The Panama Canal is a canal 82 km (51 mi) long that cuts through the isthmus of Panama, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in Central America. Due to the "S" shape of Panama, the Atlantic lies to the west of the canal and the Pacific to the east, the reverse of the customary orientation of those oceans to land in the Americas.
The building of the canal was first speculated in the early 1500s, but not finished until almost 400 years later when the canal opened on August 15, 1914. The building of a such a massive trench caused many problems during and after its construction, including deadly landslides and lack of water. Nevertheless the canal continues to accommodate the passage of approximately 12,000 ships a year. A passage through the canal by ship takes nine hours. Approximately 800,000 ships have passed through the Panama Canal since its completion.
Along the canal there are three sets of canal locks. They are the Gatun, Pedro Miguel and the Miraflores locks. At the Atlantic end, the massive steel gates of the triple locks at Gatun are 70 feet (21 m) high and weigh 745 tonnes each, but are so well counterbalanced that a 30-kilowatt (40 hp) engine suffices to open and close them. The dimensions of the locks are 33.53 meters wide by 304.8 meters long. The maximum ship dimensions for the locks are 32.3 meters wide, 294.1 meters long and must draw no more than 12 meters of water. The Gatun Lake, which is 26 meters above sea level, is fed largely by the Chagres River, which was dammed to make the lake.
From Lake Gatún, the canal passes through the continental divide at the Gaillard Cut, and then descends to the Pacific first through a single set of locks at Pedro Miguel, which as the smallest of the locks can raise or lower ships 10 feet. Then it passes to Miraflores Lake at 16.5 meters above sea level, and then through a double set of locks at Miraflores. All the locks on the canal are paired so that ships may pass in both directions. The ships are hauled through the locks with small railway engines called mulas (mules). The Pacific end of the canal is on average 24 cm higher than the Atlantic end and has much greater tides.
Several islands are located within the Lake Gatún portion of the Panama Canal, including Barro Colorado Island, home of the world famous Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI).
Prior to the Panama Canal's construction, the only commercially practical way to travel by ship from New York to California was by "rounding the Horn", the long and dangerous route via Cape Horn (at the southernmost tip of South America). The canal saves a total of about 18,000 miles on a trip from New York to San Francisco by sea.
The dream of a canal across the isthmus of Central America goes back to the 16th century. In 1524 King Charles V of Spain suggested that by cutting out a piece of land somewhere in Panama, the trips from Ecuador and Peru would be made shorter and allow for a quicker and less risky trip back and forth to Spain for ships carrying goods, especially gold. A survey of the isthmus and a working plan for a canal were drawn up in 1529 . The European political situation and level of technology at the time made this impossible.
The task was suggested again by German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, and in 1819 the Spanish government authorized the construction of a canal and the creation of a company to build it. In 1878 the company obtained permission from the Colombian government, which then controlled the land. The difficulties of "cutting" through such a large amount of land soon forced the company to give up.
In the late 19th century, it was decided that the two "most favorable" routes were those across Panama (then a part of Colombia) and across Nicaragua, with a route across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico as a third option. The Nicaragua route was seriously considered and surveyed (see Nicaragua Canal). After the success of the Suez Canal in Egypt, the French were confident that they could connect another two seas with little difficulty. The Colombian government gave the French permission to dig. Ferdinand de Lesseps, who was in charge of the construction of the Suez Canal in 1869, was initially called upon to build the new canal at Panama, and construction began on January 1, 1880, though digging did not begin until January 22, 1882 [3]. De Lesseps' company eventually was liquidated to repay investors, due to setbacks caused by malaria and other problems. Later, in 1894 Compagnie Nouvelle du Canal de Panama was created to finish the construction, however it eventually sold its assets to the U.S. for $40 million. The negotiating between the company and the U.S. government resulted in the U.S. being convinced to build the canal in Panama, and the price of the canal being lowered from 100 million dollars, to 40 million.
The Panama Railway was built across the isthmus from 1850 to 1855. The infrastructure of this functioning railway was a key consideration in the plan to build the canal in Panama. The railroad workers were from the United States, Europe, China, and also included some African slaves. Many of these workers had come to Panama to seek their fortune and had arrived with little or no identification. Many died leaving no knowledge of their next of kin, their permanent address, or even their last name.
As disease and exhaustion took their toll on the workers, the disposal of unidentifiable bodies was a boon to those with proper connections. Medical schools and teaching hospitals needed cadavers to train budding physicians, and paid handsomely for anonymous bodies pickled in barrels shipped up from the tropics. The Panama Railroad Company itself sold the corpses abroad, and the income generated was sufficient to maintain the Company's own hospital. A journalist reported sighting the chief doctor at the Panama Railroad Company's hospital conscientiously bleaching skeletons of dead workers, in hopes of compiling a skeletal museum of all the known races working on the railroad.
An enormous amount of excess soil was produced during the construction of the Panama Canal. Initially, the soil was hauled to a nearby valley, then dumped and allowed to build up. This caused many problems during the rainy season and was the cause of many landslides. Later it was decided to reuse the soil, and it was used for the creation of the Chagres Dam, which held back the Chagres River to create the Gatun Lake. The dam is 1.5 miles long and slightly under 0.5 mile wide at its base. The construction of the dam involved building 2 walls along its length, using excavated rock, primarily from the Culebra cut. The space between the walls was then built up with clay. When the clay dried it adopted concrete qualities. This dam contains 16.9 million cubic meters of rock and clay, which is equivalent to about one-tenth of the entire excavation of the canal.
When the Canal was built in 1914, it was designed to be large enough to accommodate any vessel in the world. Technologies have advanced rapidly since then, and many vessels today are too large to pass through the canal. Presently, under half of the vessels going through the canal are Panamax-sized and it is estimated that 60% of ships being planned for construction in 1999 were post-Panamax and 30% of the global shipping fleet is projected to be post-Panamax size by 2020. The canal can only allow for the passage of vessels carrying up to 65,000 tons of cargo, but ships now exist that can hold up to 300,000 tons [10]. Despite the canal's inability to accomodate certain large vessels, the Panama canal presently experiences congestion due to the large amounts of traffic traveling through. In 2003, 11,725 vessels (average of 32.1 vessels/day) passed through the canal, and it is expected that the canal will soon approach its capacity. The Panama Canal authority has stated that "the canal is currently operating at about 93 percent of capacity." It was commented by The Panama Canal Authority that the canal is "nearing maximum capacity levels, and it is expected that the canal will soon reach maximum capacity and this will impose a constraint for the growth in the future" [11]. Plans are under way for expanding the canal, but the cost forces it to be rejected by possible state sponsors.
The problems of limited capacity and inability to accommodate large vessels have given opportunities for competitors to take market share away from the canal. One competitor, Canal Interoceano de Nicaragua S.A (CIN), has already proposed to build a land bridge across Nicaragua. According to a major executive in CIN, the "target cargo would be that which is carried on post-Panamax container vessels. These vessels are too large to transit the Panama Canal, so their containers are typically off-loaded on the U.S. West Coast and moved by rail to the East Coast." Talks have also begun to build a new canal that will be capable of accommodating large vessels. Three routes are now considered and they are through Mexico, Colombia and Nicaragua.
The routes through Colombia and Mexico would allow for the construction of a sea level canal, as opposed to the Nicaraguan route, which would require a lock system. Also, tolls are rapidly increasing. The cost per TEU is $42 in 2005 and will increase to $49 in 2006 and $54 in 2007. Critics have voiced their concerns over the dramatic increase in tolls and have suggested that the Canal Authority is killing its golden goose. The tolls have increased so much that the Suez Canal is begining to seem a viable alternative for cargoes from Asia to the U.S. East Coast. Some liners' operators have already begun to react to the tolls increase by planning alternatives routes between the U.S. and Asia. Their logic is that the Suez Canal not only is able to handle larger vessels than the Panama Canal but also has good access to cargo from India and southern China, for which there is higher U.S. demand these days.
Another large problem is the decreasing average amount of water in Gatun Lake, due largely to deforestation. The Panama Canal is dependent almost entirely on the man-made Gatun Lake for the massive amount of water used to run it. 52 million gallons of fresh water are used every time a ship traverses the canal to elevate the ship over the Miraflores, Pedro Miguel and Gatun Locks. Without the rainforest vegetation absorbing rain water and distributing it slowly and consistently into the Gatun Lake, rain flows quickly down the deforested slopes into the lake. Because of this every time a large rainfall occurs (the area receives about 10 feet of water per year, but mostly in short, intense downpours) all the water enters the Gatun in a very small period of time. When this happens the water from the Gatun Lake will be spilled out into the ocean, and in the times without heavy rainfall there will be little to no water flowing to the lake to replenish it. Deforestation also causes silt to be more easily eroded from the rootless and unsupported area around the Gatun Lake and collect at its bottom, reducing its capacity.
The toll for the canal is determined by size, at $42 for every TEU (a twenty-foot long container with a width and height of 8.5 feet), but that rate can be raised for profit since the 1999 return to Panama. The most expensive toll for canal passage is credited to Princess Cruises "Coral Princess" at $141,344. The least expensive toll was 36 cents and is not credited to a ship, but to athlete Richard Haliburton who swam the canal in 1928 . The average toll is around $40,000.
