The Panama Canal

 October 24, 2022

“I am sorry for you tonight, Mr. President. You are facing one of the greatest decisions of your career. Upon what you decide depends on whether or not you are going to get your canal. If you fall back upon the old methods of sanitation you will fail, just as the French failed. If you back up Dr. Gorgas and his ideas, and you let him make his campaign against mosquitoes, then you get your canal. I can only give you my advice; you must decide for yourself. There is only one way of controlling yellow fever and malaria, and that is the eradication of the mosquitoes. But it is your canal; you must do the choosing and you must choose tonight whether you are going to build that canal.” ― Thomas W. Martin on Doctor William Crawford Gorgas Of Alabama And The Panama Canal

The president in question was Theodore Roosevelt. There were several civil engineers who managed the herculean task of bringing the canal to fruition (one of them a railroad builder which pleased my retired RR engineer father to pieces!). But the canal would never have happened without the leadership of Dr. William Gorgas.

At our shipboard lecture about the building of the canal, there was a collective gasp in the audience when our speaker shared that over 25,000 people died in the making of this waterway. That amounts to just about 500 deaths per mile of canal. And the lion's share of those deaths was caused by tropical illnesses, most particularly yellow fever. 

Passing under the Bridge of the Americas

Even though Dr. Gorgas, then a colonel in the army, had successfully eradicated yellow fever from Cuba in 1901, not all medical professionals agreed with his mosquito theory of how the virus spreads. But President Roosevelt backed the doctor and Gorgas ordered the draining of ponds and swamps, mass fumigation, spraying a petroleum/kerosene mixture on standing water known to be mosquito nurseries, and insisting on screens on windows and use of mosquito netting over beds.

Try getting the EPA to approve those things now! 

But within a year, yellow fever was gone from the region. How I wish it was gone from the whole earth! Large portions of South America and Africa are afflicted by this hemorrhagic disease today. Even with the development of a live virus vaccine, there are still over 200,000 cases of the disease resulting in over 30,000 deaths annually.

We had a bird's eye view of the workings of the mules, the small but mighty tracked vehicles that kept the Eurodam centered in the locks.

However, thanks to Dr. Gorgas' extreme measures, the isthmus of Panama is yellow fever free and the canal that links the Pacific and the Atlantic is the major source of income for the entire country!

The DH has put together a wonderful montage of our canal transit which involves two sets of locks and a brief cruise through Lake Gatun. Enjoy!

  

In this montage, there's a photo of a mystery animal that was wandering alongside the locks at one point. A rubber cookie with cement frosting to the first to identify this critter for us! 

And one more very short video for today! It's actually more about the audio...well, you'll see, er, I mean hear what I mean.

The Eurodam was a pretty tight fit!