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    The Building of the Panama Canal in Historic Photographs
    The Building of the Panama Canal in Historic Photographs
    The Building of the Panama Canal in Historic Photographs
    Ebook172 pages51 minutes

    The Building of the Panama Canal in Historic Photographs

    By Ulrich Keller

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    In 1889 the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique declared bankruptcy. The French firm's optimistic and ill-planned attempt to construct a canal across the Isthmus of Panama had resulted in the death of 22,000 workers (most from yellow fever, typhoid fever, and malaria); the complete loss of one and a half billion francs for the company's 800,000 shareholders; and the bitter failure of Chief Engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps — the man responsible for the Suez Canal. On August 15, 1914, the S.S. Ancon took nine hours and forty minutes to traverse the lock-and-lake waterway linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. What occurred in the quarter century between 1889 and 1914 is a larger-than-life true story of adventure, revolution, ordeal, and accomplishment: the building of the Panama Canal — perhaps the greatest engineering marvel of the early twentieth century. In 164 magnificent historic photographs and a well-researched text, noted photohistorian Ulrich Keller tells the compelling story of this hitherto unparalleled technological achievement. Selected from an archive of over 10,000 images amassed by Ernest Hallen (Official Photographer of the Isthmian Canal Commission), these historic prints document the Canal's construction and its way of life: 450 miles of railroad; housing for 60,000 based on a caste system; the exotic settings; tremendous hardships and health risks; leisure activities; the Canal Zone's internal government, administration and policing; dredging operations, including spectacular movements of earth and water; unheard-of engineering feats and disastrous failures; and finally, victory!
    Photographers, historians, engineers, and students of industry and technology will immediately recognize this volume as an important primary source of industrial archaeology. Photography enthusiasts and lovers of true adventure will delight in the vibrant, you-are-there sensation imparted by the photos and Ulrich Keller's exceptionally informed text and meticulous captions. The Building of the Panama Canal in Historic Photographs takes the reader back to a different era, and one of the proudest episodes in what the author calls "the 'heroic' age of industry."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateApr 9, 2013
    ISBN9780486319254
    The Building of the Panama Canal in Historic Photographs

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      Book preview

      The Building of the Panama Canal in Historic Photographs - Ulrich Keller

      ULRICH KELLER

      THE BUILDING

      OF THE

      PANAMA CANAL

      in Historic Photographs

      Dover Publications, Inc., New York

      At Dover Publications we’re committed to producing books in an earth-friendly manner and to helping our customers make greener choices.

      Manufacturing books in the United States ensures compliance with strict environmental laws and eliminates the need for international freight shipping, a major contributor to global air pollution. And printing on recycled paper helps minimize our consumption of trees, water and fossil fuels.

      The text of this book was printed on paper made with 10% post-consumer waste and the cover was printed on paper made with 10% post-consumer waste. At Dover, we use Environmental Defense’s Paper Calculator to measure the benefits of these choices, including: the number of trees saved, gallons of water conserved as well as air emissions and solid waste eliminated.

      Please visit the product page for The Building of the Panama Canal in Historic Photographs at www.doverpublications.com to see a detailed account of the environmental savings we’ve achieved over the life of this book.

      Copyright

      Copyright © 1983 by Ulnch Keller.

      All rights reserved

      Bibliographical Note

      The Building of the Panama Canal in Historic Photographs is a new work, first published by Dover Publications, Inc, in 1983.

      Book design by Barbara Effron

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      The Building of the Panama Canal in historic photographs.

      ISBN-13: 978-0-486-24408-2

      ISBN-10. 0-486-24408-3

      1. Panama Canal (Panama)—History—Pictorial works. I. Keller, Ulnch, fl. 1977—

      Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation 24408314

      www.doverpubhcations.com

      Introduction

      Ever since 1513, when Balboa discovered the Pacific behind the narrow land bridge connecting the continents of North and South America, men dreamed of building a canal to join the two oceans.¹ Holy Roman Emperor Charles V entertained the idea quite seriously, and ordered a land survey in the Panama region to explore the feasibility of an artificial waterway. But it was determined that the difficulties of the project far exceeded the technical resources of the time. Moreover, the piercing of the Isthmus appeared to many contemporaries as such a bold, if not blasphemous, proposition that a Jesuit scholar felt compelled to utter the warning:

      I believe there is no humaine power able to beate and breake downe those strong and impenetrable Mountains, which God hath placed betwixt the two Seas, and hath made them most hard Rockes, to withstand the furie of two Seas. And although it were possible to men, yet in my opinion they should fear punishment from heaven, in seeking to correct the workes, which the Creator by his great providence hath ordained and disposed in the framing of this universall world.²

      Considerations of this nature put the canal question to rest for two hundred years. Only in the nineteenth century, the age of scientific and industrial progress, did the spirit of enterprise begin to outweigh the fear of God and the menace of physical obstacles. Beginning with Alexander von Humboldt, various explorers toured the Isthmus, searching for an ideal canal location and making a variety of proposals.

      The man who finally chose Panama as the most appropriate site and tackled the enormous financial and technical problems involved in an enterprise of such magnitude seemed to be predestined for the job. Ferdinand de Lesseps had done the impossible before—he had completed the celebrated Suez Canal in 1869—and he declared that the mountains of Panama represented a less formidable foe than the Egyptian desert. He even insisted on the practicability of a sea-level canal as opposed to a more modest lock canal.

      Thanks to his reputation (and to enormous bribes paid to bankers, politicians and newspapers), Lesseps was able to raise an initial capital of 300 million francs ($60 million). In January 1881, an advance party of French engineers arrived on the Isthmus, followed by an ever-increasing stream of workers and machinery. By May 1884, the labor force had swollen to a total of 19,000 men. But progress was much slower than expected. As it turned out, Lesseps’ assessment of the geographical conditions and the technical as well as financial means necessary to overcome them had been grossly inadequate. The mountain range at Culebra required a much greater volume of excavation than the original plans called for, the technical plant was too light for the task at hand, a bewildering and unmanageable diversity of machinery had been brought in and the employment of over two hundred individual contractors created additional confusion, not to mention skyrocketing costs.

      But the most severe and eventually crippling problem was caused by the ravages of yellow fever, typhoid fever and malaria. Enormous sums were spent on hospital facilities which were praised as the finest of their time but provided little relief since the causes of the diseases and effective cures remained elusive. As a result, about 22,000 workers died on the job, making it increasingly difficult to recruit volunteers for canal construction. It must be emphasized, though, that contemporary observers were unanimous in their admiration for those Frenchmen who did go to Panama and

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