Although the ship did not stop in Panama it was our second "big event" following the visit to Colombia.
At noon on the last day of December 1999, the United States passed ownership and operation of this giant waterway to Panama. We were keeping a promise of 100 years earlier.
There had been a dream of a "big ditch" for hundreds of years that would connect the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. Before the canal, it was a month-long, thirteen thousand mile trip by ship from New York to San Francisco. By way of the canal it became 5000 miles, saving 8000 miles! Building it was the largest undertaking ever in such a project. Panama was called a pesthole. Horror stories came from the diseases that struck down explorers in the impenetrable, marshy jungle. A railroad was first built along the general route. The common story was that a worker died for each railroad tie placed down. There were some 74,000 ties! These laborers were mostly Chinese coolies and blacks. A more realistic death toll was said to have been 10-12 thousand. That was for the railroad!
The French took on a serious effort first. Their hopes were led by Charles de Lesseps. After a decade it had cost $287,000,000, which was more than had ever been spent on a peaceful undertaking. It sat, not nearly completed, and with as many as 22000 dead workers, mainly having died from yellow fever and malaria. Many of the engineers and other French experts died. They gave up on the project. It sat, with all equipment, as an unfilled impossible dream.
Rudyard Kipling wrote: "the universe seemed to be spinning round and Theodore was the spinner". He was writing of Theodore Roosevelt.Teddy took on the project. The story is a long one with lots of politics and shenanigans, but it became OUR project! The completion came in August of 1914
just as World War I was beginning in Europe. The records showed 5,609 more lives were lost, most of them black workers. Yellow fever and malaria were defeated. They had to be. It still
stands as one of the greatest man-made projects of all time.
We got up early to watch the first lock open and take in our liner. The gate closed behind as another gate opened to allow water to enter from the other end of the lock and raise the elevation. We then moved through another lock. Our entire trip through the Canal took less than eight hours. I watched with binoculars the jungle shoreline and saw monkeys, a sloth, birds of all kinds and even a huge snake (I mean really big) slowly slither down a fallen tree,
Not one mosquito flew in the air. In fact, I saw not a single one on all the trip. There were several waiting, however, in our back yard.
How much is it used? Since 1914 a million ships have passed that way. The one million mark was hit in October 2010. Vast expansion digging is underway to widen parts of the canal. How much dirt was removed to dig the "big ditch"? Estimates say that 152.9 million cubic meters of material were removed. How much is that? Enough to fill flatcars encircling the world FOUR times. This is a Texas-size big ditch!
