THE USA BEGINS CONSTRUCTION OF THE PANAMA CANAL

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the Panama Canal that was started being constructed by the United States on a day like today in 1904.

The Panama Canal is an artificial 82-kilometer waterway in Panama that connects the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean.

It cuts across the narrowest point of the Isthmus of Panama, and is a conduit for maritime trade between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. 

Locks at each end lift ships up to Gatun Lake, an artificial fresh water lake 26 metres above sea level, created by damming the Chagres River and Lake Alajuela to reduce the amount of excavation work required for the canal. Locks then lower the ships at the other end. An average of 200 ML of fresh water is used in a single passing of a ship. The canal is threatened by low water levels during droughts.

The Panama Canal shortcut greatly reduces the time for ships to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, enabling them to avoid the lengthy, hazardous route around the southernmost tip of South America via the Drake Passage, the Strait of Magellan or the Beagle Channel. 

Its construction was one of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken. Since its inauguration on 15 August 1914, the canal has succeeded in shortening maritime communication in time and distance, invigorating maritime and economic transportation by providing a short and relatively inexpensive transit route between the two oceans, decisively influencing global trade patterns, boosting economic growth in developed and developing countries, as well as providing the basic impetus for economic expansion in many remote regions of the world.

Colombia, France, and later the United States controlled the territory surrounding the canal during construction. France began work on the canal in 1881, but stopped in 1889 because of a lack of investors' confidence due to engineering problems and a high worker mortality rate. 

The US took over the project in 1904 and opened the canal in 1914. The US continued to control the canal and surrounding Panama Canal Zone until the Torrijos-Carter Treaties provided for its handover to Panama in 1977. After a period of joint American-Panamanian control, the Panamanian government took control in 1999. It is now managed and operated by the Panamanian government-owned Panama Canal Authority.

The original locks are 33.5 metres wide and allow the passage of Panamax ships. A third, wider lane of locks was constructed between September 2007 and May 2016. The expanded waterway began commercial operation on 26 June 2016. The new locks allow for the transit of larger, Neopanamax ships.

Annual traffic has risen from about 1,000 ships in 1914, when the canal opened, to 14,702 vessels in 2008, for a total of 333.7 million Panama Canal/Universal Measurement System (PC/UMS) tons.

By 2012, more than 815,000 vessels had passed through the canal. In that year, the top five users of the canal were the United States, China, Chile, Japan, and South Korea.

In 2017, it took ships an average of 11.38 hours to pass between the canal's two outer locks. The American Society of Civil Engineers has ranked the Panama Canal one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.

In 1897-1899, US President William McKinley (1897-1901) tasked two commissions headed by Admiral John Grimes Walker to recommend the best route for a canal across Central America. Although the first commission had been tasked only to consider routes across Nicaragua, William Nelson Cromwell successfully lobbied the Government to broaden the terms of reference to also consider the Panamanian isthmus. The commission issued a confidential preliminary report on 21 November 1901, shortly after Theodore Roosevelt had become president following the assassination of McKinley. The preliminary report favored the Nicaragua route on pricing grounds; although the commissioners noted the technical advantages of the Panama route, they considered its informally quoted price of $109 million to be excessive.

The report was leaked to Philippe Bunau-Varilla, who during an emergency shareholders' meeting of the Compagnie Nouvelle amended the price to a formal offer of $40 million, the estimated sale value of the existing Panama assets acceptable to the commissioners.

On 10 December, George S. Morison, the most eminent engineer on the commission, wrote a letter to President Roosevelt giving the technical reasons for preferring the Panama route.

In January 1902, Roosevelt called the members of the commission into his office individually and asked them to give their own personal evaluations of the best route. Roosevelt then held a closed meeting with the entire commission, where he made it clear that he wanted the offer to take over the Panama route from the Compagnie Nouvelle to be accepted. In late January, the commission issued a final report, unanimously recommending Panama.

The US formally took control of the canal property on 4 May 1904, inheriting from the French a depleted workforce and a vast jumble of buildings, infrastructure, and equipment, much of it in poor condition. A US government commission, the Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC), was established to oversee construction; it was given control of the Panama Canal Zone, over which the United States exercised sovereignty.

More information: Canal de Panamá

Panama is a country that's been dealing
with issues of identity since its very birth.
It was born on Wall Street.
It was born out of engineering construction.
It was the canal. Because of the canal, the country was born,
so the country has been divided into pro-canal
and against-canal people for so long.

Edgar Ramirez