The Panama Canal: History and the Lesson of de Lesseps
The Panama Canal is a lock waterway about 82 kilometres long linking the Atlantic and the Pacific. It opened on 15 August 1914.
The Panama Canal is a lock waterway about 82 kilometres long that links the Atlantic and the Pacific across the Isthmus of Panama. It opened on 15 August 1914, when SS Ancon made the passage, and it has belonged to Panama since 31 December 1999.[1][2] A French company started digging on the same ground in 1881 and went bankrupt in 1889, by which time about 22,000 people had died. The Americans who finished the job went about it another way, and the lesson of the canal comes from the difference between the two attempts.[2]
Why Anyone Wanted to Cross the Isthmus
Balboa walked across the isthmus in 1513. By the 19th century it was Colombian territory. When gold was found in California in 1848, Panama became the fastest way from the eastern United States to the west. William Aspinwall and his partners set up a company in 1850 to build a railway across it, and the line opened in 1855 at $8 million, six times the first estimate.[2]
The idea of a canal grew out of that traffic. A commission set up by President Grant favoured Nicaragua in the 1870s. In 1875 a French group, the Türr Syndicate, approached Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man who had just finished Suez. Working on its behalf, Lucien Bonaparte-Wyse obtained a 99-year concession from Colombia on 20 March 1878.[2]
The Paris Congress of 1879
A congress of 136 delegates from 26 countries met in Paris in May 1879. De Lesseps was 73 and no engineer. He argued for the formula of Suez, a sea-level canal with no locks. Those against him proposed locks, among them Ammen and Menocal of the US Navy. The vote went 74 to 8, with 16 abstentions and 38 members staying out of the room, and only 19 of the yes votes came from engineers.[2] The congress put the cost at $214 million. De Lesseps brought that down to $120 million in the following months and sold shares to the public in November 1880.[2]
Suez had been flat sand. Panama had a mountain range, swamps, tropical rain and the Chagres River, which flooded every season. Digging began on 1 January 1881. In the rain the spoil slid back down the slopes at Culebra, and yellow fever and malaria killed labourers and engineers alike. Nobody yet knew that mosquitoes carried them. Hospital bed legs stood in water to keep ants off, and the water bred mosquitoes.[2] Chief engineer Jules Dingler left in August 1885 after yellow fever took his family. His successor, Léo Boyer, died of the disease in May 1886. Only in October 1887 did de Lesseps give up sea level and accept a lock design with Gustave Eiffel's involvement, by which time the money was nearly gone.[2]
The company went bankrupt on 15 May 1889. About two-fifths of the canal was done, about $287 million had been spent and 800,000 investors lost their savings. Deaths are estimated at 22,000, about 5,000 of them French. A parliamentary inquiry led by Jean Jaurès found in 1893 that 104 legislators had taken bribes. De Lesseps and his son were sentenced to five years, the sentence was overturned and he never went to prison. The French had dug about 60 million cubic metres, of which 23 million proved useful to the Americans.[2]
The Americans Come In
What was left passed to a new French company in 1894. Philippe Bunau-Varilla, who had joined the first company as a young engineer in 1884, kept working to sell it. The likely buyer made up its mind in 1898. When war broke out with Spain, the battleship USS Oregon was ordered from San Francisco to Cuba. She went round South America, about 14,000 nautical miles, and reached Florida 66 days later. The press followed the voyage closely and public pressure for a canal grew.[2][3]
The American commission first recommended Nicaragua, because the French wanted $109 million. On 4 January 1902 the company dropped its price to $40 million, and by the end of the month the commission had switched to Panama. The eruption of Mount Pelée on Martinique in May 1902, which killed about 28,000 people, turned Nicaragua's volcanoes into an argument against it. The Spooner Act authorised the purchase on 28 June 1902.[2]
Secession and the Treaty
That left Colombia. The Hay-Herrán Treaty was signed in January 1903 and ratified by the US Senate, but the Colombian Senate rejected it unanimously that August. Manuel Amador of Panama went to New York in September to look for support for a breakaway. On 2 November USS Nashville arrived off Colón, Colombian troops were neutralised, and independence was declared on the 3rd.[2]
Bunau-Varilla soon signed for Panama as its envoy in Washington. The treaty of 18 November 1903 gave the canal zone to the United States in exchange for $10 million and $250,000 a year. Washington paid another $40 million for the French works, equipment and railway and took over on 4 May 1904.[2] Colombia closed the matter in 1921, accepting $25 million from the United States and recognising Panama.
Wallace, Stevens and Gorgas
The first chief engineer was John Wallace, from the Illinois Central Railroad. He inherited worn-out French machinery, his workers fell ill with malaria and yellow fever, and every decision had to go through the commission. When he said he had another job offer, War Secretary William Taft forced him to resign, and he left in June 1905.[4]
John Stevens, another railwayman, arrived on 28 July 1905 and began by slowing the digging. He put up warehouses, workshops, piers and housing, brought in water and sewerage, rebuilt the railway and designed the rail system that would carry away the spoil. Digging, he said, was the least of it. He opposed a sea-level canal and in 1906 persuaded Congress and Roosevelt to go for locks.[2][5]
Health went to an army doctor, William Gorgas. He knew what the French had not. Carlos Finlay and Walter Reed had tied yellow fever to the Aedes mosquito and Ronald Ross had tied malaria to Anopheles. Gorgas had used this in Havana to take cases from 784 to zero in a year. In Panama he drained standing water, sprayed breeding grounds with oil and larvicide and screened the windows. People kept dying in the American years too. The records show between 5,609 and 5,855 deaths, about 350 of them white Americans, and the heavy work was done largely by Caribbean labourers.[2]
The Culebra Cut and the Gatun Dam
Stevens resigned abruptly in 1907 and his true reasons have never been established.[5] Roosevelt gave the job to an army engineer, George Goethals, and David Gaillard took charge of the Culebra Cut. About 76 million cubic metres came out of it, 23 million of which had not been planned and came from landslides, the Cucaracha slide above all, which refilled the cut again and again. About 27,000 tonnes of dynamite were used and up to 160 trains a day hauled the spoil.[2]
The heart of the lock design was the Gatun Dam across the Chagres, an earth dam 640 metres thick at the base and 2,300 metres long at the top. The lake behind it lifted ships 26 metres above the sea. Locks at each end raise a ship to the lake and lower her on the far side, and the water that fills them runs down from the lake by gravity.[2][6] So the river that had ruined the French became the thing that made the canal work.
Dry excavation ended on 10 September 1913. On 10 October President Wilson sent a telegraph signal from the White House that blew up the Gamboa dike and let water into the cut. On 7 January 1914 the crane boat Alexandre La Valley, a French leftover, went through under her own power. The cost is given as between $375 million and $500 million. War had broken out in Europe two weeks before the opening of 15 August, and the event drew little notice.[1][2]
The 1977 Treaties and the Handover
The canal zone ran through the middle of Panama like a piece of the United States, and that caused friction for decades. Riots on 9 January 1964 killed about 20 Panamanians and 3 to 5 American soldiers, and the day is marked in Panama as Martyrs' Day. Omar Torrijos and Jimmy Carter signed the treaties on 7 September 1977, they took effect on 2 October 1979, and the handover was completed on 31 December 1999.[2] The millionth transit was made by Fortune Plum on 4 September 2010.[1]
The Neopanamax Locks
The 33.5-metre width of the old locks shaped ship design for decades and gave its name to the Panamax size.[6] When container ships outgrew that limit, the canal began to lose business. Panamanians approved an expansion by referendum on 22 October 2006, and the Agua Clara and Cocolí locks opened on 26 June 2016. They take ships of up to 366 metres long, 49 metres wide and 15.2 metres (50 feet) of draught, and side basins recover part of the water.[2][6]
How the Canal Works
The canal spares ships the long route round the southern tip of South America. A ship climbs three lock steps, crosses Gatun Lake and descends three steps at the far end. In 2017 ships took an average of 11.38 hours between the two outer locks. The state-owned Panama Canal Authority runs it.[6]
Water and the Situation in 2026
The price of the Gatun system is dependence on rain. Each transit sends an average of 200 million litres of fresh water to the sea, and the same lake supplies most of Panama's drinking water.[6] In the 2023 drought the draught limit fell from 50 feet to 44 and daily transits were cut in stages. In November 2023 Japan's Eneos paid about $3.97 million at auction to move an LPG carrier up the queue.[7]
The 2026 fiscal year (October 2025 to September 2026) closed with 13,951 transits and 521 million PC/UMS tons, up 4.1% and 6.5%, with 52.2% of the tonnage going through the Neopanamax locks.[8] El Niño then returned to the agenda. In August 2026 the Authority said rainfall in the watershed was down 34% and inflows down 44%, and it lowered the Neopanamax draught limit to 48 feet on 26 August and 47.5 feet on 3 September. Daily transits were reduced as well.[9][10] On 28 September, citing the present and projected level of Gatun Lake, the Authority raised the draught to 49 feet and set daily transits at 33 from 15 October, while saying that the water deficit continued.[11]
The ports are another front. On 29 January 2026 Panama's Supreme Court ruled the concession that gave Balboa and Cristóbal to CK Hutchison unconstitutional. The government took over the terminals in February and handed interim operation to APM Terminals at Balboa and MSC's TiL at Cristóbal, and Hutchison began arbitration.[12] Panama also left China's Belt and Road scheme during the same period.
The Lesson of de Lesseps
The French took a model that had worked at Suez to another country and outvoted the objections. On the same ground the Americans gave their first years to the railway, water and the mosquito, and only then pushed on with the digging. Shipowners face a similar question today. Fuel choices and IMO carbon rules also call for long-term investment on ground not fully surveyed, and the formula of an earlier success may not hold under new conditions.
Frequently asked questions
When did the Panama Canal open?
On 15 August 1914, with the transit of SS Ancon.
How long is the Panama Canal?
About 82 kilometres. Locks lift ships to Gatun Lake, 26 metres above the sea, and lower them again at the far end.
Who owns the Panama Canal?
Panama. The handover was completed on 31 December 1999 and the Panama Canal Authority runs it.
Why did the French fail at Panama?
De Lesseps insisted on a canal without locks, yellow fever and malaria killed about 22,000 people, landslides undid the excavation, and the company went bankrupt on 15 May 1889.
Where is the Panama Canal?
In Central America, across the Isthmus of Panama. It links the Atlantic and the Pacific.
How long does it take to go through the Panama Canal?
On the 2017 average, about 11 hours between the two outer locks. Time spent waiting for a slot comes on top.
Sources
- Panama Canal Authority. History.
- Wikipedia. History of the Panama Canal.
- Wikipedia. USS Oregon (BB-3).
- Wikipedia. John Findley Wallace.
- Wikipedia. John Frank Stevens.
- Wikipedia. Panama Canal.
- Splash247. Any Higher? $4m Paid in Slot Auction, November 2023; Maritime Executive, same subject.
- FreshPlaza. Panama Canal Transits Rise 4.1% in Fiscal Year 2026.
- Maritime Executive. Panama Canal Begins Reducing Daily Transits Due to Declining Water Levels, 2026.
- Marine Insight. Falling Water Levels Push Panama Canal to Restrict Maximum Ship Draft to 47.5 Feet, 7 August 2026.
- Panama Canal Authority. Panama Canal Announces Increase in Draft and Daily Transit, 28 September 2026.
- Maritime Executive and Seatrade Maritime. Reports on Hutchison Panama Ports, 2026.
