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Panama Canal, Building of

For four hundred years, European nations that wanted faster access to the land and riches of the Pacific Ocean dreamed of building a passage through Central America to unite the two great oceans. As early as 1529, Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortés made a proposal to Charles V for the construction of an isthmian passage through Panama. Other proposals by countries as diverse as England and Russia followed, but it was not until the early twentieth century that the dream became a reality. This was the result of the leadership of a number of powerful, self-confident men, from the visionary French promoter who built the Suez Canal to a slippery Wall Street lawyer, an ambitious U.S. president, a patient and imperturbable doctor, and a handful of talented engineers.

The French Failure

Before his disastrous attempt to construct a canal through Panama helped bring down the French Republic, Ferdinand de Lesseps, a powerful and convincing promoter, had successfully used the new power of the machine to accomplish what many had regarded as impossible, to build a canal that united the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean through the strait of Suez. He saw himself as a prophet of biblical proportions, and even stated that what he was doing was nothing less than undoing the work of Moses. As Moses had separated the oceans with one sweep of his hand, he had united them. When the Suez Canal was completed, de Lesseps, already in his late sixties and the most famous citizen of France, felt he was destined to build the great interoceanic passageway in Central America that people had been dreaming of for centuries. In 1872, he assembled a technical committee and called for a universal congress to study the feasibility of building such a canal. Studies were presented analyzing various routes, including one through Nicaragua. De Lesseps chose Panama because it had the narrowest strait.

In 1879, de Lesseps chartered the Compagnie Universalle Pour le Canal Interoceanic; its stated purpose was to build the Panama Canal, la grande enterprise. It was the biggest human undertaking ever attempted. The cost was calculated at $240 million, twice the cost of Suez, and the time for construction was estimated at twelve years, also twice as long as Suez. Most of the money was raised by issuing shares of the company, which were purchased by thousands of small investors who gave their life savings to de Lesseps. Immediately, the tragic work on the French canal in Panama began.

De Lesseps's Mistakes

The work was expected to be finished by 1882, but by that date, because of crucial mistakes, only one quarter of the excavation had been completed. First, de Lesseps had failed to appreciate the differences between Panama and Egypt. The weather in Egypt was dry, whereas in Panama it was humid and torrential, which caused landslides and increased the need for excavations. Second, de Lesseps insisted on a sea-level canal without locks similar to the canal he built in Suez, but the elevation of the continental divide in Panama meant that the digging required for such an enterprise was nearly impossible, even by today's standards. Third, the administrative costs were excessive. De Lesseps, already an old man, did not supervise the work, which fell into the hands of his younger son, Charles, and others, who wasted as much as one-third of the investors' money in matters unrelated to the construction. Finally, yellow fever, malaria, and other tropical diseases took an immense toll on the workers. When it became clear that the company was insolvent, de Lesseps made several attempts to raise more money, but failed. In December 1889, the French government appointed a liquidator, and the work was stopped.

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