Tag Archives: History of the Panama Canal

The Third Set of Canal Locks

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Currently the Panama Canal has two ‘lanes’ for vessels, each with its own set of locks (one set for at either end for vessels travelling from the Pacific to the Caribbean, and one set for ships travelling the opposite direction. As part of the canal expansion, a third set of locks will be added at either end of the canal, one on the Pacific side to the southwest of the existing Miraflores Locks, the other to the east of the existing Gatun Locks.

As might be expected 100 years after the original locks were built, the new sets are considerably more modern in design. Each chamber will have three lateral water-saving basins, for a total of nine basins per lock and 18 basins total. Like the existing locks, these will be filled by gravity, but unlike the existing locks, the water-saving basins will allow the used water to be recycled, rather than just being allowed to flow into the oceans.

10 Years in design, the new lock chambers will be 1,400 ft (426.72 m) long, by 180 ft (54.86 m) wide, and 60 ft (18.29 m) deep. They will use rolling gates instead of miter gates, the swinging gates which are used by the existing locks. Rolling gates are used in almost all existing locks with dimensions similar to those being proposed, and are a well-proven technology. The new locks will use tugboats to position the vessels instead of locomotives. As in the case of the rolling gates, tugs are successfully and widely utilized for these purposes in locks of similar dimensions.

In a recent interview, Nick Pansic, one of the design engineers for the new locks said “The Third Set of Locks project really is the opportunity for the Panama Canal Authority to “unlock the bottle neck” on their current canal system. This project includes the largest water-saving basins ever designed or built and the highest design standards we have come across as international designers for lock projects. Specifically, we are designing for major earthquakes, and the design requirements are extremely high. We’ve been pioneering new technology to advance the design state of the practice – specifically for the lock walls, and also for the lock gates. The lock gates are massive steel structures, over three thousand tons each. Making these lock gates work under a highly seismic event has been a real challenge that the design team has come through with the help of 3D modeling.”

The Panama Railway and the Canal

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Completing construction of the Panama Railway was not the end of their problems. No one had any experience of building a railway in such tropical conditions before, indeed at the time of opening, commercial public railways services were less than 30 years old. Wooden bridges that had served in the US, quickly decayed in the tropical heat and had to be replaced with iron bridges, wooden trestles had to be replaced with gravel embankments and the original pine sleepers proved to have a life of less than a year in the Panamanian climate.

Six heavy locomotives and four lighter ones provided the initial motive-power. Trains were made up from a variety of rolling stock that included 22 passenger cars (each with a capacity of 60 passengers), 51 closed boxcars and 72 flat cars. On opening the First class passenger fare was $25 (one way), children under 12 years old travelled for $6.25, the second class fare was ‘only’ $10 and personal baggage ten cents a pound. Mail was charged at .22 cents a pound, coal was $5.00/ton, first class freight in boxes or bales was .50 cents a cubic foot. All freight charges were paid in gold. The Panama Railroad was a very lucrative investment. From 1855 and 1867 more than $700 million in gold was carried on the railroad without the loss of a single dollar, and earning the railway’s owners 0.25% in fees.

The completion of the Central Pacific – Union Pacific railroad at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869 was the turning point in the fortunes of the Panama Railroad. By 1877 the Panama Railroad had revenues of $1,284,000 and operating expenses of $998,000, leaving a profit of just $286,000. Essentially the railroad was bankrupt. On Wall Street the stock plummeted from $369 per share in 1874 to less than $52 in 1877.

Again though, just when things were looking bleak, the railway again managed to turn things around. The existence of the railway was one of the key factors that contributed s to the selection of Panama as the site of the canal. In 1881 the French Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique purchased controlling interest in the Panama Railway Company. It was then used extensively to provide logistical support for the can al construction effort. When the French Canal effort failed, the value of the railway was not lost on the Americans and in 1904, the United States government under Theodore Roosevelt purchased the railway from the French canal company. At that time, railway assets included some 75 miles (121 km) of track, 35 locomotives, 30 passenger cars, and 900 freight cars.

Under the Americans, the railway enjoyed initial investment, with much of the rolling stock being replaced. However, investment was not maintained and the railway went into decline as the growth of road transport took much of its traffic.

The Japanese Plan to Attack the Panama Canal

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Throughout it’s history, there has never been an attack on the Panama Canal infrastructure, but at least one was planned. During World War II, the canal was an invaluable lifeline for the Allies, a fact not missed by the Axis powers. In 1943, with the tide of the war turned against them, and desperate for anything that might delay the defeat that was beginning to seem inevitable, the Japanese developed a plan to attack the canal locks using a secret submarine that they had developed and managed to conceal from the Allies.

The Canal was well fortified by the Americans, with shore based gun batteries, air and sea patrols and barrage balloons and anti-submarine nets. However, interrogation of prisoners had revealed that security had become lax, and air patrols had almost entirely ceased.

The Japanese had, in their fleet, a number of Sen Toku I-400-class submarines. At the time these were the largest submarines ever built (and would remain so, until the larger nuclear powered submarines began to be built in the 1960s). Not only were the Allies completely unaware of these vessels, but they had been designed and built as submarine aircraft carriers, capable of carrying light bomber aircraft far beyond the range of land-based bombers. Each I-400 submarine carried 3 specially designed Aichi seaplanes, each capable of carrying an 850 kg bomb.

Aided by documents provided by a Japanese engineer who had worked on the Canal’s construction, planning reached a very advanced stage, the pilots had been trained by bombing a full-size wooden replica of the Gatun locks, which had been built and towed out to sea. By disabling the Gatun Locks, which the Japanese believed were the easier target, the expected to be able to close the Canal for at least 6 months.

By attacking the Gatun Locks on the Atlantic side of the Canal, well out of range of any land-based bomber, and at the ‘wrong’ end of the Canal, it is quite possible that the plan would have succeeded. Fortunately, events overtook the Japanese, and by the time the war ended in 1945, although planning and training had largely been completed, there were still only 2 I-400 submarines completed and both of these were in Japan, and thousands of miles and weeks of travel away from the Caribbean.