Panama Canal

11 Key excerpts on "Panama Canal"

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  America's Greatest Projects

  From the Panama Canal to the Alaskan Pipeline

  • Dom Perrotta(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

    (Publisher)

  The Panama Canal

  We trace

  the history leading up to the actual opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, including the ideas and the attempts by other nations to develop a canal that would join the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. We also describe the efforts of many individuals, including doctors and humanitarians as well as engineers, to achieve such a world-changing feat. Without the efforts of key members of the medical profession, the death toll during the years of the Panama Canal construction would have been overwhelming. Furthermore, the role of the federal government in seeing this project through proved to be highly significant.

  Project Outline A. Early events

  1. Panama Railroad Company
  2. Suez Canal
  3. Enter the French in Panama

  B. The United States takes the lead

  1. The French look for a bailout, turn to the US
  2. US political intrigue
  3. Events leading to the Panama Canal construction
  4. Medical Breakthrough

  C. US construction begins

  1. Early planning
  2. Major General George Goethals
  3. Design and construction of locks and dams
  4. Project statistics

  D. Summary A. Early Events

  Nearly every major project in the United States has been influenced by both the needs of its citizens as well as by the political atmosphere of the country. The history, planning, and construction of the Panama Canal was certainly no exception. Considered by most professional engineers and by nearly all civil engineers to be one of the wonders of the modern world, the Panama Canal was many decades in the planning and political stages.

  As early as the sixteenth century, an access through the Isthmus of Panama was recognized by European leaders and magnates to afford their nations an advantage in shipping and world power. A direct route between the Atlantic Ocean via the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean would not only cut weeks from their travels around South America’s Cape Horn, and through the treacherous Straits of Magellan, but would also strengthen their nation’s economic and military power. Even after the American Revolution in 1776, world powers such as Great Britain and Spain continued to explore alternate routes to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

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  National Interests And Presidential Leadership

  The Setting Of Priorities

  • Donald E. Nuechterlein(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Since 1903, when the United States acquired the rights to build a canal through the center of Panamanian territory, the construction of a waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans has been an engineering achievement of profound national significance, inspiring national pride as few other achievements have in American history. The canal’s completion in 1914 probably had a greater impact on the American people than Lindbergh’s historic solo flight across the Atlantic and the astronauts’ first landing on the moon. As David McCullough wrote in his recent best-selling book on the building of the canal:

  The creation of the Panama Canal was far more than a vast, unprecedented feat of engineering. It was a profoundly important historic event and a sweeping drama not unlike that of war. Apart from wars, it represented the largest, most costly single effort ever before mounted anywhere on earth. It held the world’s attention over a span of forty years. It affected the lives of tens of thousands of people at every level of society and of virtually every race and nationality. Great reputations were made and destroyed. For numbers of men and women, it was the adventure of a lifetime.1

  Many of those who participated in this giant enterprise remained in the Canal Zone to help run the canal after 1914, and many of their children as well as other Americans have worked there for long periods of time, some continuously. Countless military men have passed through the canal on ships during wartime, and the waterway has been a great boon to international commerce from the day it began operations. Many Americans have had a large psychological investment in its efficient operation, and it was therefore understandable that most of them saw no reason why the existing legal arrangement between Panama and the United States should be altered in Panama’s favor. In short, many Americans who have lived happily in the knowledge that “the canal is American” perceive no national interest that suggests changing the existing arrangements. Therein lies the dilemma for the U.S. government, specifically for the U.S. president: it has been clear to all of them—beginning with John Kennedy—that unless the United States changes the legal arrangements with Panama, U.S. national interests will suffer serious erosion in all of Latin America and in much of the world community. Furthermore, the security of the canal itself probably could not be insured, even with a great increase in the U.S. military presence in Panama. In 1977 President Carter decided that a new treaty arrangement could wait no longer, thereby insuring that the canal issue would become one of the most controversial matters he would face as president.

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  All About Wonders of the Industrial World

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • University Publications

    (Publisher)

  ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter- 5 Panama Canal Panama Canal A schematic of the Panama Canal, illustrating the sequence of locks and passages Original owner La Société internationale du Canal Principal engineer John Findlay Wallace, John Frank Stevens (1906–1908), George Washington Goethals Date of first use August 15, 1914 Locks 3 locks up, 3 down per transit; all two lanes (2 lanes of locks; locks built in three sites) ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Status Open Navigation authority Panama Canal Authority Location of Panama between Pacific (bottom) and Caribbean (top), with canal at top center The Panama Canal (Spanish: Canal de Panamá ) is a 77 kilometres (48 mi) ship canal in Panama that joins the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and is a key conduit for international maritime trade. Built from 1904 to 1914, annual traffic has risen from about 1,000 ships in the canal's early days to 14,702 vessels in 2008, measuring a total 309.6 million Panama Canal/Universal Measurement System (PC/UMS) tons. In total over 815,000 vessels have passed through the canal. It has been named one of the seven modern wonders of the world by the American Society of Civil Engineers. One of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken, the canal had an enormous impact on shipping between the two oceans, replacing the long and treacherous route via either the Strait of Magellan or Cape Horn at the southernmost tip of South America. A ship sailing from New York to San Francisco via the canal travels 9,500 km (5,900 mi), well under half the 22,500 km (14,000 mi) route around Cape Horn. The concept of a canal near Panama dates to the early 16th century. The first attempt to construct a canal began in 1880 under French leadership, but was abandoned after 21,900 workers died, largely from disease (particularly malaria and yellow fever) and landslides.

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  Encyclopedia of Leadership

  • George R. Goethals, Georgia J. Sorenson, James MacGregor Burns, George R. Goethals, Georgia J. Sorenson, James MacGregor Burns(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Few events in world history have led to so much conflict and pain. Its construction brought down a French republic, created a new repub-lic, turned the United States into the technological leader of the world, and cost tens of thousands of lives. Ultimately, however, all the conflict and pain were forgotten when the dream of centuries became a reality and a new path connected the two great oceans. —Ovidio Diaz Espino Further Reading Bunau-Varilla, P. (1920). Panama: The creation, destruction, and resurrection. New York: Robert M. McBride. Diaz Espino, O. (2001). How Wall Street created a nation: J. P. Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt and the Panama Canal. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows. DuVal, Captain M. P., Jr. (1940). Cadiz to Cathay: The story of the long struggle for a waterway across the American isth-mus. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, and London: Oxford University Press. McCullough, D. (1977). The path between the seas. New York: Simon & Schuster. U.S. Congress, House Committee on Foreign Affairs. (1913). The story of Panama: Hearing on the Rainey Resolution before the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives, Jan. 26 to Feb. 20, 1912. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Panama Canal TREATIES On 7 September 1977, at a ceremony held at the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washing-ton, D.C., United States President Jimmy Carter and Panama’s military leader Omar Torrijos signed the Panama Canal Treaty. The agreement provided for the transfer of the waterway from U.S. to Panamanian 1150 ——— Panama Canal Treaties jurisdiction over a twenty-year period, concluding on 31 December 1999. Concurrently, the two leaders signed the Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutral-ity and Operation of the Panama Canal (known as the Neutrality Treaty), which established the waterway’s neutrality under joint U.S.

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  Waterways and Water Transport in Different Countries

  With a description of the Panama, Suez, Manchester, Nicaraguan, and other canals.

  • J. Stephen (James Stephen) Jeans(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER XXI. THE Panama Canal.

  “A little model the master wrought Which should be to the larger plan, What the child is to the man.”

  —Longfellow.

  If the question were asked, “What is the greatest constructive work that has yet been undertaken by man?” there would, without question, be a great many different replies. There can, however, be only one reply as to the most costly. Perhaps, also, there can be but one answer as to the most disastrous to human life. The Panama Canal would almost certainly secure pre-eminence in these attributes. It might or might not rank equally high as a work of engineering genius and possible public utility.

  There has probably never been a project that has so challenged the admiration and the approval of the world as that of finding a waterway between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, at or near to the narrow neck of land that separates Limon from the Gulf of Panama in Central America. This enterprise has a long and a very eventful history. Many explorers, geographers, statesmen, engineers, and economists have either written on the merits and demerits of the undertaking, or have otherwise become associated with it. Some of the more notable episodes in the records of the isthmus may therefore be referred to, before proceeding to describe the various projects now either in progress or in contemplation, for opening it up for the purposes of trade, commerce, and navigation.

  One of the earliest direct references to the importance of a waterway between the two oceans is that made by Cortez in his letters to Charles V. The great conqueror, however, does not seem to have contemplated the construction of such a waterway. He diligently searched for a natural waterway or strait between the two oceans, and declared that to be “the one thing above all others in the world I am most desirous of meeting with,” on account of its immense utility. Some sixty or seventy years later, there was a project put forward by the Spaniards for uniting the two oceans by a waterway, but it does not appear to have been carried any length. The Spaniards, indeed, were hardly the people to achieve such a distinction. Unlike the ancient Romans, the Italians, and the Chinese, their skill was not very marked in hydraulics. They were, besides, much too superstitious to venture on interference with what many of them believed to be an ordinance having all the fixity of a law of nature.[165]

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  Seas and Waterways of the World

  An Encyclopedia of History, Uses, and Issues [2 volumes]

  • John Zumerchik, Steven L. Danver, John Zumerchik, Steven L. Danver(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  A small economy has also grown around the canal, with about , employees, , of whom are Panamanian. Both harbors are being developed to favor transshipments and are managed by private companies. Globalization explains why increasing volumes of imports from Asia are now also traveling through the canal to the East Coast of the United States. Canal traffic re- mains high, about , ships a year: , crossed the isthmus in  (from Oc- tober  to September ), , in , and after a slump to , in , the amount rose to , in . Coupled with a steady rise in average ship size, this caused the tonnage carried to increase from  million tons in fiscal , to . million in . The glaring inadequacy of the existing locks continues to become more and more apparent. Another key obstacle to larger vessels is the Gaillard Cut, which was wid- ened and strengthened as part of the canal authority’s $ billion investment during the s-s, with the aim of increasing capacity by  percent. Key projects included deepening the Atlantic and Pacific entrances and the Gatun Lake navigational channel with a three-feet increase of its bottom (from  to  feet over the sea level, or from . to . meters) and a  percent increase in the water reservoir volume thanks to a Panama Canal  program started in  (. million cubic meters). Water depth is particularly prob- lematic during periods of draft. Many ships cannot make the passage, and large con- tainer ships must unload some containers to reduce their draft. Because of the growth in container traffic and the drafts problem, the Panamanian government gave Kansas City Southern Railroad and Mi-Jack Products (leading intermodal terminal builder and designer) a lease to build intermodal terminals at each coast, and the go-ahead to recon- struct the Panamanian Railroad, the continent’s first land bridge, for cross-isthmus pas- senger and intermodal service.

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  Encyclopedia of Latin American Theater

  • Eladio Cortés, Mirta Barrea-Marlys, Eladio Cortés, Mirta Barrea-Marlys, Eladio Cortes(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  Mules loaded with gold and silver left their imprints as they traversed the land from ocean to ocean. Very little of those riches were to remain. What did remain was the vision of an interoceanic canal first dreamt of by Charles V. As the California Gold Rush unleashed its siren's call upon the world, Panama was once again the bridge to that dream. By 1855, the first interoceanic railroad was com- pleted, making that route from the Atlantic to the Pacific ever more indispensable. By 1879, during the Paris Congress, Panama's destiny was sealed. After long discussions regarding the location of a canal, Panama was chosen to host it. The French immediately embarked on that project, which was to culminate ten years later in a horrible failure that cost the lives and health of workers devastated by the illnesses of the jungles. By the end of the nineteenth century, France abandoned Panama, theater was practically nonexistent, and what we are calling Panama was in fact still legally part of Colombia. With the Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty, Roosevelt took Panama by freeing it from Colombia, thus giving Panama its independence so that the United States could build the much-coveted canal. Unques- tionably, since then, Panama's destiny has been very closely tied to the interests of the United States, with great political instability ever present. Panamanian theater can only be understood as a consequence of this complex history. In summary, with the arrival of the French, theater had a grand moment of international touring companies that entertained a minority in the midst of a tropical jungle. For the last decades of the past century, theater seemed to thrive in this scene and in this sense. With the exodus of the French, this activity diminished, only to be reactivated with the inaugu- ration of the National Theatre in 1908, which once again hosted companies from around the world, at times surpassing the splendor of the previous epoch.

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  Seaway to the Future

  American Social Visions and the Construction of the Panama Canal

  • Alexander Missal(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • University of Wisconsin Press

    (Publisher)

  5 O Celebrating the Canal The Panama-Pacific International Exposition T he success stories of the Panama authors had all been written with a happy ending in mind: the grand opening of the waterway. But political developments in Europe interfered, and the event turned into an anti-climax. On June 28, 1914, a Serb nationalist killed the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary and set off a chain reaction. By August, the European powers had mobilized their troops and Germany invaded Belgium. Public attention in the United States shifted to the evolving World War I. The great Canal parade of battleships, freighters, and lux- ury yachts under the command of President Wilson, which storyteller Farnham Bishop had imagined two years before, never took place. 1 The first official ship passing through the Panama Canal on August 15, only eleven months after the digging of Culebra Cut had been completed, was the freight boat Ancon, a simple transport vessel for cement. A few months later, the opening of the Panama Canal once again made headlines, albeit in a different arena. The authors interpreting the events on the Isthmus had unfolded a vision not of a foreign territory but of the future American society. In this sense, it was appropriate that the Canal opening was embodied not by the actual passage of ships but in the abstract realm of a world’s fair within the United States, the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) in San Francisco. The admission figures of close to nineteen million visitors sound impressive, 164 but most likely they included many multiple entries. 2 As before in the case of the Canal, most Americans learned about the fair in hundreds of articles and guidebooks and by looking at photographs and postcards of its attractions. The meanings of the exposition were translated to a middle-class audience through the lens of interpretation.

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  Encyclopedia of U.S. - Latin American Relations

  • Thomas Leonard, Jurgen Buchenau, Kyle Longley, Graeme Mount(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • CQ Press

    (Publisher)

  assets occurred at noon December 31 , 1999, when Panama assumed full responsibility for the Canal and its envi-rons. Today under the Panama Canal Authority, the republic operates the waterway and even plans a larger set of locks as part of an expansion and modernization project. All the fears of Panamanian inability to run the Canal or of a hostile foreign takeover came to naught. Indeed, the Panama Canal Treaties (Carter-Torrijos), 1977 stand along with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy as testament to the possibilities for coop-eration and mutual respect in U.S.–Latin American relations. See also Arias Madrid, Arnulfo; Bunau-Varilla, Philippe J.; Bunker, Ellsworth; Carter, Jimmy; Chiari Remón, Roberto Fran-cisco; Flood, Daniel; Linowitz, Sol M.; Panama, U.S. Relations with; Panama, U.S. Invasion, 1989 ; Panama Canal Expansion, 2007 ; Remón Cantera, José A.; Torrijos Herrera, Omar . . . . . . . . . . . . MICHAEL E. DONOGHUE REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING Conniff, Michael L. Panama and the United States: The Forced Alliance . Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001 . Hogan, J. Michael. The Panama Canal in American Politics: Domestic Advocacy and the Evolution of Policy . Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986 . Jorden,William J. Panama Odyssey . Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984 . LaFeber, Walter. The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective . New York: Oxford University Press, 1989 . Major, John. Prize Possession: The United States and the Panama Canal, 1903 – 1979 . New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993 . Moffet, George D. III The Limits of Victory: The Ratification of the Panama Canal Treaties .

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  Case Study of Innovative Projects

  Successful Real Cases

  • Bernardo Llamas Moya, M. Dolores Storch de Gracia, Luis F. Mazadiego, Bernardo Llamas Moya, M. Dolores Storch de Gracia, Luis F. Mazadiego(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • IntechOpen

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 1 The New Panama Canal Ana Belén Berrocal Menarguez and Juan Pous de la Flor Additional information is available at the end of the chapter http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.69605 Abstract The canal of Panama is one of the most emblematic constructions in the world, for that reason, for Sacyr, the construction of the Third Set of Locks has been a great challenge and huge pride. The chapter details the technical specifications and innovative break -throughs that have been used in the work. Detailing the hydraulic filling and drainage system, gate system, control systems, and auxiliary systems. The final result shows the innovation capacity of the technicians who have participated in this work, who have been one of the keys to be able to overcome the challenge that Sacyr committed to Panama and the rest of the world. Keywords: canal, panama, locks, innovation 1. Introduction The Panama Canal is one of the most emblematic works of construction in the history of the humanity. For this reason, for Sacyr, to lead the consortium responsible for the construction of its most representative and complex feature, the Third Set of Locks, is a matter of enormous satisfaction and great pride. Sacyr’s broad experience and success in the field of construction and services speaks for itself: today, the company is listed on the IBEX 35, the blue chip stock index of the Spanish stock market. © 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Founded in 1986, Sacyr’s commitment to work quality and customer satisfaction, along with its determination to grow, has been the keys to its success. Sacyr is now a diversified company with a presence in more than 20 countries on 5 continents through its subsidiaries [1].

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  Panama and the United States

  The Forced Alliance

  • Michael Conniff, Lester Langley(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • University of Georgia Press

    (Publisher)

  In May 1904 Panama formally transferred to U.S. jurisdiction the zone embracing the future canal. At the same time the U.S. Treasury disbursed $10 million to Panama and $40 million to the New Panama Canal Company, through the fiscal agent for both, J. P. Morgan & Company of New York. The way was thus clear to begin the massive work of building the canal.

  Over the next ten years the U.S. government, through the ICC, supervised the largest construction project of its kind in history, one of the great marvels of the world.8 After weighing several alternative designs, the ICC adopted a locks and reservoir approach that had first been proposed decades before. The challenge was enormous: the terrain rose steadily from the Atlantic Coast to the continental divide, about 40 miles to the south, and then dropped sharply to the Pacific. The divide required moving vast amounts of rock and dirt to bring the canal level down to a reasonable height. On the other hand, neither of the two rivers that flowed north and south were navigable for more than a few miles, and seasonal flooding would not allow channelizing them.

  The problem was solved by damming the Chagres River several miles inland in order to create a great lake (named Gatun) eighty-five feet above sea level. Ships would enter from the Atlantic by a conventional canal, then be raised to the lake by means of three sets of locks. Once on the lake the route followed the Chagres Valley to the point that it veered east. From there until the descent to the Pacific, ships would transit a totally man-made cut, eventually named Gail-lard after a chief engineer. Finally, the ships dropped eighty-five feet to the Pacific in three more sets of locks. Total excavation for the canal amounted to more than a quarter-billion cubic yards.9 The landscape of central Panama would never be the same again.

  The works themselves staggered the imagination. The entire canal formed a system that required very little man-made power. Gatun Lake, supplied by the upper Chagres, flooded Gaillard Cut and filled the locks. Water released from the higher locks flowed by gravity into the lower locks to lift ships. The huge lock gates were so well-balanced that small electric motors could swing them at slack water. Because ocean-going vessels were so unmaneuverable in close quarters, they were towed through the locks by powerful electric locomotives, called mules. In the Cut and Gatun Lake, however, ships could proceed under their own power. The double locks permitted two-way traffic, and the average transit took eight to ten hours. The canal was a truly extraordinary work of engineering for the day.

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