HELL’S GORGE – THE BATTLE TO BUILD THE PANAMA CANAL
Matthew Parker; 0099484331 - £8.99
Ferdinand de Lesseps, the driving force behind the Panama Canal venture, inspired a very neat palindrome: A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL: PANAMA, and this book explores his struggles – along with those of his beleaguered workers - during its concept and creation.
Recently published as a paperback, the hardback title was Panama Fever, emphasizing the battle against the appalling conditions in the early years of the 20th century. The terrain was inhospitable, with the swamps breeding fever, the labourers enduring torrential rain or blazing sun, and “health and safety” practically non-existent: the death toll reached more than 25,000 during the period of construction (more than five hundred lives for every mile) with many more permanently debilitated through injury or sickness. However, the fact that in those hundred-odd years since the opening in August 1914 more than a million ships have passed through the Canal, travelling between the great oceans, is testimony to its significance as one of the world’s major arteries.
Why this book has a new currency, is that a $5.25bn project was launched in September last year to expand the canal and this seven year mission is already reaping benefits. The waterway was transferred to Panamanian control (from the Americans) in 1999 and the tolls now go towards youth education. Facilities are being enhanced to the extent that Royal Caribbean cruise-line will make Colon its home port, and the widening of the canal appears to be coming not a moment too soon, with ships sometimes facing a 4-day wait to transit.
To leave the present and return to the struggles that beset the hardy souls who created a pathway through the Isthmus, some of the statistics make incredible reading: between 1907 and the opening in 1914, 219 million cubic yards of rock and earth were moved, four times as much as de Lesseps originally envisaged; more than 100,000 visitors arrived to watch the work, with a tourist station being created at Ancón; transitting the Canal shaved nearly 8000 miles off the sea journey between San Francisco and New York; the US Government spent more than $400m on the canal in the ten years from 1904 – and it wasn’t until the 1950s that the venture started to show a profit. Although the concept was a Frenchman’s, it was America that finally got the project completed, and mainly West Indians who paid the price as construction workers.
This is a comprehensive study, well-researched and running to more than four hundred pages, but a fascinating insight for anyone who has made a transit of the Panama Canal or has any interest in it: given the impact it has made on world shipping, that’s going to be a lot of people.