The Panama Canal, Lock Canal, owned and managed by the Republic of Panama, connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through Panama’s narrow isthmus. The Panama Canal is about 40 miles (65 km) long from coast to coast and about 50 miles (82 km) from the Atlantic to the Pacific depths. Completed in August 1914, the canal, along with the Suez Canal, is one of the two most strategically important man-made waterways in the world. Vessels travelling between the east and west coasts of the United States would otherwise have to circle Cape Horn in South America, but the canal cuts the voyage by about 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km). Increase. Savings of up to 3,500 nautical miles (6,500 km) are also achieved when travelling between one coast of North America and the opposite port of South America. Vessels travelling between Europe and East Asia or Australia can save up to 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) by using the canal.
Canal
The Panama Canal lies at 9 degrees north latitude, where the North American Continental Divide falls into one of its deepest points. The canal does not cross the isthmus from east to west, as is commonly believed. From the entrance of Coron on the Atlantic side, it extends due south through the Gatun locks to reach the widest part of Gatun Lake. It then turns sharply east and follows a roughly southeast course until it reaches the Gulf of Panama on the Pacific side. The terminal near Balboa is about 40 km east of the terminal near Colon. The Panama Canal Railway and the Boyd Roosevelt Highway run parallel to the canal. Vessels sailing from the Atlantic to the Pacific enter the Limon Bay approach canal, about 11 km to the Gatun Locks.
What Happened
When the geography of the “New World” was revealed to European settlers, the social, economic, and political value of the shortcut from the Atlantic to the Pacific was evident. It was a long journey from Europe to the East around Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America. A much shorter route through this portion of the continental divide that we now call Panama was a very attractive prospect. In the early 19th century, German scientist Alexander von Humboldt was the first to define a passageway from the Atlantic through Central America to the Pacific Ocean. Such a transit of his shortens the journey from New York to California from about 13,000 miles around Cape Horn to one of about 6,000 miles through Central America. The US government has conducted technical studies and investigations on all three routes, and knowledgeable US technical experts generally tended to favour the Nicaragua route. An important engineering consideration in favour of the Nicaraguan Seaway is the existence of a natural lake, Lake Nicaragua, which would accommodate a considerable range of coast-to-coast channels.
The Engineering Issues
This is a discussion of technical issues and technical ethics. There is no consideration of the health security, political, and financial issues arising from this monumental undertaking, except that political and economic pressures have led to poor technical decisions. The following are the main technical issues arising from considering the route and basic configuration of transoceanic shipping routes linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Route: A technical effort of this scale and cost required a technical review of alternative channel routes and configurations. This means considering the Nicaragua and Tehuantepec routes and considering reasonable alternative configurations for the Panama route.
Soil Mechanics: Concerning the Panama route, sufficient information was known at the time about the climatic conditions of the Isthmus of Panama, raising severe concerns about soil dynamics along the proposed canal route. In particular, it was known that periodic torrential rains along the proposed canal route would severely saturate the soils. Still, at the time of the recommendations by the French-administered Paris Conference, there needed to be more knowledgeable about the effects of this phenomenon. There was no consideration of the proposed construction of the Panama Canal.
Chagres River Control: Panama’s natural climatology, geography, and topography would pass through the Isthmus of Panama. A reasonable proposal for a transoceanic canal would cross the Chagres River, which is known to pass at very high angles routinely. I made it clear at the time that I needed High altitude seasonal flow variations.
Tidal Control: Extremely high tidal variations on the Pacific side of the Isthmus of Panama presented significant engineering challenges for the Panama-Canal route. Operation of the proposed transoceanic canal across the Isthmus of Panama.
Lessons Learned
Looking back is excellent. It’s easier to look back and criticise the past than to identify and address technical issues in a large project. To be fair, when the French Panama Canal was built, the engineering theory applicable to his project could have been better developed today. The experience base of civil engineers was less than today. It is also essential to recognise that available today. Considering that much of the drilling and construction work performed by the French company was worthless when the U.S. government eventually purchased the project, it was taken over and was replaced by It was completed. The French construction effort was unnecessary and most disappointing. There are some of the most important ethical lessons that engineers and the public and private policymakers they work with daily when embarking on large-scale engineering projects must learn.
References:
(no date) U.S. Department of State. U.S. Department of State. Available at: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1899-1913/panama-canal (Accessed: December 11, 2022).
Caroline Lieffers, T.C. (2018) The panama canal’s construction was marked by horrors for Caribbean workers, Scroll.in. Scroll.in. Available at: https://scroll.in/article/875969/the-panama-canals-construction-was-marked-by-horrors-for-caribbean-workers (Accessed: December 11, 2022).
What is the Panama Canal? (no date) Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/question/What-is-the-Panama-Canal (Accessed: December 11, 2022).
Www.jstor.org (no date). Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27500003?seq%3D2%23metadata_info_tab_contents (Accessed: December 11, 2022).
