SYSK Selects: How the Panama Canal Works

I love civic projects. I love huge, um unwieldy projects that seem impossible to complete, and the Panama Canal was and is that? So? I know you're gonna love this one. Everyone, how the Panama Canal works. Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Uh with me is always a child's w Chuck Bryant. And that's if you should know the podcast. The two of us together, a

couple of mincs, our voices. You know what I've been singing all day, of course, Panama over and over and I just whistled it and Jerry was, well, now I got that stuck in my head. Yeah. When we were growing up, my sister I was singing it and I realized that she was singing turn and Run? Like what what she's like that song? That Van Halen song, like

don't be an idiot? She thought that's what they were saying. Yeah, that's so interesting because there's so many misinterpreted song lyrics famously over the years, but I never have heard Panama as being one of them. Yeah, especially since the song is named Panama. Yeah parentheses, turn and run? Right, Maybe they were talking about the people who were working on the early French effort to build a canal and Panama. Yeah, boy, that didn't go over so well. We'll get to that, okay, spoiler,

the French didn't build the Panama Canal. I thought we were gonna get to it right now. All right. Do you want to talk about Da Gama Balboa? Which one? Which one is? George Costanza's favorite explorer was a da Gama or Balboa? O? Man, it was one of the two? Da Gama, was it? Yeah? I think so? Okay, Um that was a funny conversation though, Um so, Yeah. Balboa back in the day was was wandering around in a region called Darien and he summoned to the peak there

and was like, holy cow. If I look this away, I see the Pacific Ocean, and if I look at that a way, I see the Atlantic Ocean or the Caribbean. And the only thing between these two big bodies of water it's this little isthmus of land. Yeah. I'm gonna have a lot of trouble with that word. That's okay, just say strip, okay. So the strip of land here is the only thing in between, and we should figure out a way to use this as a as a thoroughfare. Yeah, yeah,

because this is it. This connects the world us exactly. At the time, the Spanish we're trying to trade with the um Chinese and we're doing a pretty good job of it in the Philippines, and the best way to get to that was to come across the Atlantic and go into the Pacific. It worked very, very well. And the idea of just having a place where you could go straight through rather than go all the way down South America and then back up it was just mind boggling.

It's like you said, it opened up the world. This guy got it immediately. The problem was it would take about four dred more years before anyone finally got around to completing it successfully. Well, yeah, and forget the rest of the world. The United States just like, Hey, I want to ship this by boat from New York to San Francisco. How can I do that? I can just like kind of sneak around Florida, right Nope, blocked? Right, Well,

then what do I gotta do? You gotta go eight thousand miles nautical miles around South America to get to California or um, you know when you and I were in Nicaragua, we were in a town that in the nineteenth century was a way station for minor forty niners going on to California, and um, they would sail on to Nicaragua, take a train, and then ship out from Nicaragua up to California. Except the handful that was like I think I might just kick it here exactly. Yeah,

I bet you there were some du oh, definitely, I'm sure. Um, but yeah, there was there was a continent in the way, in the idea that it was just this little narrow strip of land that that made a lot of people say this is the place to be. In the sixteenth or know, the eighteenth century, the Scottish showed up. They tried to establish an outpost, failed spectacularly. Yeah, that's there's a great um section in about it. Yeah. Um, the Spanish were there, the French were there. Uh, they established

pretty good outposts there. It was very clear that this little area which was then part of Colombia is now present day Panama, was going to be a hoping spot because there was no thinner portion of the North or South American continents than this one, and everyone needed to figure out a way to get through. Yeah. And it wasn't as easy as like, hey, let's just dredge all this sand and let the waters meet, because that's not too hard. It's like dense jungle and mountains and the

continental divide. Yeah, so it's it's My first thought was like, how hard could it have been? I didn't realize how treacherous that area was. Yeah, and I think that, um, that Balboa and a lot of people who succeeded him, I thought the same thing, like how hard is it? But it is like, that's that continental divide. That's a tough thing to break through. That's why they call it

a divide. Yeah. Well that's where two tech time plates to come together and form a mountain range and like that's you're cutting through not one, but two tech time plates. Everybody wrap your head around that. Seriously, let's talk about it,

because obviously we were successful eventually. But the first attempt was not in the first attempt, it was by the French, yeah, who in the eighteen twenties, I believe, started to undertake a what is known as a sea level canal, which is basically they were going to cut their way straight through the Isthmus of Panama. That's right. And canals were all the rage at the time because of steam technology. So all of a sudden you didn't have to use the very cool and quaint towpath and have a mule

walk alongside of a river or canal. Well, yeah, a lot of them now are like jogging trails and stuff, you know, which you know, that's great, it makes for good us exactly. I don't see any mules on them these days. But it's great that people can use these topas now too, you know, it's like a nature trail. Yeah, um, yes, So the steam technology gave the French the idea that hey man, we can we can build a sea level canal here because we can just dig right through it.

We have steam. We don't need the mules for the tow paths any longer. All we need is some good steam shovels. We're gonna cut right through this continental divide, right through this jungle. And as a result of this ambition, twenty thousand people died. Yeah, and um, they were able to you know, get a little, a little far thanks to the railroad there in Panama. Believe it or not, it was the first railroad in the world to connect both sides of a continent. Wasn't very big, but it

didn't need to be, which is kind of great. But that allowed the French to get in there. They were deciding between Nicaragua and Panama at the time. Um, and they said, like you said, we can do sea level, we don't need these locks. Yeah. If you look at a map of Nicaragua and look at Panama, like the idea of going through Nicaragua over Panama is just nuts. Yeah,

and we'll explain how the locks work. But it essentially just raises and lowers your ship right for sure, in a little like bay station of water that's flooded and then drained. Actually, that's how a lock works. So the French organized this thing called the company Universal Duca Now enter they cute and uh, led by a guy named Ferdinand Lesseps who had created a sea level canal through the Suez that connected the Mediterranean and the Red Seas.

It was a big deal. So they brought him in and he's like, sure, we'll do another sea level canal. I'm feeling good about this. Like I did the Suez Canal with my eyes closed, exactly, Like I can do this with one arm tied behind my back. Well, he didn't realize was that digging through a bunch of sand is not like digging through two tectonic plates and a bunch of jungle and malaria. Uh. And like I said, twenty thousand people died as a result of this. Like this guy was like, no, we can do it. We

can do it. We're gonna do a sea level canal. We can do it. And then finally it was like, I don't think we can do this. It was too late. A lot a lot a lot of people were dead from yellow fever, in malaria, from accidents. Um. It's privately financed, so a lot of people lost a lot of money too. Exactly. This company goes under well, he tried to salvage it though.

First he tried to hire Gustav Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame, right, and said, hey, I think we need those locks after all, um, and you're good at building big steel things, so can you help? And he was like, of course I can. And then it was too late though that the business was done right, and they had done a little bit. Well, they had done a lot, Like they made eleven miles

of canal up to that point. Not bad, it's about a quarter of the way there, right, But this was the when did they start chuck the eighteen Yeah, so chuck as we understand it, they started in the eighteen twenties and this thing went bust by nineteen o two, I believe. Well that's when Congress. I mean they were busts before that, but that's when the US stepped in and said, hey, we'll buy your junk. Oh I'm sorry.

Eight So in like sixties, about sixty years they they had managed to dig eleven miles of canal, build a bunch of buildings. They had a lot of equipment and supplies there. Um, and yeah, the US said, we smell a really really great opportunity. And congres said, let's spend some cash. We're feeling good about things these days, where we annexed Hawaii recently Puerto Rico, Philippines. What else, How

why not take over this very ambiscious project. Why it's the American century by now, and we can stick it to the French at the same time. Exactly, So they did this in nineteen o two, UM with the one stipulation that said, you know what, you guys have to Columbia controls Panama right now, and you guys have to work out a deal with them. And we tried and that failed. So he said, you know what, We're just

gonna overthrow Columbia then and give the control to the Panamanians. Yeah, they we supported this Panamanian independence movement and yeah, threw off the shackles of Columbia. And Columbia is like, what did you just do? Because we gain control of that. We we followed that congressional mandate and gain control of

this Panama Canal zone. Basically, the swath uh that went through Panama was considered American soil thanks to a treaty UM from my believe nineteen o two, the hey Bunal Varia treaty UM where Panama signed over the canal zone.

There was no Spanish translation of this treaty. Yeah, so basically the U S went in over through Colombian control of Panama, supported Panamanian independence and then rob Panama of its canal one fell in like a year, yeah, and Columbia is like, well, just I guess we'll just start exporting cocaine and massive exactly, we'll get you back one day.

So um. In the end, they paid about forty million bucks in nineteen o four for the assets of this French company, just a lot of money back then, and about ten million dollars um as this very cheeky article by the way, did you notice um they offered they she referred to it as um alimony of sorts to Panama ten million bucks to get gain the rights to this canal zone. And basically, hey, we're gonna run the show.

We're gonna finish your canal from the eleven mile mark to the you know, to the ocean where it belongs. And like you said, I think there was a certain amount of snub to it, right, probably so um, but they said, you know what we gotta do first, though, is we have to decide on if we can go sea level. Um, like, was it just the French were

incompetent or is it really impossible to do sea level? Yeah, like we need to do our own due diligence basically, And they did that, and Theodore Roosevelt chose chief engineer John Frank Stevens, and he was like, it's all about the locks, dudes. If you want to canal here, you can have to go over these mountains, not through them. Right.

So here's the thing. And this is just brilliant because there was another problem with this isthmus And there's this thing called the Chagres River and it is very temperamental. It was prone to flooding. All sorts of crazy stuff associated with this river. So not only did you have the continental divide, the jungle and the malaria to deal with once you completed it, what were you gonna do with this river? Stevens came up with this great idea that you go over the mountains, and you go over

the mountains. You killed two birds with one stone by damming the river, and you create a lake that will carry you over the mountains. Like, yeah, I'm sure that's not pronounced correctly. Think about that. That is one of the most brilliant feats of engineering I've ever heard of, the Panama Canal. Yeah, but that's specific aspect of it damming the river to create a lake so you can go over the mountains. Yeah, that's just incredibly beautiful the

whole thing too. And at the time, dude in the early nineteen hundreds is just like, it's amazing that they could pull us off. Yeah, because they're all wearing like knickers and stuff. Yeah, it's very there's some awesome documentaries out there, by the way, you should watch. In fact, there's one. There's one cool. Just go to the YouTube's and uh, put in time laps Panama Canal and it takes you the full route in like a minute and a half. Nice and said eight to ten hours. And

it's kind of neat. You know. The boat goes in and sinks and then not sinks but lowers and then raises, and then it tools along in the lake for a little while and then sinks and lowers and raises and yeah, because it's like an eight to ten hour transit right from from deep water to deep water eight to ten hours. Yeah, depending on your boat. I guess once you finally get clearance to go through. That's right, So he's damned up.

The river created got tuned lake. Um ships going towards the Pacific kind of enter it uh Lemon Bay in the Caribbean, go through a couple of locks upward and just it's like walking up steps basically, except it's a big boat and it's done with water. And then they navigate through that lake for a little while and then go towards Panama City through another series of locks and down, down, down over the mountains and boom, you are connected to

the rest of the world. Right, So when they when they um agreed on the lock method, they had one other thing to handle. And that's why the scott is maybe they were getting confused with locks meaning lakes, right, maybe that's a bunch of locks. They're like, where are all the locks? They're like they're right there. They're like, no,

but where are the locks? So there was one other big problem that had leveled the French effort, which was um yellow fever, which you can be immune to if you're exposed to it in childhood, but if you're from New York, you're not. So you go down to Panama and you are stung by a mosquito and you die. Um. The thing is, nobody knew that it was mosquitoes until a guy named Ronald bross uh in seven studied mosquitoes in India and found malaria present in their stomachs and

that it was transmittable through their saliva. Yeah, they didn't know what it was. They were all sorts of different theories. Yeah, they thought it was maybe from like unclean living whatever. When they found out that it was the mosquitoes, they that changed everything. So they to this really rigid um anti mosquito uh program. They cleaned up the country basically and basically eradicated came close to eradicating yellow fever in the area, which paved the way for this lock system

to be built. Yeah, and you can thank Colonel William Gorgas for heading up that sanitation squad. And um, yeah, I mean it worked, and that was the key, because you can't have your workers dropping dead of yellow fever every day. You have to they have to drop dead of landslides. Yeah. Even though a lot of these workers were you know, poor black people. I think eighty five percent of the people that died were black. Um, and a lot of people still died, but it wasn't like

the dropping dead from yellow fever, you know. But it's still a very dangerous project. Mudslides, all all sorts of drownings, things like that. So we've got the the we've got yellow fever licked. We've settled on the lock system, and um John Frank Stevens is replaced by a guy named Lieutenant Colonel George Washington Gothals and he was a lock expert and he looked at the plan and he said, you know what, We're gonna divide this up into three sections.

That makes perfect sense. It does. You've got the Pacific section that's going to be working from Limon Bay, which by the way, means lime in Spanish. Did you know that? I did not. Uh. So they're working from Limon Bay to the newly created Lake Gatun. Yeah that was the Atlantic Division. Yeah, okay, you're right. So the Atlantic divis is synonymous with the Caribbean um. And then so you've got the Atlantic Division working from Gattuned to um or

Lemont to get tune. You have the Central Division. This is the hardest part. Yeah, they're working in Lake Gatune to basically create a channel through this Continental Divide. You don't have to cut sea level, but you you don't need to make sure these ships aren't gonna like run around in a mountain. Um. And then you have the Pacific Division, which is working from uh the end of the Continental Divide pass which is Pedro Miguel locks down

to the Pacific, right, that's right. And like we said, the railway, the Panamanium Railroad is there, and um, we had like awesome gear at the time. It was no longer you know, men with chisels and sledgehammers and stuff. It was steam shovels, rock drills, dynamite and uh they moved ninety six million cubic yards of earth and rock, right,

which is seventy three million cubic meters, that's right. And uh it was really hot though, and it was a pretty bad scene and they called that Hell's Gorge and it was dangerous and that's where I think most of the lives were lost on this second pass. Yeah, and that was definitely the hardest work, but they made it through.

Um and by nine a crane that was used in the construction of the Panama Canal was the first thing to ever make it through all the way and they were like sweet, yeah, and eight months later it was open for business as far as I understand, Yeah, big business. Um should we should we walk people through or I guess swim people through? Yeah? I think we should. Okay, Uh, you approach from the Atlantic, you go through the gattoon locks. It's gonna lift your vessel up eighty five ft pretty awesome,

and take you to Gatun Lake. Very nice. There. You're gonna wind through that channel for about twenty three miles, then enter the Gallard cut about eight miles through there, and you're gonna reach the Pedro Miguel locks, and then they're gonna lower your ship about thirty feet to the

mirror floors lake. You're gonna pass through this, it's about a mile long, and then the two steps mirror floors locks are gonna return you finally back to sea level to seven mile passage from there to the Pacific, And all told, you've gone fifty miles in about eight to ten hours. And um, mind bogglingly, I saw that it takes fifty two million gallons of fresh water to move a ship from one end to the other two million,

and they're getting all that from Lake Gatun. Yeah, and it's just I imagine it's just recycled back into the system, right, No, what is it? What happens to it? They lose it, most of it. It's it's either pumped back in. It either goes flows back into Lake Gatun or else it flows out into the oceans, which is not necessarily good. They're worried that Lake at Tune may become brackish and like a Tune is now the freshwater supply of Panama

and it they're using a lot of it up. Yeah. Well, it's always presented a bit of an environmental quagmire, especially with their plans to expand, which we'll get to. But right now they have two way traffic. Um. They're looking to make that a three lane highway, which would actually adding that third lane, um will double the amount of traffic. Yeah, which is crazy. You would think it would increase it by a third. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's wider. Oh maybe it allows for two ships at a time.

They just jam like eight in there once. I don't know. I do know that if you are a large enough ship, they don't let you drive yourself because you know you've got one drunk sea captain and all of a sudden, your locks are out of commission, so they use electric towing locomotives to tow those big bad boys. Right, And we should say, just briefly, with the locks, if you want to move a ship upward, you flow into a lock.

The lock closes behind you and it fills up with water so that you can float over the lip of the next higher lock that the gate closes behind you with that one and it fills in with water, and so on and so forth. Yeah, it's remarkably basic. Yeah, and then the opposite takes place when you're stepping down. Yeah, it's just basically going into a little square pool, raising or lowering the water level so you can go up

or down. It's really neat. Yeah. And if you've got a minute and a half to kill, you can take this voyage in high speed on the YouTube. So uh, Like we said, the US used gunboat diplomacy to and I guess good old fashioned, old timey nineteen o two

swindling to gain control of the Panama Canal zone. And it had complete control until nine nine when Jimmy Carter um malaise forever right terrise that Simpsons, they unveil a statue of Jimmy Carter and it says Malaise Forever on the base and one of the townspeople goes, he's history's greatest monster. Anyway, Carter negotiated with the leader of Panama at the time, UH General Omar Terrios Herrera, and said, hey, how is he like this thing back? Give us You

think they said, hey, we'd like this back. I like to think of American magnanimous. Not sure. So we said, you know what, we've had it for this long plus plus we're talking Carter, it's entirely possible. He just started contacting people and said, what's the US have that we can sell or give back. It's a good point. Um. So yeah, he he sold like one of the like the presidential yacht was sold by him. I really yeah.

Why because he thought it was frivolous. That's awesome, um and Panama Canal He's like, how about this, Let's get rid of a significant portion of our economy. Anyway, he gives it back after twenty years and on December thirty, which is why I suspect they made it a twenty year deal. Yeah, I mean they had to transition. You can't just hand the keys over and be like all right, send your crew in, right, but not only that, Like why not a fifteen year deal or an eighteen year

deal or year deal. They went with twenty because it was gonna end on December thirty millennium. Actually that didn't start till two thousand one though, Right, yeah, but you know, okay, it's symbolic, right, Okay, So the Panamanians take over and um immediately start taking flak because the things aging traffics jammed up. Yeah, they've done a good job with it, though, it's it's just by nature of how things are. These they are victims of circumstances. UM and five percent of

the world's trade goes through the Panama Canal. We sold them a limit of a canal, right there. The millionth ship UM went through in two thousand, ten hundred and forty four thousand ships go through a year, and it's a very narrow little strip. Yeah, you know what that means, waiting in line, a lot of waiting in line. Plus also there's an upper limit to the size ship that can go through. It's called Panama Panamax is the is the ship size. That's yeah, what a great name for

the guess ship that Panamax, what could be bigger than that? Well, these ships that are called post Panama exactly, A lot of shippers are like, you know what, I'm tired of waiting. It's actually going to be more economical for me to build a ship that can't go through the Panama Canal but can hold a lot more and I'll just sail around the lower part of South America. And um, that's

kind of increasingly happening. Plus, Nicaragua threatened to open their own canal, So Panama says, okay, wait, wait, wait, let's let's holl the referendum and see if we can expand this thing and modernize it and save the canal. And Panamanian said, yes, let's so in two thousand and six they approved this third lane that's expected to be open by two fourteen. That is Nicaragua still planning a canal. I don't know. I don't know if that shot it

down or not. Well, and there's also talk now with a northwest passage thanks to um what some people might say, it's climate change and melting ice caps. There may be a way to get there, um by land. Henry Hudson is clapping in his grave. Um, So we'll see if that happens. I don't know. I didn't get a chance to really look into that research. And like, how real

is that? Right? Even still, the Panamanians will probably make their UM five point to five billion investment back eventually, although it took the US good forty years to make four million back. Yeah, yeah, I think thee when they finally broke even. Huh that's crazy. Yeah, And um, you break even by charging a toll. I don't think we

even mentioned that. You obviously, like any way station or passage, you gotta pay according to how what how much stuff you got, right, It's like I think the record is I looked it up. It was like a hundred fifty or something. Yeah, they do it by ton in. The thing is is if you are, um carrying a lot of really expensive natural gas, right, you're gonna pay a lesser toll than if you're carrying a bunch of less

expensive or even equally expensive coal, which isn't fair. And if you're if you're transporting a lot of raw steel, why should you pay more? So they're they're trying to figure out a new toll system, especially for the newly expanded version of the canal um that takes into account the value of the of what's on board rather than just the weight, right, So they should make a little

more money that way. Yeah. I don't know if this is still accurate, but the record that I have is a hundred and fifty three thousand dollars, six hundred and fifty three thousand, six hundred and sixty two and the cheapest was when a dude swam across it. Any weighed like a hundred and fifty pounds, and so they charged them what like thirty cents. Yeah, that back in Richard Halliburton and he swam the Panama Canal, and I guess it was some sort of publicity stunt. I'm sure people

love doing stuff like that back then. Yeah. But if you look at this um this high speed route on YouTube, it's pretty neat and there's a lot of times you're like, oh, look out for that boat, and then it turns you're like, okay, so there's a lot of activity out there. Yeah, you know, it's not a pleasure cruise. Well no, and it's not one ship at a time. They have, like you said, two way traffic, right, that's right, and they try to

keep them going through as efficiently as possible. And I should say also, um, the the um the new locks that they have can serve about six of the water used, so they'll address a lot of environmental concerns hopefully. I got a couple of little facts here if you're interested. Uh, the entrance to the canal in the Atlantic side is twenty two and a half miles west of the Pacific entrance, which is interesting because it has a unique S shape.

And then, um, the locks themselves are seven ft thick each, So if you're wondering how to keep out that much water, like to to basically damn up the oceans, you need to do it with seven foot thick concrete. Um. The workforce is paname in right now, which is pretty great. And uh, it's about all. I got. Sixty million pounds of dynamite was used to construct this thing. That's some nice stats. Chuck, Yeah, it's not bad. Cool You got anything else then? No, all the rest of these are

kind of boring. Panama Canal forever. Uh. If you want to learn more about the Panama can now, you can read this very good article on how stuff works dot com type in Panama Canal or turning a run canal. See what happens when you do the ladder. Um, Chuck, hold on, let's let's take a message break. Huh, it is time for a listener mail, Josh, I'm gonna call

this one listener mail about listener mail. Hey guys, I'm currently on the seven train heading to Queens for Manhattan after a long day of working as an auditor at a C p A firm. Um, as usual, I'm listening to your podcast. This time it was the death Mask episode, and you're concluding with a listener mail. And this is instance. It was from Martha regarding peak oil. And I think Martha was talking about the auditing of oil reserves. And

he says this to Marda. She was correct for the most part, regarding the audit of oil reserves held by entities whose stocks may be publicly traded on the stock market. Just one thing. I was so a gas by that I felt I needed to type this from my phone as I'm on the train. Still, the SEC does not perform any audits of its own on these companies. It is firms like the one I work for that audit

these companies, albeit under SEC guidelines. Actually p C a O B public company audit oversight board guidelines and if you want to get technical, uh, the SEC may perform a type of audit, but when they do, there you really auditing an audit firm or an audit that has already been done by an audit firm as part of some kind of investigation. What So they'll audit an audit like the SEC does an audit. So it's a long

and sort of it. I've said audit club finds. I've actually been through one of these audits and it is no fun at all. For some reason, it seems everyone whom works at the SEC is what you stereotypically picture as an accountant with no humor. Plus the word audit loses all meaning when you hear it. That's right. I digress though, Guys. If you pull up a ten K annual filing for any public company, you can see in the audit opinion the audit firm which performed the audit

for that particular year. I hope that clears things up. Henrik Gomez and Henry I'm not sure if that cleared it up, but um, if I was an accountant, I would probably say, yes, very much clear things, very nice, Thank you very much, Henry. That was very nice of you to correct somebody who is correcting us. Yeah, and I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You gotta take that. Thank you. Seven train man? Is that a terrible train? Do that one? It's like it's the old red train that looks like

it's about to fall off. It's like the midnight Meat train. Yeah, have you seen that? Now? What's midnight meat? That's a midnight meat train. It's got Vinny Jones and Bradley Cooper in it. It's actually based on a Clive Barker short story, because that's an old joke between me and my friend p J, who've met I believe. Yeah, he cookouts famously. PJ is a great chef home chef, but he was so he would typically take so long we referred to

his meals as midnight meat. And then I made a joke about cold cooking a steak one time night because it took like twenty four hours. Yeah, no, that's definitely okay. This is not a slam on PJ. No, we love the midnight Meat. Uh, if you have anything you want us to know, if you want to correct somebody who's corrected us, or you just want to say hi whatever. You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot com Slice Stuff

you Should Know. You can always find us on our website Right that's right, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com. H