The Panama Canal is called the eighth wonder of the world for a reason. This masterpiece of engineering is one of the world's most intense, longest and most challenging artificial waterways. And hardly any other engineering structure on Earth has such a rich and dramatic history.
Let's remember her …
The Panama Canal is a shipping canal that connects the Panama Gulf of the Pacific Ocean with the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, located on the Isthmus of Panama in the territory of the State of Panama.
Length - 81.6 km, including 65.2 km by land and 16.4 km along the bottom of the Panama and Limonskaya bays (for the passage of ships to deep water).
The construction of the Panama Canal has become one of the largest and most complex construction projects carried out by mankind. The Panama Canal had an invaluable impact on the development of shipping and the economy in general in the Western Hemisphere and throughout the Earth, which led to its extremely high geopolitical importance.
Thanks to the Panama Canal, the sea route from New York to San Francisco has been reduced from 22.5 thousand km to 9.5 thousand km.
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Panama was discovered in 1501 by the Spanish conquistador Rodrigo de Bastidas. Vasco Nunez de Balboa sailed with Bastidas - he was the first to cross the Isthmus of Panama, spending weeks on the way to the Pacific Ocean. In 1519, Balboa was falsely accused of treason and executed, but thanks to him the Isthmus of Panama got on the maps. Since then, the idea of connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by water, so as not to make a long-term passage full of dangers around South America, has not left the minds of sailors and merchants.
In 1502, Christopher Columbus founded the village of Santa Maria de Belém at the mouth of the Belém River, which was soon destroyed by the Indians. In 1509, the Spaniards established a colony on the coast of Darien Bay. Ten years later, the city of Panama was founded - the current capital of the state of the same name. The Spaniards transported the mined gold, silver, and jewelry along a stone road called Camino real - the Royal Route. From the city of Panama on the Pacific coast, the treasures were ferried to Puerto Bello (Portobelo) on the Atlantic.
In 1529, a Spanish officer, an eminent mathematician and geographer named Alvaro de Saavedra Seron, proposed four options for digging the canal. He died, not having time to acquaint any of the powers that be with his projects, but five years later, King Charles V of Spain personally ordered to survey the shores of Panama in search of a waterway across the Isthmus of Panama. In 1550, the Portuguese sailor Antonio Galvao published a book outlining four projects, largely overlapping with those of Saavedra. At the beginning of the 19th century, the German naturalist and traveler Alexander Humboldt had already proposed nine plans for digging a canal, including through the northern part of the American continent.
By the end of the 18th century, the then known gold and silver mines were developed, and the importance of the path across the isthmus began to gradually decline. In addition, there was a constant threat of pirate attacks. But, losing its importance for Spain, the path through the Isthmus of Panama became more and more important for the young power, growing and gaining strength - the United States. In 1846, the United States entered into a treaty of friendship, trade and navigation with New Granada, which then included Panama. The American side pledged to guarantee the inviolability of the Isthmus of Panama. At the same time, the United States received a concession to build a railroad through it. It turned out to be a timely move. Gold was discovered in California in 1849, and thousands of people flocked to San Francisco. An American company began construction of a railwaycost a huge amount and about 60 thousand human lives.
The road less than 80 kilometers long was completed only in 1855. In order to recoup the costs, the company inflated freight rates unreasonably, taking advantage of its monopoly. However, this monopoly did not last long: other companies established a regular service around Cape Horn, which was much cheaper, although it took more time. And the direct path across the isthmus fell into desolation for the second time. At that time, between the United States and Great Britain there was a "treaty of mutual distrust" - the Clayton-Bulwer agreement, according to which both sides waived their exclusive rights to build the canal. France took advantage of this contradiction.
The Universal Interoceanic Canal Company was created, headed by the diplomat and entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal. After Suez, Lesseps became a national hero, he was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences and received the title of engineer, although he had no technical education.
It is not known what played a role - the authority of Lesseps as the head of the construction of the canal in the East, or his diplomatic ability, but the Colombian government agreed to the construction of the canal in Panama.
On January 1, 1880, a groundbreaking ceremony took place at the mouth of the Rio Grande. The maximum number of workers involved in construction was 19,000 people. I was working on a grand scale, but by 1885, only one tenth of what was planned was completed. The main reason for this was technical difficulties unforeseen by the project and the tropical climate. The proximity of malaria marshes has caused outbreaks of disease in workers living in unsanitary conditions. Hundreds of people died from yellow fever. The lack of timely medical assistance and the necessary medicines led to huge casualties among the builders.
The Isthmus of Panama is one of the most difficult geological areas of the earth's surface - mountainous, covered with impenetrable jungle and deep swamps. The mountains here, formed by volcanic activity, are a mixture of hard rock with soft rocks, and the mixture is disordered and located at different angles. The canal builders passed 6 large geological faults and 5 centers of volcanic activity. Add to this the scorching sun, very high humidity, abundant tropical rains typical for these places, as well as the regular floods of the Chagres River, which sometimes take on catastrophic proportions, and, of course, yellow fever. It is good that the engineers of the past did not have detailed information about the geology of the isthmus and about all the other natural "surprises"otherwise the Panama Canal would hardly ever have been built.
Lesseps decided to found a joint stock company - the last time the idea was successful. Three years after the completion of the construction of the Suez Canal, it began to bring in net profit, and before nationalization in 1955, the company paid out 12.4 billion francs to shareholders. But in this case, Lesseps' enterprise ended in complete failure and became a tragedy for many Frenchmen.
In 1876 Lesseps acquired the project of the engineer Vasa and the concession. It took 10 million francs. In 1880, a report was drawn up, according to which the costs were estimated at 843 million francs. As it turned out later, this amount was very low. On February 1, 1881, construction began on the Panama Canal. It was supposed to run at sea level, without locks and dams. A tunnel was to be built through the pass at the junction of the Veragua and San Blas mountain ranges (87 meters above sea level).
Material difficulties began almost immediately. Few people wanted to invest in the construction of a canal somewhere on the other side of the world. I had to carry out a wide advertising campaign, and for this I had to pay a substantial sum to banks and print media. The railroad, which intersects the route of the future canal, had to be bought from the Americans for an amount three times its cost. For the years 1879-1889, expenses amounted to 1274 million francs. Meanwhile, construction has barely progressed.
At the end of 1887, under pressure from the young engineer Philippe Buno-Varigli, Lesseps was forced to agree to the transition to the sluice canal. As conceived by the engineer, the highest level of the canal was to be 52 meters, and this circumstance entailed the need to revise the project. For this, engineer Alexander Gustave Eiffel was called from Paris, who was just finishing the construction of his legendary tower, so that he would get involved in the work and prepare the project of the canal using locks. But all efforts to revive the rapidly declining works were in vain, due to lack of money they were suspended at the 72 meter mark.
The financial difficulties of the Panama Company grew from year to year. In 1885 Lesseps and his colleagues decided to improve the company's affairs by issuing a long-term winning loan. The issuance of such a loan required the consent of the government and parliament - the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, because private companies did not have the legal right to conduct lotteries. The company began processing journalists, ministers and parliamentarians to make changes to the law. Baron de Reinach distributed over four million francs in cash bribes to all echelons of power!
The struggle over the state's sanction to issue a winning loan lasted about three years. The company could no longer hide either the unsatisfactory progress of work on the isthmus, or its financial problems. The halo of Lesseps faded, and his physical strength was at the end.
The Panamanian company, to stay afloat, issued two more regular loans that did not require government approval. To attract subscribers, she made bonds especially attractive by raising the nominal (so-called coupon) interest rate to 10% per annum. The banks that placed bonds had to pay more and more expensively.
In April 1888, the House of Deputies approved a loan, supported by the Senate and the President, and the ceiling was increased to 720 million francs. President Theodore Roosevelt actively supported the Panama project, for which he was later accused of the fact that government money did not reach French investors, but settled in Morgan's pockets.
The bond subscription, which began in June 1888, ended in complete failure almost immediately. It raised only 254 million, of which 31 million were the issuance costs of the banks. Finally, the law required the company to set aside a special reserve fund from the collected money as a guarantee for the payment of winnings and the redemption of bonds.
The leaders of the Panama company, led by father and son Lesseps, continued to make desperate efforts to avoid bankruptcy, assuring shareholders at a shareholders' meeting that construction would be completed on time and money would flow to the company's cashier.
They undertook a trip around the country with speeches to guarantee their honesty. But after the deputies' refusal to support the bill on preferential debt repayment, the end has come. The Seine Department of Civil Court on February 4, 1889, officially declared bankruptcy and liquidation of the Panama Company and appointed a liquidator.
At the time of bankruptcy, after eight years of building the canal, the work was only two-fifths complete. The Panamanian company raised 1.3 billion francs by issuing shares and bonds. Of these, 104 million francs were paid to banks as commission fees, 250 million - as interest on bonds and for their redemption. The contractor companies were paid 450 million francs, but a significant part of the work on the estimate was not completed.
In the course of liquidation of the company, it turned out that there were no liquid assets left on its balance sheet, with the exception of a giant, unfinished ditch and a heap of rusting equipment in the jungle of Central America. The number of investors who lost all their savings after the bankruptcy of the Panama Company reached, according to various estimates, 700-800 thousand people.
Three years after the financial collapse, in 1892, a corruption scandal erupted when the French nationalist press began to publish revelations of the massive bribery of politicians, government officials and the press by the administration of the Panama Company, which tried to hide from the public the deplorable state of the company and obtain permission to conduct a »A winning loan.
Numerous financial abuses were exposed, first of all - the universal corruption of all branches of government. Charges of taking bribes were brought against 510 MPs, who took bribes not furtively in an envelope, but with a bank check!
The scandal led to the fall of three French governments. Many ministers were involved in it, including the future Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, and practically none of them was brought to justice.
On the dock were the elder and younger de Lesseps, Gustave Eiffel, several company managers and a former minister of public works. In 1893, they were sentenced to various prison terms (Eiffel - to two years and a 20 thousand francs fine), but four months later these sentences were annulled by the cassation court, and the defendants in the case were released.
Ferdinand de Lesseps, due to his advanced age and services to the country, was released from prison. The health of Lesseps, significantly undermined during the years spent in Panama, was seriously damaged in this situation. He went mad and died in December 1894 at the age of 89. Charles lived until 1923, having seen the Panama Canal in action and learned that the good name of him and his father was restored …
Ferdinand de Lesseps experienced both the intoxication of success - this is Suez, and the bitterness of disappointment - this is Panama. When he managed to unite the two seas, the sovereigns and nations paid him honor, but after he was defeated, not mastering the Cordillera rocks, he turned into an ordinary swindler …
As soon as the passions subsided, it turned out that the defrauded investors could save at least part of their money only on the condition that the construction would continue. In the year Lesseps died, in 1894, a new Panama Canal Company was established in France, which very slowly but continued construction and survey work.
The Americans, who bought the property of the new Company, not forgetting the sad experience of their predecessors, significantly adjusted the project of the canal, choosing the option with locks, made a bet not on private capital, but on state funding, and fine-tuned the construction management procedure. Modern discoveries in the field of medicine also came to their aid: by that time it was established that mosquitoes and mosquitoes were the destroyers of the French - carriers of yellow fever and malaria, therefore unprecedented efforts were made on the territory to destroy insidious insects. Serious sanitary and hygienic measures were taken throughout the entire construction of the canal. However, even in this case, human casualties were not without - during the second stage of the construction of the Panama Canal, 5,600 people died, and 70 thousand workers took part in it. The construction was laborious and took ten years. According to official reports, the construction of the century cost the Americans $ 380 million.
Whether Ferdinand de Lesseps was really guilty of fraud, or whether this elderly man simply turned out to be a victim of self-deception and became a pawn in someone else's dishonest game, now it is probably impossible to establish. The methods used in the construction of the canal can be safely called fraudulent. The excessively underestimated cost of the project and the timing of its execution initially misled investors. This was facilitated by an active advertising campaign, which extolled optimistic forecasts, but which constantly hushed up difficulties.
Despite this, public opinion and the press did not approve of the severity of the sentence …
By 1888, almost 2 times more funds than expected were spent on the construction of the canal, and only a third of the work was completed. The company went bankrupt, leading to the bankruptcy of thousands of minority shareholders.
Further investigation revealed facts of mass corruption, bribery by the company of officials, newspaper editors. This adventure was named Panama, and the word "Panama" became synonymous with scam, fraud.
In 1894, a new Panama Canal company was organized in France, but work was not resumed. The New Company was in behind-the-scenes negotiations with the United States government, which hoped to use the channel to further penetrate the Central and South American economy. Negotiations were crowned with success and the deal was concluded on February 13, 1903. The Company ceded to the United States government for $ 40 million its rights to build the canal and all equipment and property on site.
The conditions under which the company carried out work in Colombian territory did not satisfy the United States, and they developed a new agreement under which the entire 10-mile wide strip of land along which the canal passed was removed from the sovereignty of the Republic of Colombia. The cities of Colon and Panama were declared free ports. The protection of the channel was entrusted to the government of the Republic of Colombia. The United States government pledged to pay the government of the Republic of Colombia a paltry $ 10 million in a lump sum and then pay a small sum of $ 250,000 annually.
This treaty was signed by both governments on March 18, 1903, a month after the acquisition of the rights to the channel, and submitted for ratification to their Senates.
The Colombian Senate, under pressure from the masses, outraged by the enslaving conditions, rejected the treaty, demanding that its sovereignty over the canal zone be secured and wanting to receive large compensation for the concession presented. The refusal of the Colombian Senate to ratify the treaty caused a storm of indignation among the ruling circles of the United States. The President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt proposed not to stand on ceremony with the random owners of the territory needed by the United States and deal with them at their own discretion.
Using bribery and pressure, American entrepreneurs on Wall Street, through their agents, staged the Panama Revolution on November 4, 1903.
The newly formed Republic of Panama, which includes 84 thousand square kilometers, including the zone of passage of the future canal, declared itself independent from Colombia, and was headed by pro-American hard-core businessmen bought with American dollars.
The President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt immediately ordered the commanders of American warships stationed in Colon and the Pacific port of Mexico - Acapulco to prevent Colombian troops from landing on the shores of Panama, heading there to suppress the "revolution". The American directorate of the Panama Railroad also refused to transport Colombian soldiers for this purpose.
Just a week after the "revolution", the United States hastened to formally recognize the independence and independence of the Republic of Panama, and on November 18, 1903, signed a new agreement with the government of this republic on the construction of a canal on even more favorable terms for the United States than the agreement previously rejected by the Colombian Senate. On February 26, 1904, the territory adjacent to the canal, 1422 square kilometers with a population of 14.47 thousand people, was annexed to the United States and named the "Panama Canal Zone".
The Republic of Columbia did not risk a war with the United States and was forced to admit defeat. Canal construction was resumed and continued by the United States.
Culebr cut
The Culebra Cut in terms of the totality of labor, people and money used was a kind of "special miracle" of the Panama Canal. The essence of this work was to overcome the multi-kilometer section between Gamboa on the Chagres River through the Continental Division mountain range south to Pedro Miguel. The lowest point on the pass between Gold Hill in the east and Contractors Hill in the west was about 100 meters above sea level.
Technically, it all came down to drilling holes in which explosives were placed, the detonation of which lifted a mass of stones and petrified clay into the air. Steam excavators then removed the resulting crushed soil, placing it on railcars for transport to the dump sites. In general, the working equipment, in addition to the railway as such, included steam excavators, unloaders, spoilers and track drives. Of all these machines, only steam excavators were known to the French, and they were much less powerful. The Lidgerwood unloader, manufactured at the Lidgerwood Manufacturing Company of New York City, was an indispensable tool for the job. Wooden single-sided platforms with an average carrying capacity of 14.5 cubic meters transported most of the excavated soil,of them were long trains (there were no gaps between the platforms, they were closed with special troughs), which were hooked up to powerful locomotives built in America.
The unloading system was interesting. The unloader's three-ton plow was mounted on the last platform, and a long cable ran from it to a winch on the frontmost platform. Having received power from the locomotive, the winch began to quickly attract the plow to itself, thereby unloading the train of 20 platforms in one ten-minute movement. One of these machines once set an 8-hour record, unloading 18 trains during this time, that is, over five and a half kilometers of platforms and 5780 cubic meters of soil. Engineers calculated that twenty of these unloaders, which required 120 workers to service, replaced the manual labor of 5,666 people.
The spreader was another American invention. It was a trolley running on compressed air, on both sides it had a kind of wings that could be lowered or raised. After being lowered, they covered several meters along the sides of the track. Moving forward, the spreader pushed and leveled the material left by the spreader. Like him, the spreader did the work of five to six thousand ordinary workers at a time.
Another machine, the overhead traveling machine, was invented by the American William G. Bierd, general manager of the Panama Railways from September 1905 to October 1907. The massive crane-like machine lifted an entire section of the road - rails and sleepers - and moved it in the other direction, a maximum of more than two meters at a time. Its usefulness was especially great because the paths had to be constantly shifted in accordance with the course of work. Once, having demanded a dozen people for its management, such a machine moved over a kilometer of track per day, which would otherwise require the labor of more than six hundred workers.
A significant number of large four-sided tipper cars (ie dump trucks) from Western and Oliver were also used. Since their unloading turned out to be very difficult, due to the fact that heavy clay adhered to the steel walls, they were used almost exclusively for transporting stones from Vyomka to Gatun Dam. Their four-sided design made it impossible to use the unloader. Many millions of cubic meters of excavated soil had to be diverted from the extraction site. Some of this soil was used to connect four small islands in the Bay of Panama (Naos, Perico, Culebra and Flamenco) to build a breakwater. There is a paved road on top of this breakwater,which for several kilometers passes in fact across the Pacific Ocean. The area between the mainland and the island of Naos was especially difficult in terms of bulk work, as the bottom there was soft, and whole tons of stones disappeared into it without a trace. The railway and the piles, with the help of which these works were carried out, were once washed away by the sea, which required their re-construction. As a result, in order to reach the island of Naos with these works, the builders needed to fill ten times more of the planned volume.to reach Naos Island with these works, the builders needed to fill ten times the planned volume.to reach Naos Island with these works, the builders needed to fill ten times the planned volume.
The resulting soil was also used to backfill two square kilometers of the Pacific Ocean, in order to create a site for the construction of the city of Balboa and the military fort of Amador. Millions of cubic meters were also used to build large embankments in the jungle. The largest of them, Tabernilla, contained over ten million cubic meters. Other significant embankments were the Gatunskaya Dam and Miraflores.
The Gatunskaya dam, on the Atlantic side, was during its construction the largest dam on Earth, and the resulting Gatunskaya Lake was the largest artificial reservoir on the planet. Nowadays Lake Gatunskoye is not even included in the thirty such lakes. Two dams of similar importance were built on the Pacific side - the Miraflores Spillway and, already in the thirties, the Madden Dam up the Chagres River. Upon completion of the Gatun Dam, the Chagres River valley between Gamboa and Gatun turned into Gatun Lake. The end of the Culebra cut widened this lake across the Continental Section to the Pedro Miguel Locks.
Landslides along the banks of the Kulebrskaya excavation were a source of constant problems for engineers. The first such landslide under the Americans occurred near Cucarachi on October 4, 1907, when hundreds of cubic meters fell into Vyemka after several days of heavy rain. For ten days, the landslide moved at a speed of more than four meters per day. To this day, Cucaracha remains a landslide hazardous area.
A "normal" landslide, similar to what occurs in the Cucarachi area, occurs due to the fact that the porous material lying on a solid rocky base is liquefied by water and at some stage loses its adhesion to the base and collapses in whole layers, often many meters thick …
There is also another type of landslide called "structural" or "deformation". In this case, it already depends on the geological structure of the rock massifs. In the case of the Kulebrskaya excavation, the extraction of material led to the fact that the high banks lost stability and collapsed under their own weight, often in the deepest sections, thereby reducing the depth of the channel. The greatest threat of such landslides appears during dry seasons, thus not depending on rainfall.
The one-year labor record for the construction of the Culebra excavation was achieved in 1908, then, in addition to tens of millions of regular cubic meters of soil, it was also necessary to move the Panama Railway to a higher level, due to the forthcoming appearance of Lake Gatun. This required to lay about 64 kilometers and was completed on May 25, 1912, the money spent about nine million dollars.
By 1913, the construction of three gigantic locks was completed, which became a real wonder of the world. The walls of each airlock were the height of a six-story building. For each series of locks: Gatun on the Atlantic coast and Pedro Miguel and Miraflores on the Pacific coast, more than 1.5 million cubic meters were used. meters of concrete, which were cast into steel structures from a huge 6-ton bucket.
On August 15, 1914, the Cristobal was the first to navigate the Channel from the Atlantic to the Pacific. On board was the "good genius" of construction Philippe Buno-Variglia. It took the ship 9 hours to pass. Thanks to the artificial artery, the ship sailing from Ecuador to Europe “saved” about 8 thousand kilometers.
The first ship sailed along the canal line on August 15, 1914. The official opening of the channel took place only on June 12, 1920.
From the very moment of the construction of the canal, its actual and legal owners were the USA. Interestingly, the canal and the area around it have always been used by the United States not so much for the purpose of making a profit from cargo transportation, since the main principle was not the profitability of the canal, but covering the costs of maintaining and maintaining it in good condition, but with the aim of gaining the ability to control the region.
In the canal zone, there were numerous military bases used for training soldiers. In the country itself, at different times, there were from 10 to 65 thousand American military, who were stationed there not so much to service the canal, but to exercise control over Panama and other countries of the region. Moreover, there was a special "School of the Americas", which taught soldiers the strategy and tactics of fighting the rebels on the continent. The area around the Panama Canal has always been important to the United States.
The issue of channel ownership has been raised many times. Many, primarily US representatives, were against the transfer of the canal to Panama, because they believed that such actions could only lead to the decline of the cargo transportation system, since the Panamanians simply would not be able to manage the canal.
French companies began construction of the canal, but they failed to complete the project due to bankruptcy. The started construction was bought by the United States, which concluded in 1903 an agreement on the transfer of the canal for eternal use. In addition to receiving the canal and land around it under full control, under this treaty, the United States was given the right to deploy its troops at any time in any area of Panama and, in general, was allowed to feel at home. The contract price was $ 10 million, plus an annual rent of $ 250,000.
An interesting fact in the history of Panama. As you know, Panama was a colony of Spain for a long time, and from 1821 it became part of the federal Colombia. The struggle for independence here continued throughout the history of Panama, where uprisings and movements for freedom from Colombia erupted from time to time. But, oddly enough, it was the United States that helped Panama gain independence. Of course, the intentions of the United States were far from noble, their main goal was still the Panama Canal, and here's why. To sign an agreement on the transfer of rights to the channel, the consent of at least two parties was required.
At the same time in Panama, by the beginning of the 20th century, separatist sentiments had exacerbated, which went right into the hands of the United States. But a certain threat was carried with them by the troops of Colombia, whose authorities did not want to just give up Panama. That is why, in order to ensure security, and indeed, the very fact of the conclusion of the treaty, the United States paid Colombia 25 million dollars for the independence of Panama.
Colombia agreed to "let go" of Panama in 1903, although the fact that Panama became free can only be said conditionally, since it immediately fell under the de facto US control.
The further history of the canal, Panama and everything that was hovering around it, I will tell you in the next post about the modern Panama Canal.
For now, let's look at the footage of the canal construction:
Read also: Construction of the Panama Canal is a grand financial scam