Laurina Loursen, age 11, of Vancouver. B.C., Canada, for her question:
What is the Panama Canal?
If you keep up with current events in your newspaper as you should, you know that we soon may be calling this short cut the old Panama Canal. In perhaps 10 years or less bigger ships may be taking an easier route between the Atlantic to the Pacific across the Isthmus of Panama.
On Aug. 15, 1914, the first ship sailed through the man made waterway that links the Atlantic with the vast Pacific. This world famous Panama Canal is almost 51 miles long, and during each crossing ships are lifted up 85 feet from sea level and down again to sea level. The stupendous lifting job is done by a complex system of smoothly operated locks. The passage of each ship takes from six to eight hours, and the canal can lead and lift about 48 ships between the two great oceans every day.
Ships in the past had to sail all the way around the tip of South America on their voyages between the Atlantic and Pacific. The canal created a short cut that reduced the old voyage between New York and San Francisco by 7,878 miles. The waterway is built across a narrow neck of the Isthmus of Panama, the land area that links North and South America.
The builders of this waterway decided to make use of Gatun Lake, a wide body of water near the Atlantic side of the isthmus. The surface of the lake is 85 feet above sea level, and the complex system of locks was needed to lift the ships up to the surface of the lake and down again on the other side.
The construction of the Panama Canal was one of the most difficult and heartbreaking, jobs in the history of engineering. Its successful completion was one of engineering’s greatest victories. For 400 years this waterway had been a dream of world governments and weary travelers. In the 1880’s, the French, who had built the Suez Canal, contracted to build the waterway across Colombia. After seven years of hardships and the loss of 22,000 workmen from tropical diseases, the project failed. Later, America paid $40 million for the French rights to the site and $10 million in a treaty with Panama, a new country which then claimed the area.
Work on the present canal began on May 4, 1904. For 10 years vast piles of Earth were scooped to form ditches and great cuts were made through stubborn mountains, but tropical diseases were a constant threat. The cost of the stupendous job, including payments to France, Panama, and construction, totaled $375 million.
In the 1903 treaty with Panama, the United States was given the right to occupy, use and govern, with no future time limit, a strip of land 10 miles wide. This land in Panama across the narrow isthmus is called the Canal Zone. The canal is financed by tolls paid by ships on a basis of tonnage. In the original treaty, it was agreed that Panama would be paid $250,000 a year, and in 1955 this yearly payment to Panama was raised to $1,932,000.
From 1903 to 1979 the territory was controlled by the United States of America, which had designed, built and financed the canal's construction. From 1979 to 1999 the canal itself was under joint U.S.-Panamanian control. In 1977 the Torrijos-Carter Treaties established the neutrality of the canal