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The Canal at Panama

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 10, 1913

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 90, No. 28.

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The Canal at Panama

By B. E. CONNERLY

AFTER centuries of delay, marked by countless efforts and fruitless endeavors, the world's great anticipation of an isthmian waterway is to be lost in a reality which far surpasses its most sanguine dreams.
The canal now stands about ninety-eight per cent completed, and everywhere there is a manifest desire to see it in operation. Not only do the men whose energy is making the waterway possible desire this, but the general public is impatient to see water flowing through the isthmian cordillera, and the present administration is anxious, to the border of passion, to see a hull brave the danger of the untried passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Never before have all departments of the work moved so harmoniously. Nearly forty thousand men are working with a precision that has not been equaled since the work began. Besides this enormous personnel, the mechanical paraphernalia which Uncle Sam has sent to Panama is no small item. The tools with which the canal is being dug have cost millions of dollars.
A real marvel of perfection is the system by which this great profusion of machinery is operated. A hundred human-acting steam-shovels keep a thousand locomotives and a thousand trains zigzagging over a half-thousand miles of track; while a score of powerful dredges have kept the wet, or below sea-level, excavations as rapidly advanced.
The fact that of the original 250,000,000 cubic yards to be removed only ten million of dry excavation remain, shows how nearly the great work has reached its completion. The five million cubic yards of concrete that compose the locks are practically laid; and the forty-six powerful double gates that open and close the locks are nearly all in place. Each of the ninety-two massive leaves measures seven feet thick, fifty-five feet long, and from forty-seven to eighty-two feet in height. Fifty-seven thousand tons of steel were required to build these monster gates; and it is reported that the contractors, the McClintic-Marshall Company, who fabricated and hung them, have lost money at a contract price of five million dollars.
Only at Southampton are there larger docks than those that are under construction at either end of the canal. These docks are to cost, approximately, seven million dollars each; and a ten-million-dollar dry dock and the largest coaling station in the world are being built on the Pacific side of the isthmus.
The great breakwaters that protect the harbor approaches of the canal are practically finished. The one on the Atlantic side is two and one-fourth miles long, and will cost approximately two million dollars, while at the southern terminal is one three miles long, and will cost three million five hundred thousand dollars.
By many it is supposed that the opening of the waterway will mean the blending of the waters of the Atlantic with the Pacific, but this is not the case; the fact is that the waters of the two oceans will never mingle, the canal only forming a water-bridge across the isthmus.
A ship will go through the canal something as follows, beginning at the Atlantic side: From Limon Bay it will enter the canal (five hundred feet wide and forty-five feet deep), and steam seven miles to Gatun, where, through a series of three twin locks it will be lifted eighty-five feet to the surface of Gatun Lake, and will then steam through twenty-four miles of fresh water to Gamboa; then the ship will enter Culebra cut (three hundred feet wide with forty-five feet of water), and steam nine miles to the Pedro Miguel locks, be lowered twenty-eight feet through one lock to Miraflores Lake, then steam one and one-half miles to the Miraflores locks, be lowered fifty-seven feet through two locks to sea-level, and sail seven miles to tide water on the Pacific.
The Gatun dam is one and one-half miles long, and one-half mile wide, and its crest reaches an elevation of one hundred ten feet, and impounds water that covers an area of one hundred sixty-four square miles. This lake is supplied with water from the Chagres River, whose tributaries drain a large portion of the Atlantic side of the isthmus.
That which is now proving to be the greatest obstacle to the flooding of the canal are the slides, or earth movements, in the Culebra cut. Excavations in the cut are finished except in the three miles at the south end, between the village of Culebra and the Pedro Miguel locks. Here the isthmian watershed reaches the greatest altitude, and here between Contractor's Hill and Gold Hill the canal prism reaches its greatest depth, more than five hundred feet, and it is in this section that all the great slides have occurred. Just now a spur of Gold Hill, on the east side of the canal, is making trouble; in fact, for years a great mass, millions of cubic feet of earth and rock, is, inch by inch, moving toward the canal, and will eventually have to be dug or pumped out.
The engineers plan to turn the water into the canal Oct. 6, 1913, the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Pacific by Balboa. Then the long and ceaseless hum of air-drills and steam-shovels will cease, and the final tuning up of the big ditch will be made by suction-dredges.
A huge barge loaded to cause a displacement equal to that of a battle-ship, will be the first to go through the canal. Whether this barge gets safely through or not is a question that gives rise to immense speculations. At all events, it is evident that the work will be ready for the grand opening in 1915.
We have in this article noted a few of the facts concerning the construction of the canal which it is well for all to be familiar with; but there is more than these for Seventh-day Adventists to see in this immense work. A thorough study of the motives and outworking policies of our government in this undertaking will reveal what a mighty stride has been taken toward the fulfilment of Rev. 13: 11-16. And it will be interesting to note how easily our government, while in this land of the Southern Cross, can "grasp hands with the Roman power."
B. E. CONNERLY.
Ancon, C. Z.