The Panama Canal (Spanish: Canal de Panamá) is an artificial 82-kilometer (51-mile) waterway in Panama that connects the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. It cuts across the narrowest point of the Isthmus of Panama, and is a conduit for maritime trade between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Locks at each end lift ships up to Gatun Lake, an artificial fresh water lake 26 meters (85 ft) above sea level, created by damming the Chagres River and Lake Alajuela to reduce the amount of excavation work required for the canal. Locks then lower the ships at the other end. The original locks are 33.5 meters (110 ft) wide and allow the passage of Panamax ships. A third, wider lane of locks was constructed between September 2007 and May 2016. The expanded waterway began commercial operation on 26 June 2016. The new locks allow for the transit of larger, Neopanamax ships. An average of 200,000,000 litres (52 million US gallons) of fresh water is used in a single passing of a ship. The canal is threatened by low water levels during droughts.
The Panama Canal shortcut greatly reduces the time for ships to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, enabling them to avoid the lengthy, hazardous route around the southernmost tip of South America via the Drake Passage, the Strait of Magellan or the Beagle Channel. Its construction was one of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken. Since its inauguration on 15 August 1914, the canal has succeeded in shortening maritime communication in time and distance, invigorating maritime and economic transportation by providing a short and relatively inexpensive transit route between the two oceans, decisively influencing global trade patterns, boosting economic growth in developed and developing countries, as well as providing the basic impetus for economic expansion in many remote regions of the world.
Colombia, France, and later the United States controlled the territory surrounding the canal during construction. France began work on the canal in 1881, but stopped in 1889 because of a lack of investors' confidence due to engineering problems and a high worker mortality rate. The US took over the project in 1904 and opened the canal in 1914. The US continued to control the canal and the surrounding Panama Canal Zone until the Torrijos–Carter Treaties provided for its handover to Panama in 1977. After a period of joint American–Panamanian control, the Panamanian government took control in 1999. It is now managed and operated by the Panamanian government-owned Panama Canal Authority. Annual traffic has risen from about 1,000 ships in 1914, when the canal opened, to 14,702 vessels in 2008, for a total of 333.7 million Panama Canal/Universal Measurement System (PC/UMS) tons. By 2012, more than 815,000 vessels had passed through the canal. In that year, the top five users of the canal were the United States, China, Chile, Japan, and South Korea. In 2017, it took ships an average of 11.38 hours to pass between the canal's two outer locks. The American Society of Civil Engineers has ranked the Panama Canal one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
The idea of the Panama Canal dates back to 1513, when the Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa (c.1475–1519) first crossed the Isthmus of Panama. He wrote in his journal the possibility of a canal but did not take action. European powers soon noticed the possibility of digging a water passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans across this narrow land bridge between North and South America. The earliest proposal dates to 1534, when the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V ordered a survey for a route through the Americas in order to ease the voyage for ships traveling between Spain and Peru. In 1668, the English physician and philosopher Sir Thomas Browne specifically proposed the Isthmus of Panama as the most convenient place for such a canal.
The first attempt to make the isthmus part of a trade route was the ill-fated Darien scheme, launched by the Kingdom of Scotland (1698–1700), which was abandoned because of the inhospitable conditions.
In 1811, the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt published an essay on the geography of the Spanish colonies in Central America (Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne; translated into English as: Political essay on the kingdom of New Spain containing researches relative to the geography of Mexico). In the essay, he considered five possible routes for a canal across Central America, including Panama, but concluded that the most promising location was across Nicaragua, traversing Lake Nicaragua. His recommendations influenced the British to attempt a canal across Nicaragua in 1843. Although this attempt in the end came to nothing, it resulted in the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty (1850) between the United Kingdom and the United States, in which the two nations bound each other to joint control of any canal built in Nicaragua or (by implication) anywhere in Central America.
In 1846, the Mallarino–Bidlack Treaty, negotiated between the US and New Granada (the predecessor of Colombia), granted the United States transit rights and the right to intervene militarily in the isthmus. In 1848, the discovery of gold in California created a demand for a crossing of Panama as a practical route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This demand was exploited by American businessman William Henry Aspinwall, who ran steamship legs from New York City to Panama, and from Panama to California, with an overland portage through Panama. This route was soon exploited by other businessmen, such as Cornelius Vanderbilt. Between 1850 and 1855, a syndicate founded by Aspinwall built a railroad (now the Panama Canal Railway) from Colón on the Caribbean Sea to Panama City. The project cost US$8,000,000 (six times the estimated cost) and the lives of between 6,000 and 12,000 construction workers who succumbed to Tropical diseases. The railroad soon became immensely profitable for its owners.
In 1870, US President Grant established an Interoceanic Canal Commission, which included Chief of Engineers Brigadier General Andrew A Humphreys as its members. It commissioned several naval officers, including Commander Thomas Oliver Selfridge Jr., to investigate the possible routes suggested by Humboldt for a canal across Central America. The commission decided in favour of Nicaragua, establishing this as the preferred route amongst American policy-makers.
French construction attempts, 1881–1899
The French diplomat and entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps and engineer Philippe Bunau-Varilla were the driving forces behind the French attempts to construct the Panama Canal (1881–1889). De Lesseps had made his reputation by successfully constructing the Suez Canal (1859–1869), a route that had soon proved its value in international commerce. After this success, he actively sought new projects. In 1875, de Lesseps was approached by the Société Civile Internationale du Canal Interocéanique par l'isthme du Darien (also known as the "Türr Syndicate"), a syndicate formed to promote the building of an interoceanic canal across Panama. Its directors were Hungarian freedom fighter István Türr, financier Jacques de Reinach and Türr's brother-in-law Lt. Lucien Bonaparte-Wyse. Between 1876 and 1878, Bonaparte-Wyse and Armand Reclus investigated several potential routes across the isthmus of Panama. Bonaparte-Wyse rode by horseback to Bogotá, where he obtained a concession from the Colombian government to build a canal across Panama (20 March 1878). The agreement, known as the Wyse Concession, was valid for 99 years and allowed the company to dig a canal and exploit it.
In May 1879, de Lesseps convened an international congress in Paris at the Société de Géographie to examine the possibilities of a ship canal across Central America. Among the 136 delegates of 26 countries, only 42 were engineers, with the remainder being speculators, politicians, and friends of de Lesseps, who used the congress to promote fundraising for his preferred scheme, which was to build a sea-level canal across Panama, similar in manner to the Suez Canal. At the conference, the chief engineer of the French Department of Bridges and Highways, Baron Godin de Lépinay proposed a canal plan consisting of locks, the flooding and use of lakes (at Gatun) and a cut through the hilly terrain at Culebra. However, Lépinay's plan was dismissed in favour of Lessep's proposal for a sea level canal, although the locks plan would later be implemented under US control. Lesseps won the approval of a majority of the delegates for his plan despite reservations expressed by some who preferred a canal in Nicaragua or who emphasized the likely engineering difficulties and health risks. Following the congress, de Lesseps organized a company to construct the canal (the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique de Panama). The company bought the Wyse Concession from the Türr Syndicate and raised considerable funds from small French investors on the basis of the huge profits generated by the Suez Canal.