Perhaps the title should read
‘many men, multiple plans, finally a canal - in Panama’ (though it somewhat
ruins the palindrome). All I knew of the Panama Canal was that it was a canal
in Panama. I win no prizes for knowing that. A birthday gift of Graham Greene’s
The Captain and the Enemy, partly set
in Panama, got me to wondering about the canal’s history and how the link
between two of the world’s great oceans came about.
A Plan
Work began on the canal in 1881,
after the success of another project at Suez. Its opening in 1914 would have
been a celebration of human endeavour over the environment if it wasn’t for the
First World War igniting in Europe only 18 days before. At 48 miles long, the
Panama Canal is half the length of the Suez Canal, but took four times longer
to construct.
Maybe Panama’s wacky geography
confused the canal’s designers. Despite separating the Atlantic in the east
from the Pacific to the west, the canal runs more or less west from the Atlantic, along a north-south axis. And although the
canal divides Panama into two halves, it only came under the control of
Panama’s government in 1999, belonging previously to the United States.
Whichever cardinal compass point
is the correct one, on opening on 15th August 1914 the canal halved
the sailing time to the U.S west coast and Pacific nations, avoiding the need
to sail around the tip of the South American continent. It made these trading
areas more accessible, opening up China and Japan for those little bits of
plastic we know we can’t do without.
A Canal
A canal across the narrow stretch
of Panamanian land was first envisaged in 1534 by the Holy Roman Emperor and
King of Spain Charles V as he sought a better route to Peru. However, the first
transcontinental crossing was a rail line. The canal follows much of the same
route, making use of the levelling and cutting activity necessary for the
laying of tracks. On its Atlantic side the canal makes use of Gatun Lake,
before taking a path that winds around spits of land towards the Pacific. It
takes a ship between 8-10 hours to change oceans. Although waiting times can
increase the crossing time to 20-30 hours, it’s still a massive improvement on
the time required to circumnavigate south America instead.