Very few human endeavors have ever conceded to change the face of the planet on which we live, as did the successful completion of the inter-oceanic Panama Canal - but at what cost?
The 48 mile-long (77 km) international waterway known as the Panama Canal allows ships to pass between the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean, saving about 8000 miles (12,875 km) from a journey around the southern tip of South America, Cape Horn.
Various surveys were made between 1850 and 1875 showed that only two routes were practical, the one across Panama and another across Nicaragua. In 1876 an international company was organized; two years later it obtained a concession from the Colombian government to dig a canal across Panama. This was the start of the French Governments attempt to build the canal.
France - Planning and initial Construction
By the late nineteenth century, technological advances and commercial pressure allowed construction to begin in earnest. Noted canal engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps (know for his work with the Suez Canal) led an initial attempt by France to build a sea-level canal. Over 40,000 men began the project, most from the West Indies.
The greatest effort, though, was the Culebra Cut — a nearly eight-mile carving through the Culebra mountain ridge, which reached 210 feet above sea level. 27,000 metric tons of dynamite were used to blast apart over 100 million cubic yards of earth, which were carted away with steam shovels and trains.
Due to a misjudgment of the composition of the geological strata, the excavation was plagued by unpredictable landslides, which sometimes took months to clear. By the time the cut was completed in 1913, the summit had been lowered from 210 feet above sea level to 39.
Disease - Accidents - A Sad Legacy to the Canals History
Beset by cost overruns due to the severe underestimation of the difficulties in excavating the rugged Panama land, heavy personnel losses in Panama due to tropical diseases, and political corruption in France surrounding the financing of the massive project, the project succeeded in only partially completing the canal.
The continual runs of the death or funerary trains became legendary during the Canal construction years. The routine passage of these trains loaded with the bodies of dead, mostly West Indian workmen, who had died while on the job, was a sorry sight for the survivors who looked on with somber acknowledgement of those who, only a short while before, had worked by their side.
What the world never imagined would be the thousands of bodies either blown to pieces or buried under mud slides and rock that were never recovered by the rescue and clean up crews that combed the sites after the explosions and deathly slides. There were also the “sick who never made it to the hospital- for the vast majority that is- the end was frequently even more gruesome.”
“The accusation that ‘black workers were sometimes disposed of in the dumping grounds- simply rolled down an embankment, then buried beneath several tons of spoil,’ appears in several accounts and is undoubtedly based on fact.”
The numbers offered in our modern historical accounts seem to represent only a minor detail in calculating the cost of modernizing our present technological world, and yet they are only a glimpse of the great price paid by our black Caribbean ancestors. It is estimated that 22,000 laborers died between 1881 and 1889, the French period, and the American death toll was officially 5,609, brining the total estimated human cost to 27,609.
United States - Completion of the Panama Canal
In 1899, the US Congress created an Isthmian Canal Commission to observe the potential of a Central American canal and to advise a route. The commission first decided on a route through Nicaragua, but later on reversed its verdict. The Lesseps Company offered its assets to the United States at a price of $40 million. The United States and the new state of Panama signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla treaty, by which the United States guaranteed the liberty of Panama and secured a continuous lease on a 10-mile strip for the canal. Panama was to be compensated by an early payment of $10 million and an annuity of $250,000, beginning in 1913. This strip is now known as the Canal Zone.
A Must See…
If you go to Panama City a trip to visit the Miraflores Locks, is a must see. The Canal Museum is well done and provides a good introduction to the start, completion and current operation of the canal. It takes about 10 hours to complete the journey through the canal. Ships travel west to east in the morning and east to west in the afternoon.
