The French project
Contenido
La idea de construir un canal a través de Centroamérica fue sugerida una vez más por el científico alemán Alexander von Humboldt, que condujo a un resurgimiento del interés a principios del siglo . En 1819, el gobierno español autorizó la construcción de un canal y la creación de una empresa para construirlo.
El proyecto se detuvo por algún tiempo, pero una serie de encuestas se realizaron entre 1850 y 1875. La conclusión fue que las dos rutas más favorables eran a través de Panamá (entonces parte de Colombia) y a través de Nicaragua, con una ruta a través del istmo de Tehuantepec en México como una tercera opción.
Conception
After the successful completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, the French were inspired to tackle the seemingly similar project to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, confident that it could be carried out with little difficulty. In 1876, an international company, La Société internationale du Canal interocéanique, was created to carry out the work and two years later obtained a concession from the Colombian government, which then controlled that area, to dig a canal across the isthmus.
Ferdinand de Lesseps, who was in charge of the construction of the Suez Canal, is the fundamental figure of this initiative. His enthusiastic leadership, coupled with his reputation as the man who had brought the Suez project to a successful conclusion, convinced speculators and the public to invest in the plan, ultimately to the tune of nearly $400 million.
However, de Lesseps, despite his earlier success, was not an engineer. The construction of the Suez Canal, essentially a trench dug through a flat, sandy desert, presented some challenges, but Panama was to be a very different story. The mountainous spine of Central America traces a low point in Panama, but still rises to an altitude of 110 meters above sea level at the lowest crossing point. A sea-level canal, in the form proposed by de Lesseps, would require prodigious excavation, and through various areas where the floor was rock rather than the easy sand of the Suez.
The task of cataloging the goods was immense; it took several weeks simply to card an index of the available equipment. 2,148 buildings had been acquired, many of which were completely uninhabitable, and housing was initially a major problem. The Panama railroad was in a serious state of decay. However, there was much that was of significant use; Many locomotives, dredges, and other pieces of floating equipment were put to good use by the Americans throughout their construction effort.
Obstacles
A less obvious barrier were the rivers that cross the canal, particularly the Chagres River, which flows very strongly in the rainy season. This water could not simply be dumped into the canal, as it could pose an extreme danger to navigation, and thus an at-grade canal would require diverting the river, which cuts across the entire route of the canal.
The most serious problem of all, however, were tropical diseases, malaria and yellow fever in particular. Since it was not known at the time how these diseases were contracted, all precautions against them were doomed to failure. For example, the legs of hospital beds were placed in metal boxes of water to prevent insects from climbing over them, but these containers with stagnant water were ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes, the carriers of these two diseases, which aggravated the problem.
From the beginning, the project was plagued by a lack of engineering expertise. In May 1879, an international engineering congress was held in Paris, with Fernando de Lesseps at the head; However, of the 136 delegates, only 42 were engineers, the others were speculators, politicians and personal friends of Lesseps.
Lesseps was convinced that a level canal, dug through the mountainous and rocky range of Central America, could be completed as easily as, or even more easily than, the Suez Canal. The Engineering Congress estimated the cost of the project at $214 million; on February 14, 1880, an engineering commission revised this estimate to $168,600,000. De Lesseps twice reduced this estimate, without apparent justification, on February 20 to $131,600,000, and again on March 1 to $120 million. The engineering congress estimated seven to eight years as the time required to complete the work, Lesseps reduced the time to six years, compared to the ten years needed for the Suez Canal.
The proposed level channel was to have a uniform depth of 9 metres, a bottom width of 22 metres, and a width at water level of about 27.5 metres, and involved excavation estimated at 120,000,000 m³. It was proposed that a dam be built at Gamboa to control flooding from the Chagres River, along with canals to carry water away from the canal. However, construction of the Gamboa Dam was subsequently determined to be impracticable, and the Chagres River problem was left unresolved.
Start of works
Construction of the canal began on January 1, 1880, although excavations at the Snake Cut did not begin until January 22, 1880. In 1888 a huge workforce of 20,000 people was hired, nine-tenths of this group were workers from the British West Indies. The French engineers were well paid and the prestige of the project attracted the best of the French engineering school, but the enormous number of deaths from disease made it difficult for them to retain their jobs, they returned after a short time of service or died. The total number of deaths between 1880 and 1889 was estimated to be more than 22,000.
Exactly at the beginning of 1885, it was clear to many that the canal at sea level was impracticable and that an elevated canal with locks was the best alternative; However, Lesseps was persistent, and it was not until October 1887 that the lock plan was adopted.
By this time, however, the mounting financial, engineering and mortality problems, along with frequent flooding and mudslides, were making it clear that the project was in serious trouble. The work was carried on under the new plan until May, 1889, when the company became bankrupt, and the work was finally suspended on May 15, 1889. After eight years, two-fifths of the work had been completed, and about $234,795,000 had been spent.
Bankruptcy
The collapse of the company was a huge scandal in France, and the role of two speculators in the scandalous business allowed Edouard Drumont to take advantage of the matter. 104 legislators were found involved in corruption and Jean Jaurés was commissioned by the French parliament to lead the new Panama Canal company.[6].
New French company
It soon became clear that the only way to save anything for shareholders was to continue with the project. A new concession was obtained from the Colombian government, and in 1894 the Nouvelle du Canal de Panama company was created to complete construction. In order to comply with the terms of the concession, work began immediately on excavations of the Culebra cut—which would be required under any possible plan—while a team of competent engineers began a detailed study of the project. The plan eventually established was for the two-tier canal lock base.
The new effort never really gained momentum; The main reason for this was speculation by the United States of America over the construction of a canal through Nicaragua, which would render the Panama Canal useless. The largest number of men employed on the new project was 3,600 in 1896; This minimal workforce was primarily employed to agree the terms of the concession and maintain the existing excavation and equipment in a salable condition—the company had already begun searching for a buyer, with a price tag of $109,000,000.
At this date, no decision had been made as to whether the canal should be a lock canal or a sea-level canal—the excavation beneath the track would be useful in either case. In late 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt sent a team of engineers to Panama to investigate the relative merits of both projects and their cost and time requirements. The engineers decided in favor of the canal at sea level, by a vote of eight to five; but the canal commission and Stevens himself opposed this project, and Stevens' report to Roosevelt was essential in convincing the president of the merit of the lock project. The United States Senate and House of Representatives ratified the project based on locks, and work was free to formally continue under this plan.
In November 1906, Roosevelt visited Panama to inspect the progress of the canal. This was the first trip outside the country for a United States president during his time in office.
Another controversy at the time was whether the canal work should be carried out by contractors or by the United States government itself. Opinions were sharply divided, but Stevens eventually came to favor the direct approach and this was ultimately adopted by Roosevelt. However, Roosevelt also decided that armed forces engineers should carry out the work and appointed Major George Washington Goethals as chief engineer under Stevens in February 1907.