Next weekend, the largest single sporting event on the planet known as the Super Bowl will take place in the US between Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. The San Francisco team is known as the 49ers in recognition of the gold rush that occurred in San Francisco in 1849. Not only did it change the financial fortunes of the United States, but it also changed the politics of the Americas for ever.
There was an urgent need to get people and supplies from the eastern cities of New York and Chicago to the newly discovered goldfields of San Francisco, and then return loads of gold safely. However, there was a problem. The only way to get to San Francisco was by boat around the south of Argentina through the Drake passage which was slow and dangerous. Nobody wanted a load of gold at the bottom of the southern ocean or pinched by pirates. The only other alternative was to sail down to what we know today as Panama, take your ships into the lakes of Panama, unload them and haul the goods overland for some 50 miles, reload them onto another ship and sail north to San Francisco. So, in 1850 the US built a railway line across the centre of Panama, which was then actually a part of Columbia, to make life a bit easier. However, a canal across Panama so that you didn’t have to unload ships was the ultimate goal.
Cornelius Vanderbilt was awarded the sole concession to operate the railway, and that was extremely lucrative. In 1856 the US sent a mercenary force to conquer Nicaragua, which was the only other country with the possibility of having a route between the two oceans, in order to protect the Panamanian railway.
In 1881 France, who had successfully built the Suez Canal, signed a contract with Columbia to build a canal across the centre of the country. They tried for some 8 years losing thousands of men to disease, malaria, dysentery and natural disasters before eventually abandoning their attempt before it bankrupted France.
The US moved quickly. In 1903 they supported an uprising by local Panamanian separatists to become an independent country, blockaded the ports, and sent the army in to support the separatists against Columbian forces. In return the new Panamanian regime gave the US unfettered rights to the wedge through the country where the canal was to be built. The US wasted no time, devoting huge amounts of money and resources and manpower, and between 1904 to 1912 completed the canal that the French had started.
From 1903 through to 1939, Panama was a US protectorate, and the Canal Zone was considered part of the USA. The canal was only handed over completely to Panama in 1977.
Simultaneously, in order to protect their interests and ensure that no alternative canal was ever dug, the US occupied Nicaragua from 1912 through to 1933.
The completed canal was around 82 km long and cost some US$14 billion in today’s value. Today more than 15,000 vessels pass through the canal every year. It takes some 200,000,000 litres of freshwater to operate the ships locks for every ship that passes through, so the canal is now threatened by low water levels due to drought and climate change. However, luckily, we got to make a passage through it today.
The canal pilot came on board around 6:30am, and we started to enter the lock system proper around 7:15. However, it didn’t go quite to plan. Having entered the first lock and tied up to the ‘mules’ (tug boat trains on each side of the lock used to tension the ship so it doesn’t touch either side), we floated there, for about an hour. Lots of people eventually gave up and drifted off for breakfast, and the crowd on their tour to the lock observation tower on the shore got restless. Turned out that we were waiting for a tug that was working with a large container ship in the newer locks, and when you realise that to leave it behind would cause another 200,000,000 litres of fresh water to be wasted, we stopped being impatient.
Ok, so a few facts and figures.
First – charges. There are three fees that cruise ships pay to transit the canal. Hang on to your hats. Firstly, there is the transit fee based on the size and displacement of your ship. This just gets you permission to transit in the order in which your money is received from your company – first pay, first served is the mantra we heard often. Windstar paid US$120,000 some 6 months ago. Then cruise ships want to be able to guarantee a certain day and a daylight passage to satisfy us paying passengers, and that cost Windstar an additional US$16,000 booking fee and US$45,000 daylight passage fee. So, all up we paid US$181,000 or roughly US$850 per person to just cross 82km of river in around 9 hours.
Secondly, locks. There are three sets of locks in total. On the Pacific side where we started there are two sets of locks. The first, Miraflores, has two sets of gates that raise the ship 18 metres into the man-made Miraflores Lake. An hour later you go through the Pedro Miguel lock that raises you another 9 metres into the famous Culebra Cut and eventually the Gatun Lake, which is the highest part of the canal system. The Culebra Cut is the rocky section at the highest part of the route which eventually defeated the French, and was responsible for most of the 26,000 deaths during the construction.
All the water used in the operation of the canal comes from Gatun Lake, a freshwater lake in the centre of the country fed by over 28 rivers coming down from the nearby hills. It is water from this lake that feeds the canal both ways, and eventually flows into either the Pacific or Atlantic Oceans. Given that the rivers would eventually flow into the ocean anyway, it’s a pretty ingenious system. Eventually, if this lake dries up, the canal ceases to function.
Then on the Atlantic side, there are a further three sets of gates known as the Gatun Locks that lower you to the Caribbean Sea, again 27 metres down.
Thirdly, operations. In the morning, all ships enter in a one way stream from both the Pacific and the Atlantic side, and pass each other in Lake Gatun. In the afternoon, all ships exit the canal in a single line out the other end. So, essentially its a one-way system. There are a new, second set of gates at the Miraflores Locks – longer, deeper and wider than the originals, completed in 2016 to accommodate the very large container ships, and they pay a much larger fee to get through. To give you some idea, the very largest container ships can be charged up to US$6 million per transit. Not surprisingly we went through the original set.
Not a quick process. We finally exited the last of the locks into the Caribbean Sea around 4pm, so in all it had taken us close to 9 hours to cover 82km – that’s jogging pace.
Miraflores Locks
Electric mules
In the Miraflores lock
Pedro Miguel lock
The Gatun locks
Finishing a full transit