It’s perhaps the most effective shortcut
in the world. Slicing through the dense jungles of Central
America, the Panama Canal bisects the continent, carving an 80km path that joins the Atlantic
to the Pacific. For ships that pass through its intricate
system of locks, it can chop up to 12,500 km off their journey - a time saving that
puts even Egypt’s Suez Canal to shame. When construction was finally completed in
1914, it was the most expensive infrastructure project ever undertaken, and is still one
of the engineering wonders of the modern world. Yet the tale of the Panama Canal is more than
just the tale of a whole bunch of guys getting together to decide how to get boats from port
A to port B in record time. It’s also a tale of a dream. Of a dream so big - so unimaginably vast - that
it persisted for centuries; and of the nightmares that were unleashed in pursuit of that dream. In the video today, we take a look at the
epic story that is the history of the Panama Canal, a story stuffed with conquest, war,
revolution… and the birth of the modern world. The Deathless Dream
If the story of the Panama Canal is the story of a dream, then the sandman responsible for
that dream must be Vasco Nuñez de Balboa. A conquistador who left Spain at the dawn
of the 16th Century, Balboa had one goal: to find as much gold as possible and impress
the crap out of the king back home. But it wasn’t gold Balboa ultimately found
amid the jungles of Panama. It was something much more precious. He found the Pacific Ocean. Before Balboa sighted it in 1513, no European
had ever set eyes on the Pacific. No-one even knew Panama was just a narrow
isthmus separating two mighty oceans. But now Balboa had seen this vast sea with
his own eyes, the world would never be the same. The first to recognize the value of Balboa’s
discovery was Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who, just to be confusing, was also Charles
I of Spain. Realizing the new vistas of trade that could
be opened up, Charles Doubleking ordered the Panama regional governor to figure out a shipping
route between the isthmus’s coasts. It was a visionary idea. Unfortunately, just a little too visionary. The Panama governor went out, dutifully poked
around the dense rainforest, measured the foreboding mountains and declared:
“There is not a prince in the world with the power to accomplish this.” And that was that. But here’s the thing about dreams. Although they fade, the brightest never vanish
entirely. And while Charles the Numerically Confusing
wouldn’t live to see it, his dream of a shipping route across Panama would resurface
time and time again. In the following centuries, life on the isthmus
underwent dramatic changes. In the South American Wars of Independence,
Panama first backed Spain, before realizing Simon Bolivar was serious about this whole
liberation thing and joining his new state of Gran Colombia. Unfortunately, Gran Colombia lasted a not-so
grand total of 11 years before Venezuela and Ecuador split, leaving a rump state that was
essentially modern-day Panama and Colombia. At first, the two nations got on fine. But then, in 1843, the government in Bogota
revoked Panama’s joint status, transforming the isthmus into just another province of
Colombia. Needless to say, the Panamanians were not
impressed. But what could they do? Colombia was a huge country with an army and,
like, proper cities and stuff. What did little Panama have that could compete
with that? Eventually, the answer to that question would
become “very powerful friends.” But first, they’d have to meet those friends. In 1846, not long after Panama was reduced
to a mere Colombian province, officials in Bogota began to worry about British activity
in the Caribbean. Not wanting to be subsumed into the ever-growing
British Empire, they turned for protection to the only big kid in the American playground. Uncle Sam heard the Colombian pleas with what
we like to imagine was a smug smile, before effectively holding up his hand and saying
something like: “Sure, I’ll guarantee your neutrality
from those limeys. But you’ve gotta do something for ol’
Uncle Sam in return.” “Like what?” “See that Panama of yours? Well, I’d like ta move my ships across there
from one ocean to the other. All you gotta do is give me exclusive transit
rights.” In our imaginary scenario, this would be the
point the American giant stuck out his hand. “Whaddya say, son? We got a deal?” What could the Colombians do? They agreed, signing the Bidlack Treaty in
1864. If Bogota’s leaders had known this would
end with the disintegration of their country, they might have thought twice. First Attempts
The realization of old Charles’s dream of crossing Panama began as most major projects
do: with the prospect of making lots of money. In 1848, gold was discovered in California. The only trouble was, crossing America in
1848 wasn’t simple. You either had to head overland, a journey
you might well end inside a coffin, or you went by sea, which involved taking a boat
all the way around Tierra del Fuego. So the idea of sailing down to Panama, skipping
across the narrowest point, and sailing back up to California suddenly seemed mighty attractive. Between 1848 and 1855, Uncle Sam poured money
into an overland crossing in Panama. Unfortunately, the finished railroad was both
controversial, and kind of crappy. Let’s tackle the latter point first, through
the eyes of Ulysses S. Grant. In 1852, Grant was sent down to cross Panama
at the head of the Fourth Infantry. Unfortunately, it was rainy season. The railroad flooded out, and cholera swept
through the troops. By the time the Fourth Infantry reached the
Pacific, they’d lost 150 men. For the rest of his life, Grant would be haunted
by nightmares of the journey. But what about the controversial part? Well, the presence of endless American soldiers
crossing Panama sent the whole of Colombia into a nationalist spin. In 1856, anti-railroad riots paralyzed Panama. In the chaos that surrounded construction,
20 governors were deposed. Perhaps its no wonder that, even before the
railroad was finished, people were muttering about replacing it with a canal. But it would be another 13 years before anyone
pushed the project forward. Come 1869, Ulysses S. Grant had graduated
to the White House. Still haunted by memories of his 1852 journey,
Grant commissioned teams to go out and find if there was a way to spare others from that
terrible ordeal. For five years, the US Navy surveyed Central
America. Finally, in 1875, they returned with their
recommendations. The US should build a canal…
...through Nicaragua. Yep, the original plan wasn’t to build in
Panama at all. The only reason the canal ever came so far
south is due to two men. The first was French diplomat Ferdinand de
Lesseps. When de Lesseps saw the yanks focusing on
Nicaragua, he swept in and offered Bogota his expertise to build a canal through Panama. That offer wasn’t nothing. De Lesseps was the guy behind the Suez Canal,
the waterway joining the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. If anyone could build a huge, continent bisecting
canal, it was him. In 1880, Bogota gave de Lesseps the go ahead. The Frenchman secured millions in backing
and brought over the greatest engineers he could find. One of them just happened to be our second
man. Philippe Banua-Varilla was an engineer hired
by de Lesseps. Although he would spend the next decade in
the shadows, he would soon become very important. But only after he’d helped de Lesseps waste
millions of dollars. That’s right, waste. De Lesseps’ idea was to build the canal
at sea level, negating the need for locks. Unfortunately, this created a construction
site that was prone to flash floods and landslides, and filled with mosquitoes carrying malaria. Ground was broken on the French canal in 1880. By 1888, 20,000 workers were dead and the
canal nowhere near finished. In a desperate last move, de Lesseps brought
in Gustav Eiffel - of Eiffel Tower fame - to help design locks for the canal. But it was too late. In 1889, funding was pulled on the project. De Lesseps, Eiffel, and others wound up in
court back in France on charges of fraud. But one man escaped the wave of arrests and
stayed on in Panama. Philippe Bunau-Varilla refused to accept the
dream of a trans-Panama canal had died. If no-one else was going to make that dream
a reality, then he would. One Thousand Days of Horror
We’ve all met people who are great at wearing others down. Who can just keep grinding away until everyone
is too tired to do anything but agree and hope they’ll go away. Philippe Bunau-Varilla was that guy on steroids. Starting in 1890, Bunau-Varilla launched an
all out lobbying campaign to convince the US to abandon its Nicaragua plans and complete
the canal in Panama. At first, Washington was all like, “nah. Thanks, but we’ve got our own canal.” Then they were like, “yeah, OK, we get your
point about Panama, but we already invested!” Finally, after years of Bunau-Varilla’s
whining, they were all “OK! Godamnit, OK! We’ll open a new commission to look into
the Panama idea. Yeesh.” The U.S. Isthmian Canal Commission opened
in 1899, tasked with reexamining the possibility of a Panama Canal. But it wasn’t this commission or even Bunau-Varilla
who would eventually decide the issue. It was events in Colombia. The same year the new commission opened, 1899,
a slump in coffee prices hammered the Colombian economy. It came at a time when the country’s Liberals
and Conservatives were already at loggerheads and looking for an excuse to annihilate one
another. So when unrest exploded in the coffee regions,
both parties used it as cover to spark a civil war. The Thousand Days’ War devastated Colombia. Between 1899 and 1902, it’s estimated 130,000
people died in Liberal and Conservative violence. In the closing days, Panama was transformed
into a battlefield, while Panamanian locals were dragooned into the two armies. By the time the war finally ended with a pyrrhic
victory for the Conservatives, Panama was home to an angry and growing independence
movement. Not coincidentally, 1902 was also the year
Washington finally caved in to Bunau-Varilla’s cajoling and authorized the US purchase of
French land in Panama. Sensing the wind in his sails, Bunau-Varilla
turned his impressive powers of persuasion onto the Colombians, pressuring Bogota into
signing the Hey-Herran Treaty in 1903. In return for building the Panama Canal, the
treaty not only ceded control of the canal itself to the US, but also an 8km strip of
land either side. Known as the Panama Canal Zone, this strip
of land would cover 1,432 sq km of Panama, effectively creating a US colony within Colombia. For Bogota, this was simply too much. The Colombian senate rejected the treaty,
citing loss of sovereignty. But that was fine with Bunau-Varilla ,who
already had a plan B. In fall, 1903, Bunau-Varilla began siphoning
funds from the Panama Canal Company into Panama’s pro-independence movements. Up north, he successfully convinced President
Roosevelt that American interests were best served by removing Bogota from the equation
altogether. Then, he simply sat back and watched the fireworks. On November 3, 1903, the Panama independence
movement seized control. They proclaimed a revolutionary junta and
unilaterally seceded from Colombia. By the time the Colombians realized what was
happening, the seas were crawling with American warships and the rail lines into Panama had
been disabled. Still weak from the Thousand Days’ War,
Bogota had no choice but to surrender Panama without a fight. On November 6, the US recognized Panama as
an independent state. Days later, Bunau-Varilla was made the new
nation’s ambassador. He immediately signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla
Treaty, granting the US everything it had asked for. That December, French lands and equipment
passed into American hands, while the 16km wide Canal Zone became American property. When the majority of Panamanians figured out
what was going on, they were outraged. They’d just declared independence from one
pushy nation and now another was already violating their sovereignty! But by then it was too late. The treaty was signed. The Americans were coming. And nothing in the world was gonna stop them. Building the Dream
The construction of the Panama Canal over the next 12 years was a miracle of human ingenuity. It was also an extremely depressing example
of just how awful ingenious humans are capable of being to one another. Work officially began on May 4, 1904, only
to almost grind to a halt as workers refused to, well, work. There was too much danger. Too much disease. No American was gonna risk his life building
a canal through some malaria-ridden jungle. The problem persisted until July, 1905 when
railroad specialist John Stevens came in with a simple solution. That same year, the sugar market had crashed,
throwing many in the Caribbean out of work. So Stevens hired them, thousands of West Indians
who couldn’t say no to even the most abysmal conditions. And “abysmal” was exactly what Stevens
had in mind. The Zone existed under its own Jim Crow-style
segregation laws, but even more stratified according to class and perceived morality. For example, men who were married were entitled
to homes, while bachelors were stuck in grimy bunkhouses. On the class side, workers were divided into
“gold” and “silver” rolls. Gold roll workers, who were mostly but not
exclusively white, lived in decent conditions and were treated well. Silver roll workers, who were mostly non-white,
were treated more like slave labor. There were long hours. Almost no health and safety laws. At Culebra Cut, 13km of canal had to be carved
through mountainous terrain, using equipment like pickaxes, steam shovels, and dynamite. Work took place around the clock, in the driving
rain and in temperatures topping 30C. 6,000 workers were onsite at any given time. Unsurprisingly, there were accidents. While the Panama Canal Company had a contract
with an American company to supply artificial limbs to injured workers, that only applied
if you were physically working when you were hurt. If you just happened to be taking a break…
if you just happened to be on a company train that derailed en route to the site… Well. No compensation for you. For the true horrors of working on the Panama
Canal, you only have to look at the death toll. Officially, 5,609 workers were killed during
construction, although many historians think the true total is higher. Of those thousands dead, only 350 were valuable
“gold roll” workers. The rest were the poor, the non-white, and
the desperate the company treated as expendable. Yet there was more to building the Canal than
merely a tale of exploitation. Take Dr. William Gorgas, the Zone’s chief
sanitation officer. Gorgas was the one who realized all the yellow
fever and malaria wracking the project was caused by mosquitoes. So he and his team embarked on a vast extermination
campaign, fumigating houses, draining swamps, and cleaning stagnant pools of water. By 1905, the Canal Zone had recorded its last
case of yellow fever. Over the next decade, malaria rates plummeted. There were also the engineering miracles. After John Stevens quit and was replaced with
Lt. Col. George Washington Goethals, the work took off. A series of 12 locks was created that would
raise each ship 25 meters above sea level during its journey. What was then the world’s largest dam was
built across the Chagres River, creating the vast Gatún Lake. In the Zone itself, hospitals, schools, and
police stations all sprang up from land that had once been only rainforest. It was the Panama wilderness tamed. The great American continent sliced in two. The dream of Charles V - or should that be
Charles I? - finally realized. In May, 1913, two steam shovels moving in
opposite directions met in the middle of the Canal, signifying the end was near. Five months later, in October, 1913, Woodrow
Wilson sat down in the Oval Office and pressed a button on a telegraph that sent a signal
to a bundle of dynamite in Gamboa dike. When it exploded, it flooded the last section
of Culebra Cut. To all intents and purposes, the Canal was
finished. But while construction might be over, the
story wasn’t. There was still the thorny question of who
really owned it. Making the Nightmare
Here’s a quick quiz for all you trivia fans: what was the first ship to sail the length
of the Panama Canal? If you guessed the SS Ancon, we hate to tell
you but your history books lied. On January 7, 1914, the beat-up old French
crane boat Alexandre La Valley became the first vessel to traverse the Canal, a feat
today remembered by almost no-one. But it was still a historic milestone. More to the point, it allowed the Panama Canal
Company to start planning a grand opening ceremony, one that would see dignitaries from
across the world converge on this tiny, new nation to marvel at US engineering. Or at least it would have, had the organizers
not scheduled the ceremony for August, 1914. One month beforehand, WWI erupted and that,
well, was that. On August 15, 1914, the Canal officially opened
not with festivities, but with the SS Ancon slowly making its way through the 12 locks
under the command of John Constantine. No, we never expected to publish a Geographics/DC
Comics crossover either, but apparently here we are. After Hellblazer himself had piloted through
the canal, the first transport ships started appearing. With the company charging by the weight, the
money was soon rolling in. As it did so, life in the Panama Canal Zone
got better and better. For the Zonians, as they were known, it was
the American dream transplanted to Panama. There were high wages. Restaurants serving American food. Theaters offering the latest Hollywood movies. In effect, the Zone was America. It certainly felt that way to residents. High schools flew the US flag and taught in
English. There were neighborhood bake sales and PTA
meetings. At its height, some 100,000 US citizens, mostly
soldiers and their families, were stationed in the Zone, equivalent in modern population
terms to the US Virgin Islands. But the success and prosperity in the Zone
were in stark contrast to the country surrounding it. Little by little, Panamanians started to notice
that they were unwelcome in the Zone. That Zonians never came to Panama City to
spend their money. That they rarely mingled. Slowly, resentment started to build. By 1951, the organization of the Zone had
been moved into two entities: the Panama Canal Company for the canal itself, and the Canal
Zone government for everything else. Despite this, the governor of the Zone was
also head of the Company, meaning all power over this 1,432 sq km stretch of land was
concentrated in the hands of one man. In the late 1950s, that man decided to do
something very divisive. He decided to build a wall. Well, more accurately, it was a fence atop
a small wall. And there were practical reasons behind it. But visually? It looked like the Americans were trying to
keep the Panamanians out. The Colombian ambassador even later referred
to it as another Berlin Wall. Whatever the truth, for many Panamanians it
was the last straw. For too long, they’d watched the Americans
lord it over a chunk of their country on the basis of an unpopular treaty signed in the
heat of revolution. Now they were gonna claim that land back. Waking Up
The end of American involvement in the Panama Canal began on January 9, 1964. That day, students from Panama’s Instituto
Nacional marched into the Zone and demanded the Panama flag be raised alongside the American
one. When the Zonians refused, the students rioted. The riots lasted three days. In that time, shops, homes, and cars in the
Zone were torched. 24 Panamanians and 4 US servicemen were killed. It was the start of a diplomatic crisis that
would last a quarter of a century. By 1977, it was clear the riots had awoken
Panamanian nationalism as effectively as the Thousand Days’ War. That year, Jimmy Carter signed two treaties
with Panama’s leader, Omar Torrijos, that would eventually place the Canal in Panamanian
hands. The first treaty came into force on October
1, 1979. That day, the Zone was officially abolished,
although in practice it continued to exist, only now under Panamanian civilian control. At the same time, the Panama Canal Company
moved to joint US-Panama ownership. Yet US soldiers still remained in Panama,
guarding the Canal. Many Panamanians continued to resent them. It would take one last, bloody catastrophe
to finally settle things once and for all. In 1989, Panama ran elections under the dictator
Manuel Noriega to pick a new president. But when Noriega’s guy lost, the dictator
annulled the election and declared the US had interfered. In an atmosphere of heightened anti-Americanism,
four US soldiers left the Zone and ventured into Panama City. There, on December 15, they were attacked
by a pro-government mob. Three were badly injured, the fourth was killed. The result? The US invasion of Panama. On December 20, 1989, 26,000 US troops descended
on Panama. Although the fighting was fiercest around
government-held areas, it spilled over onto the streets of Panama City. In the carnage that followed, anywhere between
516 and over 1,000 Panamanian civilians were killed. Whole neighborhoods were reduced to rubble. Noriega finally surrendered on January 31,
1990, after almost a month in hiding at the Vatican embassy. As the American soldiers led him away, it
marked the last time the US would get involved in Panama. Nearly 8 years later, at noon on December
31, 1999, full control of the Canal and Zone was handed over to the Panamanians. After nearly a century, the US presence was
over. In the years since, the Panama Canal has hit
a number of milestones. In 2006, Panamanians voted in a referendum
to double its size, work for which is still ongoing. In 2010, the millionth ship passed through
since the Alexandre La Valley’s historical first. From a dream once dreamed by a long-dead emperor,
traversing the isthmus of Panama in a boat has become utterly routine. Even banal. Yet the miracle of engineering that is the
Panama Canal has lost none of its lustre. Today, the Canal remains the premier crossing
point for ships going from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with some 14,000 passing through
its locks per year. Of these, the majority are American. But Chinese, Chilean, Japanese, and Colombian
vessels are also represented. But the Panama Canal is something more than
just a popular shortcut. In the walls and locks of the canal, we can
see not just engineering ingenuity, but also stories. Stories of the humans involved in the canal’s
history, of the thousands who died building it; of the thousands more who lived alongside
it for decades. The tale of the Panama Canal may be the tale
of a dream that refused to die. But it’s also a tale of the tens of thousands
of ordinary people who risked their lives to make that dream a reality.
