It was 40 miles long and literally cut through the continental divide, so it was extremely difficult. The French attempted to do this and failed. After that failure, the US came in. The American ingenuity was of building, rather than a sea level canal, a lock canal.
The way the terrain is, a sea-level canal would flood, it was prone to landslides and the terrain was not stable enough. You had to accommodate different levels. It was lower on one side than on the other side, with mountains in between. The systems of locks is what made it possible. Noel Maurer: A key thing the US did, was they used railroads to truck out the dirt. The French were piling it up, which led to landslides. Also, when it rained, the dirt would turn to puddles, which attracted mosquitos, which meant malaria rips through your workforce.
The US established medical innovations to control malaria and yellow fever. Ovidio Diaz-Espino: The construction itself was so significant that at one point one-third of the city of Pittsburgh was working to build the canal.
Every lock of the canal, and there are four, has more steel, more concrete, and took more work than the Empire State Building. Something like six Empire State Building constructions are here. There was massive steel, provided by US Steel. Massive concrete provided by Portland Cement. GE had to invent new type of machineries to be able to move the ships, these huge tankards that only had a few inches on either side needed to be controlled.
Railroad had to be developed with minute precision. Dredging techniques used to dredge the Port of New York had to be much more precise. With such a massive body of work it probably employed one-third of Central America and the Caribbean, and the US was heavily influenced by it and by the money that was flowing through Wall Street, the banks, the insurance companies.
He staged a successful PR stunt: he sat in a big earth moving machine wearing a Panama hat, made a speech that America could and needed to do this, and when he returned to the US the Senate supported its construction.
Julie Greene: But on top of that had to do with the human challenges involved. The chief engineer said at one point that the real challenge of this canal, and what allowed the US to succeed, was in figuring out how to manage and discipline the humans.
By that, he meant they had to build a whole society: a police force, dorms, cafeterias, a judicial system. Forty-five thousand women and men, mostly men, came from dozens of different countries, and then thousands of women and children came to be with their menfolk. To create a world for them and then to keep it orderly was a challenge. Julie Greene: The United States built the Canal between and , picking up the ball from the disastrous efforts by the French.
The loss of life during the French era was much greater because disease was more widespread. The US managed to get yellow fever completely under control, and malaria largely under control.
By the official US statistics, the mortality rate was about 10, people, maybe a little less. Richard Feinberg: Panama had not existed before this. There were some independence movements which the US decided to support, creating a new country in order to construct this canal. So Panamanians who welcomed independence welcomed the canal. But the canal was built mostly by foreign workers. They imported tens of thousands of Caribbean workers, many of whom died from disease or accidents.
Ovidio Diaz-Espino: 27, people died building the Panama Canal during those two periods. Can you imagine an infrastructure project today that cost 27, lives? How was it seen on the ground in Panama and by its neighbors? Julie Greene: The chief engineer had extensive powers thanks to an executive order.
Anyone in the Canal Zone not productive could be deported. Many were. Workers who refused to show up would be, if not deported, sentenced to jail time. They had a massive police force, and did not allow strikes. Workers who might try to organize could be and were quickly deported. In the end, this kind of careful system of rules and regulations allowed order.
American, white workers were paid in gold, and they had better housing and conditions. So the US found it constantly had to manage problems resulting from its own policies. However, the Panamanian people would experience their brand new nation as one whose land had been split in half by the United States and a canal.
This became the cause of nationalistic struggle which continued for decades and ended with the return of the canal, and the land it was built on, to Panama in the year , under the Torrijos-Carter treaty. Right from the beginning of the 20th century, it became the mandatory route for ports that had never been connected before.
By significantly shortening the distances between points of production and consumption at the time, the waterway propelled the growth of everyone related to the business of commerce and transportation. It also pushed the creation of new, and larger port facilities, mainly on the coasts of North, South America, Europe, and during the recent past, China. Culebra Cut was where most of the digging took place.
Big vessels are forbidden to meet in this area. Here, the Pedro Miguel Locks which is a single step lowers the vessels 30 feet 9 metres to Miraflores Lake, which is at an elevation of 52 feet 16 metres above sea level. The ships then pass through a channel almost 2 km long to the Miraflores Locks which consists of two consecutive steps, where they are lowered back to sea level on the Pacific Ocean side.
The ships then pass through a final 7 mile Each lock chamber is feet metres long by feet The maximum beam width that a ship can have in order to be allowed passage through these locks is feet The canal may allow the transit of vessels with larger beams like feet The maximum allowable draft is Each set of locks consists of two lanes.
The lanes are not for locking ships in opposite direction at the same time as people might think which occurs invariably as a coincidence but rather they were built that way so one could be completely closed for maintenance work while the other remains available for shipping.
This way the canal does not have to cease servicing the industry. Ships move through these locks with the assistance of powerful locomotives known also as mules as an analogy with those strong and stoic beasts while using their own engines. Tugboats are also used in assisting ships, depending on their size, to arrive and enter the locks. Even after a century of constant use and having transited more than a million ships safely, the great steel gates of the Miraflores locks still swing open with the precision comparable to that of a Swiss watch.
Each of these ton locks is operated with the help of a pair of horsepower motors. These new set of locks, capable of handling vessels with a length of feet Unlike the old Panamax locks, these new ones called Neo Panamax locks were designed with recycling pools in order to minimize water consumption.
Instead of locomotives, ships are assisted by tugboats tied up at each end. Apart from their huge difference in size the new locks, Agua Clara on the Atlantic and Cocoli on the Pacific side were each built as three steps locks. There is no intermediate lake like in the case of Miraflores and Pedro Miguel. Ships are raised to Gatun lake level, or lower to sea level, once they pass through these new locks.
All the water used for locking ships up or down goes out to sea by gravity. This is why rainfall is very important to keep the canal operational. An average of 52 millions gallons of water is necessary for every ship that uses the old locks.
In the case of the Neo Panamax locks, the recycling pools contribute to saving about 33 million gallons of water, while letting 22 million gallons drain out to sea. Each vessel that transits is under the control of a Panama Canal Pilot. The complexity of the operation makes it a necessity. Depending on the size, vessels are assigned one or more pilots. It will stop in Balboa before proceeding to Manzanillo and probably some ports on the U.
West Coast. If these new locks had not been built, ships this size would have to use Suez or just trade in a different route. To understand the importance of the Panama Canal we only have to think of the consequences for the shipping industry if, all of a sudden, it would not be available.
About routes, connecting ports from countries, depend on the waterway on a regular basis. An average of 14, transits is made every year through the Panama Canal. Ships of all types, carrying all kind of cargoes safely navigate the waters of the canal. Containers are at the top of the Panama Canal list users, closely followed by tankers and bulkers.
With the new locks, gas tankers have found a shorter route to their destinations. By some accounts, pension funds, an essential source of domestic savings in Latin America, are investing only 1 percent of their portfolio in infrastructure around the world. Moving goods across borders quickly and cheaply is important for firms to be competitive and for countries to boost trade.
High trade costs can destroy the competitive edge of a company that might otherwise have all the resources and skills it needs to export a great product.
In Central America, for example, logistic costs can account for more than 50 percent of the final price of goods. IFC has worked with governments in the region to help them streamline import and export processes. It included our financing to build the Manzanillo International Terminal on the Atlantic coast to establish a modern transshipment option for shipping lines, as well as the Panama Canal Railroad Company and the Corredor Sur toll road connecting Panama City and the airport. Infrastructure is an essential investment that allows people to get to work quickly, children to study at any time with reliable electricity, and families to stay healthy with affordable water and sanitation.
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