Panama Canal ( a canal of death )

The idea of a passage between North and South America is older than their respective names. Christopher Columbus had searched in vain for a water passage through the land that would lead him to the Indies where riches awaited him. Napoleon III of France had once toyed with the idea of building a canal in France’s land across the sea, but nothing ever became of it. Perhaps because it would have been a high-risk operation involving lots of money and feats of ingenuity never attempted on a large scale.
No real progress was ever made, other than ideas and brainstorming, until the nineteenth century when a French individual named Ferdinand de Lesseps thought that it was time for a French-owned canal at Panama. He began convincing his countrymen that such a canal would make them famous and rich. Large business agreements were made and stock was sold for Lesseps new company the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interoceanique. The results of this stock sale were unsettling for the French. The company was only able to raise eight percent of what Lesseps had hoped for- 30 million francs of his requested 400 million francs.
To understand France’s failure in the building of the canal you must understand the physical geography of what is

In 1908 changes to the canal plans had to be altered because of unforeseen engineering problems. The canal width was changed from two hundred to three hundred feet, the lock size was increased by fifteen feet, and the Pacific locks were moved further inland for military strategic reason (harder to hit from the Pacific). The most difficult excavation took place at the Culebra Mountain or Culebra Cut. The canal had to be dug out of the largest mountain in the path. The French failed in their attempts at this excavation because they had tried to maintain a certain slope at the sides. This angle was impossible to hold because of the large landslides that take place year round because of the rainfall in the area. 96 million cubic yards of dirt were removed from the cut, 30 million of that being soil deposited in the bottom of the Cut by landslides. Dynamite was a choice tool used to loosen the rocky ground for excavation. Over nineteen million pounds of dynamite was used in the Culebra Cut alone.

The final design of the canal was this: A damn built at Gatun, which would create, at the time, the largest artificial lake in the world. This lake would fuel the large locks. A series of three locks were placed at Gatun that could raise of lower ships 85 feet vertically, another set of two locks at Pedro Miguel, and a single at Miraflores on the Pacific side. The width at the bottom of the canal was 300 feet. The width at the top of the canal depended on the location. The canal was 1,800 feet wide at Culebra. The locks themselves were enormous. They were manufactured in the United States and were over 1,000 feet long apiece. They were shipped in pieces to their sites and cemented together. Water was allowed to flow into or out of the locks through large culverts in the wall of the locks.