Panama Canal

The Panama Canal is considered one of the most greatest wonders of the world. The first plans for a canal to be built started in 1539 by King Charles V. The beginning of the construction started in 1880 by the French. However the people building it had to work under brutal working conditions. Yellow fever and malaria broke out during this time and about 22,000 people died and before the project was finished, it went bankrupt in 1889.

The Panama Canal is a ship canal that joins the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific ocean. The canal was one of the largest and most difficult projects ever taken on and it had an enormous impact between the two oceans. The Panama canal allowed ships to travel faster and it was a less dangerous route to travel between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. By the time the canal was finished, about 27,500 men had died in the French and American efforts. "The length of the Panama Canal is approximately 51 miles. A trip along the canal from its Atlantic entrance would take you through a 7 mile dredged channel in Limón Bay. The canal then proceeds for a distance of 11.5 miles to the Gatun Locks. This series of three locks raise ships 26 metres to Gatun Lake. It continues south through a channel in Gatun Lake for 32 miles to Gamboa, where the Culebra Cut begins. This channel through the cut is 8 miles long and 150 metres wide."

"Construction of the current Panama Canal began in 1904. Casualties among the workers were much lower due to extensive projects to control yellow fever and malaria, and the canal was completed in ten years, three years ahead of schedule. However, the cost was a phenomenal $350 million, the most expensive operation the US government had ever undertaken. In addition, Panama was paid ten million dollars, plus another quarter million each year, for use of the territory. This was a very large amount of money at the time, and the fees would be raised in 1936 and again in 1955. During construction, the US also established stores, schools, and military bases around the canal."

"The panama Canal is a waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, cut through the narrow neck of land connecting the continents of North and South America. It is the solution of the problem of international commerce that became acute in 1452 when the Eastern Roman Empire fell before the assaults of the Turks." Book source The cargo ship Ancon was the first vessel to travel through the Panama Canal on August 15, 1914. A boat coming from New York to San Francisco was told to save about 7,872 miles by using it instead of going around Cape Horn. The canal was all in all a great turn out and it became a very well used path for ships.

"In the early years of oceanic commerce, ships carrying goods between Europe and the Far East had to travel a long, circuitous 12,000-mile (19,308 km) route around the continent of South America. As early as the 1500s, Spanish rulers first explored the idea of creating a canal through the Isthmus of Panama to drastically reduce travel time. In 1903, a treaty between Panama and the United States finally paved the way for the construction of the Panama Canal, a massive feat of engineering which not only united two oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific, but opened an invaluable artery for international trade." Book source