The Panama Canal (Chapter 10 Blog)

The Panama Canal is a ship canal that joins the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The Panama Canal has a huge impact on the shipping industry. It can shorten a trip that would originally have to be taken around Cape Horn into over half the distance. The construction of the canal was attempted and failed a few times before the United States completed the construction around the 1900's. Construction on the canal dated back to the 16th century.

The United states started to get involved with the construction of the Panama Canal around the like 1800's. In 1898, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, the chief of a group that owned large parts of land across Panama, hired William Nelson Cromwell of the United States law firm Sullivan and Cromwell to lobby the US congress to no longer build a canal across Nicaragua, but instead across Panama. On June 19, 1902, the congress voted for a Panama path for the canal because of volcanic activity in Nicaragua.

In 1903, a treaty was supposed to grant the United States a lease for 99 years to use the land needed to be used in Columbia for the construction of the canal called the Hay-Herran Treaty, but the Senate of Columbia did not ratify the treaty like the United States in 1903. The Hay-Benau Treaty was made after that, and was signed by the Panama ambassador to the United States, but this did not go well because the ambassador was French and was not supposed to sign it without the permission of Panama. This caused a riot to break out in which resulted in the deaths of four United States Soliders and twenty-one Panamanians. All of the issues going on were resolved in 1977, when the Torrijos-Carter Treaties were made that returned the former Canal Zone territories back to Panama.

During the time of the controversy of the land treaties, the United States was busy working on the canal. The canal brought many diseases such as malaria and yellow fever, and throughout the construction of the canal there were many deaths. The canal was completed in 1914, and it was first used that same year. On August 15, 1914, the canal was opened. The first ship to pass through was a cargo ship called the SS Ancon. Now, an estimated 14,000 ships pass through the canal each year.

http://www.eclipse.co.uk/~sl5763/panama.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Panama_Canal

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The Panama Canal (Chapter 10 Blog)

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