Stretching 50 miles from Colon on the Atlantic side to Panama City on the Pacific, the Panama Canal, built over a hundred years ago, is still an engineering marvel and one of the most significant waterways on earth. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a key conduit for international maritime trade. Over 14,000 ocean-going vessels of all sizes pass through it each year 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We have experienced it entering from the Pacific side (see my post “The Bridge of the World”), but it was quite different this time starting from the Atlantic. We passed through one of the original two lanes, both built side by side, with locks at each end to lift ships up to Gatun Lake, an artificial lake created to reduce the amount of excavation work required to build the canal. When we passed through in 2015, a third, wider lane was nearly completed. It has since opened in 2016 and is built to handle neo-Panamax ships, the largest that can transit, each with the capacity to carry 14,000 20-foot containers.
The first attempts to construct a canal were begun by the French in 1881, who erroneously thought it could be built as a sea level canal. They were totally unprepared for the brutal conditions of the environment which included torrential rains, dense jungle, venomous snakes, insects, and spiders. But the worst challenges were yellow fever, malaria, and other tropical diseases which killed thousands of workers. The French effort went bankrupt in 1889 and left some 22,000 men dead from disease and accidents.
The United States took over from the French in 1904 and implemented sanitation measures to minimize the spread of disease, particularly yellow fever and malaria, which had recently been shown to be mosquito-borne illnesses. By 1906, it was realized that a sea-level canal was not a justifiable proposition and that the better alternative would be to develop a lock system. Construction of the original canal was completed in 1914, and in 1997 a treaty between the US and Panama was signed that mobilized the process of granting the Panamanians free control of the canal so long as Panama guaranteed its permanent neutrality. This led to full Panamanian control effective on December 31, 1999, giving the Panama Canal Authority (PCA) command of the waterway, which remains one of the chief revenue sources for Panama. The fee for our cruise ship alone to pass through is around $200,000.
Our suite in the bow of the ship offers an optimal viewing site, so we invited friends to an Open House for the transit, which takes six to eight hours. Celebrating with snacks and drinks, our guests wandered in and out to see this marvel of engineering. Ships do not transit under their own power through the lanes as they may collide with the sides or the gates, rather they are towed by mechanical mules on each side which keep the ships at an even and steady pace. There is plenty to see with the hitching of the “mules”, the massive gates, rising and falling water levels, huge ships, and tropical forests that line the waterway.
From the Atlantic side the ships rise through the Gatun locks to cross the Gatun Lake 85 feet above sea level, then pass through the Pedro Miguel Locks and Miraflores Locks to lower back down to the Pacific. Coincidentally, we passed our sister ship Marina in Gatun Lake to much celebrated cheering and waving as she headed eastward to the Atlantic.
And, the crowning finish was on our way out to sea as we passed a beacon of Panama City, the primary-colored, playful Biomuseo, opened in 2014 and designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry, which stood as an exclamation mark to a memorable day.
thank you for sharing!