As in really, REALLY big. And who better to appreciate this massive trench than this wandering civil engineering graduate. Here is my chance to justify my long months away from home, where I can actually apply my degree to my travels . I promise not to make this a long, boring entry on the ins and outs of the canal, however; I know better than that. How does that saying go? Ah yes, "engineers are not (all) boring people, we just enjoy boring subjects. I went with a couple guys from where I was staying in the city, and while they got bored quickly, I lasted a bit longer. We watched the incredibly slow process of a ship passing through the locks, with an overexcited PA announcer leading us through every step as if we were watching a horse race. There was a museum full of facts and figures, some of which appear below.
First, however, let me use my soap box for just a bit. For those that don't know, we engineers aren't as close as you might think, and each group thinks it has the most prestigious field within the scope of engineering (except civils don't need to think, but just know it to be Truth). This led to some intense word battles in and out of the library, but mostly in it because that is where we spent most of our time. ME students like to tell us how they build the missiles, and we build the targets. Blah blah blah, go help Brain take over the world then, Pinky. Others say we have the easiest of all the fields, that Mechanical, Chemical, Electrical, Aeronautical, Computer, etc. have it harder. I beg to differ, but for your sake, dear reader, I won't argue about the complications of our math problems. Permit me, however, to throw out some questions.
EE's, where is your modern wonder of the world that the crowds are just flocking to see? AE's, all those flying contraptions you create that fly so high, how high until they can't see this giant accomplishment from the ground, or our many others? ChemE's, try dealing with this amount of moving water. ME's, when have you ever defied plate tectonics and seperated two continents that have been joined together for over 3 million years? It would take more missiles than you have to do that. Yeah, you all wish you had a ditch like ours.
Ok, moving along. In my opinion, the main wonder of the canal is its sheer size and how its construction was accomplished. To help you all somehow picture it, here is some history and a list of some stats I have found that have some seriously large numbers in them. It is cooler to stand on a viewing patform at the canal when thinking about all this, but the stats themselves are pretty cool in and of themselves. First is a brief history, then a picture story, and finally some cool facts with huge numbers.
History
"Although the Suez Canal had already severed Africa from asia three decades earlier, that was a comparatively simple, sea-level surgical stroke across an empty, disease-free, sand desert with no hills. The french company that dug it went next to the 56-mile-wide isthmus between the Americas, smugly intending to do the same. Disastrously, they underestimated dense jungle steeped in malaria and yellow fever, rivers fed by prodigious rainfall, and a continental divide whose lowest pass was still 270 feet above sea level. Before they were one-third of the way through, they suffered not only a bankruptcy that rocked France, but also the deaths of 22,000 workers." (1) Way to go France.
For those that think we don't invade/interfere with countries for ulterior motives (I won't name names...there are too many to list anyway), rather than liberating Puerto Rico from the Spanish in the Spanish-American War, as we had promised, we instead held onto the island because of its "perfect positon as a coaling station for the still-nonexistant canal." (1) Furthermore, Panama was at that time a part of Colombia, whose government didn't want to make a deal about the canal with us, so we helped Panama rebels oust Colombia, faithfully recognizing as Panama's first ambassador a French engineer from France's canal attempt who promptly affirmed a treaty agreeing to US terms for the canal. (1) This pretty much "sealed the US's reputation in Latin America as piratical gringo imperialists." (1)
In 1903 the US started construction on the canal, and it took 11 more years and 5,000 more deaths to complete it, opening in the year 1914. The completion of the canal shifted the economic center of the world to the US, and seperated the continous mountain range spanning from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego as well as two continents, as stated before, for the first time in 3 million years. (1) The canal is essentially and aquatic staircase across the continent, with three seperate locks - Gatun, Miraflores, and Pedro Miguel - serving to raise and lower ships as they traverse the isthmus. Although designed in the early 1900's, the canal remains a principle conduit for international maritime trade. (3) Very few projects maintain this status after so long an interval.
The Future
Some of the modern ships on the water today have outgrown the canal's geometric limits, and so an extension to the canal has been designed, with excavation started and bids being taken for the construction of new locks to allow for larger ships to pass through. No new canal is being made, just an extension of the already existing one. As long as the canal can keep up with the evergrowing sizes and numbers of ships, it will remain the principle route through the Central American isthmus and in the world. And on to the stats.
The Picture Story
Boat enters Miraflores lower lock
Locks close behind the boat
Water from second lock begins to drain into the lower lock (to the right)
Water levels equalizing
When levels equal, gate opens and ship goes through.
The Numbers
- The Canal occupies 7% of Panama's territory (3)
-1884 peak labor force of 19,243 workers (3)
- In excess of 1.53 million cubic meters (404 million gallons, or 612 olympic size swimming pools) of concrete were used to make the Gatun locks alone (4)
- Ships are lifted with 52,000 gallons of water (lots and lots of those 5-gallon orange gatorade buckets...10,400 to be exact) in the canal's locks (1)
- To contain the water in the Miraflores locks, gates 66 ft (20 m) wide by 6.6 ft (2 m) thick were constructed. Height varies from 46-82 ft (14-25 m), and the tallest in the miraflores locks are designed to withstand the tidal motion from the pacific. (3)
- The Gatun locks are 108 ft (33 m) wide. (2)
- French excavated 59,747,620 cubic meters of rock and soil (3)
- Americans excavated a stretch of land called the Culebra Cut, which took 6,000 men digging every day for seven years to complete (1)
- Dry cut excavation of Culebra cut lasted 7 years, consisted of 153 million cubic meters (That is 61,200 olympic swimming pools!) of rock and dirt removed and transported by drilling, blasting, digging, dredging, hauling and dumping (3)
- Machines were designed that could remove more than 8,000 tons of earth in under 8 hours (2)
- More than half the material removed during th construction of the canal was solid rock, yet every day 600 holes were drilled and blasted to slice the rock up to 7 meters down. (3)
- With the amount of drilling upon completion, a hole could have been drilled through the earth and 900 km beyond (3)
- Between 1905 and 1911, more than 60 million tons of dynamite were used (our most powerful nuclear missiles ever (known to be) created have a yield of 25 million tons of dynamite. How 'bout that, ME's?). (3)
1 - The World Without Us, Alan Weisman
2 - Wikipedia
3 - Miraflores Museum
4 - http://www.eclipse.co.uk/~sl5763/panama.htm
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