It was to be, and ultimately became, the engineering marvel of its time. The Panama Canal was started by the French in the late 19th century, and abandoned in shame after millions of dollars, 22,000 deaths (mostly from malaria and yellow fever) and 200 uncoordinated engineering companies.
\nThe Canal was about one-third complete when the Americans resurrected the project following the assassination of President McKinley and the installation of Teddy Roosevelt, who was a visionary of such projects. Abandoned was the dangerous and impractical idea of digging a canal at sea level, as the French intended. A series of locks were to lead “up the steps” to a man-made lake in the middle of the Isthmus of Panama, followed by locks down the other side to the Pacific.
\nThe Canal was finished in 1914. Roosevelt never saw it. On the 100th anniversary of its opening, a newer and bigger Canal is expected to open to accommodate newer and bigger ships.
\nWe are expecting to see some of the construction on our 48-mile journey. While we are not rookies at navigating locks, we are Panama Canal rookies, so we decide to record the journey in excerpts.
\nMore later…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was to be, and ultimately became, the engineering marvel of its time. The Panama Canal was started by the French in the late 19th century, and abandoned in shame after millions of dollars, 22,000 deaths (mostly from malaria and yellow fever) and 200 uncoordinated engineering companies. The Canal was about one-third complete when the… Continue reading The Panama Canal<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,31,19,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cruise-industry-news","category-ports","category-ships","category-stories","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}