The Longest Shortcut Essays - Panama Canal, Culebra Cut, Gatn

The Longest Shortcut Section One The problem was the great 12,000 mile distance to go around South America to get to from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean or vice versa. The solution was to make canal to cut the distance down significantly. Vasco Nunez de Balboa discovered the Pacific coast in the 1513. Many famous people including Benjamin Franklin suggested that a route could be made through Panama to shorten the path. However, others people disagreed that it could be done in Panama. German explorer Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt believed that Panama was too mountainous and the wrong place to build the canal. ?U.S. Army Col. Charles Biddle concluded after four days of hiking in the jungle that the impracticality of building a canal in Panama ought to be clear to anyone.? (Kiger) Designing, constructing, and implementing the Panama Canal is one of the largest macro-engineering projects in recorded history. It took a two nations and the workforce of many other nations to complete. Columbia lost a large part of its land and the Republic of Panama was created for the sole purpose of building the Canal. ?Apart from wars, it represented the largest, most costly single effort ever before mounted anywhere on earth.? (McCullough 11) Not only were there advances in technology, but also entire technologies were created for this macro-engineering project. ?In the history of finance capitalism, in the history of medicine, it was an event of signal consequence.? It marked a score of advances in engineering, government planning, labor relations.? (McCullough 12) Even thought it took numerous people to design and finish the Panama Canal's original creator was the entrepreneur Vicomte Ferdinand De Lesseps. Ideas varied on how to complete the task. Vicomte Ferdinand De Lesseps was the first in charge of the Panama Canal. De Lesseps promoted the idea of the French building the canal. He believed that he would return pride to France by completing this project. He successfully completed the Suez Canal in Egypt. He planned to repeat his success in Panama using a sea level canal. He sold stock and investors put up about 240 million dollars. Three times the amount of what the Suez Canal cost. The completion of the Canal was set at twelve years. 20,000 workers were working on the canal by 1883. The French had a string of failures. They failed because the technology and medical technologies didn't exist at this point of time. De Lesseps was more a man of personality then an engineer, for he had no technical training. The French piled dirt up next to the spots they were digging. This cause landslides and they had to dig the same spots over. About 200 people were dieing a month from yellow fever. (Kiger) The French had no idea what was causing this. Next to the hospital they had plants in basins filled with water to stop umbrella ants from eating them. Unbeknownst to the French this was the perfect breeding ground. These basins helped mosquitoes breed in great numbers that carried yellow fever. The money was squandered and embezzled from the project. The French then decide that maybe switching to a lock canal might be better in order to try to comfort investors. De Lesseps realizes that he is out of his league and asks Eiffel for help. It is too late for the French to succeed in completing the canal. De Lesseps's Canal Company goes out of business and simply run out of funds to continue work. The French pull out of Panama after 10 years, but not until 287 million dollars was spent and 20,000 people died. Many people are sent to prison over the financial fiasco. The word Panama became synonymous with the word scandal in France. ?Leon F. Czolgosz, aged twenty-eight, a Detroit resident of Polish heritage and an unemployed mill worker of anarchist sentiments, had fired a concealed .32 Iver Johnson revolver point blank into the President's chest. McKinley doubled over and fell backward into the arms of his Secret Service escorts.? (The American President) When this happened the presidential power went to Theodore Roosevelt. With this change also brought change in American foreign policy. Columbia could not agree with terms United States wanted to