M. Syken 1 www.PDHcenter.com www.PDHonline.org The Istmus’ low green mountains rising up behind coral shores look benign and inviting. However, unlike most mountain ranges, instead of being formed by folding due to lateral pressure, these mountains were formed by the upward thrust of individual volcanic actions. Independent formations of different types of hard rock are interspersed and layered between softer rocks and materials in a disorderly and unpredictable patchwork of strata and angles. The Isthmus has also been subjected to several periods of submersion Above: the Isthmus of Panama. Only fifty-miles wide at its narrowest point, it’s characterized beneath the sea, thus adding cavities of marine materials to by its mountains, impenetrable jungle, deep swamps, torrential rain, hot sun, debilitating the geological mix. This, in addition to there being six major humidity, pestilence and some of the world’s most complex geological formations. Most of this was apparent to early explorers and surveyors. What wasn’t obvious was the geology of faults and five major volcanic cores in just the short distance the earth itself which even today remains a constant challenge. The eastern portion of the between Colon and Panama City, adds to the area’s land is dense tropical jungle while the western part is mountainous and consists of coastal plateaus, very similar to the kind of terrain found in northwestern Spain from where the early geological challenges. settlers to Panama came from. The word “Panama” means “a place of many fishes” in the native Indian language. 7 8 “Although nearly the entire country, from its headwaters to Alhajuela, is clothed with vegetation, much of which is dense, the slopes are so precipitous, and the rock lies so near to the surface, that severe tropical rain storms convert the precipitous banks of the Chagres into a series of small torrents and cascades, causing the river to rise suddenly and discharge almost inconceivable volumes of water.” RE: excerpt from: “Climatology and Hydrology of the Panama Canal.” Panama’s tropical climate, with a temperature averaging eighty degrees and an annual Above: Map of Panama rainfall of 105 inches, creates ideal conditions for jungle growth similar to that of Location: Central (Middle) America, bordering both the Caribbean Sea and the North Pacific Brazil's Amazon jungle. In fact, the Panama jungle was used as a training ground Ocean, between Colombia and Costa Rica for U.S. troops during the Vietnam War as well as survival training for Area: astronauts. Flooding, especially of the Chagres River, was another very serious total: 78,200 sq km problem. Because of the terrain’s precipitous slopes, the heavy rainfall gathers land: 75,990 sq km quickly into streamlets that flow quickly into the river, causing it to swell at a rapid water: 2,210 sq km Area - comparative: slightly smaller than South Carolina rate, thus creating floods. Geography - note: strategic location on eastern end of isthmus forming land bridge connecting North and South America; controls Panama Canal that links North Atlantic Ocean via Caribbean 9 Sea with North Pacific Ocean 10 When the Spanish Conquistadors looted the Incan Empire in the 1500s, the fastest way to get their gold from Peru (on the El Camino Real Pacific-side) back to Spain was across Panama using the Chagres River part of the way. First, the Incan gold was shipped 1K-miles from Peru to Panama’s Pacific coast. From there, it was transported by mules fifteen-miles across the Continental Divide using El Camino Real – “The King’s Highway.” At that point, the gold was then loaded onto boats which used the Rio Chagres to cover the remaining forty- miles to reach the Caribbean-side. 11 Left:mapofthe 16th Century Spanish Empire 12 Right: early Spanish bird’s-eye map of the Isthmus of Panama © J.M. Syken 2 www.PDHcenter.com www.PDHonline.org “…The Isthmus of Panama became, almost at once after its discovery, the great trade route between the oceans. The gold of Peru, brought up the west coast by vessels, was transported by mule trains north across the Isthmus to Limon Bay, where it was loaded into waiting galleons for transportation to Spain. Out of this traffic grew the first European settlement on the mainland of America, the old city of Panama founded in 1519. For more than 150 years Panama remained the chief city on the Pacific coast until its destruction in 1671 by Sir Henry Morgan, the English Buccaneer. But throughout all this period, the canal project continually came up, as traffic across the Isthmus grew…” Replica of the Nao Victoria in the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal. Popular Mechanics, December 1913 The ship recalls the first around-the-world journey by Juan Sebastian Elcano. The ship left the port of Seville, Spain in 1519 under the command of Ferdinand Magellan with four other ships. In 1522, only the Nao Victoria 13 14 (captained by Elcano) returned with eighteen crew members. The Fe ve r Coast “…It was, indeed, extremely difficult for Europeans to believe that there was not some natural channel across the Isthmus, if it could only be found. Some of the early maps of America, published in Europe, showed an imaginary ‘Strait of Panama’…” Popular Mechanics, December 1913 15 16 Above:mapofthePacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea (ca. 1590) “When the trade winds die out, and the hot sultry air of the Isthmus ceases to move, a white mist will sometimes rise out By a decree issued in 1534, Carlos (Charles) V of Spain of the swelling ocean and hover like a fog over land and (left) ordered the regional sea. The white mist is the precursor of fever and sickness, governor of Panama to make and those of the Isthmus who know remain within doors, plans to build a route to the unwilling to meet the ghost of the ocean half way. In the early Pacific Ocean following the days the white mist that rose from the disturbed soil of the Chagres River. This was the first study to build a canal that Isthmus was far more disastrous in its killing effects than the would allow shipstocross mists of the ocean. It rose from the soil like incense from a from one ocean to the other brazier. It carried with it from its underground prison all the via Panama and its course poison of putrefaction, and wherever it enclosed its victims, wasmoreorlessthesameas there fever and death followed...” the current Panama Canal.By RE: both Malaria and Yellow Fever were endemic to the Isthmus of the time the survey map was Panama. For several hundred years, outsiders who came to “The Fever finished, the governor said it Coast” - especially seamen passing through, died from diseases would be impossible for purportedly caused by “miasmal mists,” supposedly emanating from anyone to accomplish such a swamps and marshes. feat. 17 18 © J.M. Syken 3 www.PDHcenter.com www.PDHonline.org “…In 1551, the Spanish historian F.L. de Gomara, again forcibly urged the canal project in a memorial to Philip II. By this time, however, the Spanish government had concluded to devote all its energies to maintain a monopoly of communication between Europe and the New World, and the itimprovementsof communitiications by ldland was discourage d.

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