Gatun Locks

As promised, or rather threatened, what follows is a fact-based piece lifted pretty much verbatim from various leaflets and documentaries piped into my cabin. I make no apologies for this – it’s a canal, not Las Vegas, though as canals go, it’s right up there with Suez and way better than the Manchester Ship one.
 
Originally started by the French in the late 19th century, the size of the task quickly became apparent; workers died in their thousands from malaria and yellow fever. Industrial accidents claimed more lives as the wet season brought landslides, precipitated by reckless use of dynamite.

The dry season saw temperatures hit 120 degrees, not really ideal trench-digging weather. Wildly over schedule and over budget, the work was abandoned when the money ran out, bankrupting the entrepreneur who had completed Suez, Ferdinand de Lesseps, and ruining hundreds of investors (NB: there will be no cheap jokes about the French surrendering in this piece, oh no).

It wasn’t long before the Americans took up the baton, securing rights to the land surrounding the proposed route (this was officially handed back to Panama on Dec 31st 1999), and kicking off work just after the turn of the century. They had learned from history, and built good housing for their workers and put preventative measures in place to prevent disease. By 1914 the first ship officially passed through from the Caribbean to the Pacific, saving a 7000+ mile journey around Cape Horn.

The journey is surprisingly interesting. We reached the breakwaters at dawn, waking to see dozens of boats loitering in the mist. It can cost a large liner around $375,000 to pass through the canal, and we seemed to skip the queue as we headed up to Gatun Locks, two lanes of three lock chambers that raise vessels to 85 feet above sea level.

Oriana

With only a foot’s leeway on either side, onshore locomotives keep the ship aligned, and we were joined in negotiating the locks by P&O sister ship Oriana, whose guests had made a bit of an effort with flags, banners and such, much to our shame.

Gatun Lake

On reaching Gatun Lake, itself the size of the Isle of Wight, we chugged slowly through tropical rainforest, the scenery causing me to briefly imagine myself as Humphrey Bogart in ‘African Queen’, or Martin Sheen in ‘Apocalypse Now’, before remembering neither had air conditioning or room service. Once across the lake, all that remains is to negotiate the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores locks to return to sea level, and then it was a dash to the Pacific, crossing the finish line in ten hours as rain pelted down.

From here we hug the Central American coast, passing Costa Rica until, after a further two days at sea, we will reach Acapulco.


Canal facts:

-    the canal is 80km long
-    the Americans used more dynamite to build the canal than in all previous wars in their history
-    over 20,000 people died during the abortive French attempt to complete the canal
-    197 million litres of fresh water from Gatun Lake are used for each lock
-    the canal generates its own hydro-electric power, enough to be self-sufficient
-    the canal & Gatun Lake displaced 50,000 Panamanian people
-    152.9 million cubic metres of material were excavated to make the canal. Placed in standard rail trucks, this would circle the globe four times.