Where east meets west

Panama Canal to celebrate a centennial of transit

CRISTOBAL, Panama - One morning in late January, Cunard’s cruise ship, Queen Victoria, approached the Port of Cristobal on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal. Huge cranes towered against the dawn sky, ready for the ships that carry grain, cargo containers and petroleum between the East Coast of the United States, Asia, and the west coasts of North and South America. Without the canal, the freighters would have to make a long, treacherous journey around Cape Horn.

The 48-mile-long canal cuts through the Isthmus of Panama at one of the most narrow points between North and South America. Three sets of locks raise ships 85 feet to Gatun Lake and then lower them again. The 90,000-ton Queen Victoria would just fit in a lock, with two feet to spare on each side and just under 18 feet front and back.

The Panama Canal has often been called “the eighth wonder of the world.” Seventy-five thousand people worked on it; around 32,000 people died in the effort. It took decades to build. A French team tried, starting in 1880, but was defeated by mosquito-borne diseases and a flawed plan. In 1904, an American team began work on the canal and succeeded. Without fanfare, on Aug. 15, 1914, a freighter, the SS Ancon, became the first commercial ship to make the transit.

Today, around 5 percent of the world’s ocean-borne commerce goes through the canal.

The Panama Canal Authority has already begun to celebrate the centennial year. On Aug. 15, it ceremoniously affixed the Panama Canal Centennial logo to the control house balcony at the Miraflores Locks.

At 6 a.m. on the day of Queen Victoria’s transit, three Panamanian pilots came aboard to assume navigational authority for the ship. The morning sky was fiery red, illuminating the dense jungle that borders the canal. Magnificent Frigate birds soared overhead.

Two men rowed a boat toward the Victoria to throw the lines needed to hitch the ship to small locomotives, called “mules,” that would guide her through the locks. Over the years, more complicated technology has been tried, but the rowboat-toss method has proved best. Then the ship nosed her way into the first of the Gatun locks and the gates swung closed behind her.

It takes 52 million gallons of water to move a ship through the Panama Canal. The concept is simple. As a ship ascends, water flows from Gatun Lake at the crest of the system into the locks below, raising the ship in steps to the level of the next lock. When that level is reached, the forward gates open and the ship proceeds into the next lock to repeat the process.

At 23-mile-long Gatun Lake, the ships pause to await their turn to begin the downward journey. There, water drains from each lock until the ship is level with the one below. The descent is especially tricky on the Pacific side, where there are 18-foot tides.

For passengers and most crew, it’s a splendid spectacle. For a ship’s navigation officers, a Panama Canal transit is a long, tiring day. Scraped paint is probably inevitable, and Queen Victoria got her share.

But after nearly 100 years, there is a matter-of-fact quality to this remarkable journey. Around 14,000 ships go through the canal every year, and everyone knows his job.

To appreciate what this eight or nine-hour crossing really means you would have to know that Gatun Lake is still one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, that the Panama Canal was the most expensive construction project that the United States had ever undertaken, and that the canal was dug with steam shovels removing enough earth to circle the globe four times.

Though the locks were so well built that they have never needed to be replaced, dredging and construction go on continually, especially at the Galliard Cut, which crosses the Continental Divide and is prone to landslides.

Near the Centennial Bridge just north of the Pedro Miguel locks, a new channel is being built, part of an extensive project that will accommodate larger ships than the present locks can accommodate. The new locks will be longer, wider and deeper than the old ones. These new locks are so long that New York’s Empire State Building would fit into each of them three times over. The channels on the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the canal have already been deepened, with the Gatun Lake soon to follow.

Work on the expansion began in 2007 and has taken longer than anticipated. It is now scheduled for completion in 2015, at a cost of $5.25 billion. When the new lock system is finished, the canal will have twice the capacity that it does today.

The cost to transit the canal is by tonnage. Traveler and adventurer Richard Halliburton swam the canal in 1928 and paid 36 cents. The Queen Victoria paid $275,000.

In late afternoon, she reached the Miraflores locks and was released into the Pacific. Hundreds of people on shore waved and cheered as this great ship completed her Panama Canal transit. People on the ship waved back. Some had tears in their eyes.

So many large ships are built every year that we might take them for granted, but they are amazing feats of engineering as is the canal. More than 815,000 vessels have gone through the canal since it was built. Each transit is a testimony to the genius, perseverance and sacrifices of the builders.

The Panama Canal centennial will be celebrated with special exhibitions in Panama City and with dance performances and lectures. Day trips go from Panama City to points of interest along the canal such as the visitor center at the Miraflores Lock, where exhibitions supplemented by a documentary film cover the history of the canal. But perhaps the best way to celebrate will be to board a cruise ship and repeat the trip that so many have taken before.

CRUISE SHIP TRANSITS

In the course of their regularly scheduled cruises, many ships will be going through the Panama Canal in 2014. Most Panama Canal transits take place between September and May. Here are some examples:

Queen Elizabeth (Cunard): A cruise that leaves New York on Jan. 18 and arrives in San Francisco on Feb. 6 goes through the Panama Canal with stops in Fort Lauderdale, Aruba, Limon and Puntarenas.Prices start at $3,495 per person for an inside stateroom.

Norwegian Sun (Norwegian Cruise Line): The ship leaves Miami on April 28, stops in Cartagena, Colombia, and then transits the canal with several stops on the Pacific Ocean side before arriving in Los Angeles on May 13. Prices start at $969 per person for an inside cabin.

Coral Princess and Island Princess (Princess Cruises): Princess Cruises offers a variety of ways to experience the Panama Canal, including transits from the Atlantic and Pacific sides, an 11-day round trip excursion from Fort Lauderdale and back that goes as far as the Gatun Lake before returning, and a full transit followed by a full day docked in Fuerte Amador near Panama City, for additional sightseeing. Among the options are a walking and driving tour of old Panama City, a tour of the canal via the Northern Hemisphere’s first transcontinental railroad, and a visit via dugout canoe to an Embera Indian village in the heart of Chagres National Park. Prices vary by ship, route and season. For instance, an 11-day cruise aboard Coral Princess, starting and ending in Fort Lauderdale from March 26 to April 6 costs $1,099 per person for an inside cabin.

THE COMPETITION

For nearly a century, the Panama Canal offered the only way to avoid a long and dangerous trip around Cape Horn for ships traveling between the east and west coasts of the North and South American continents. For a ship starting in New York bound for San Francisco, for instance, a transit through the canal meant cutting nearly 8,000 miles off the trip, so most ships chose the Panama route.

Now, however, the Panama Canal has some competition. Nicaragua has plans for a canal and has awarded a Chinese company a contract for the project. Work could start in 2014. In addition, climate change has begun to open sea lanes north of the Arctic Circle. If the channels continue to enlarge, China could potentially reach its markets in Europe by sailing through Canadian waters. Both of these possibilities are real but for varying reasons, not imminent. For the next decade or so, the Panamanian hegemony is safe.

For more information: visitpanama.com

Travel, Pages 54 on 10/06/2013

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