“The Panama Canal: The Invisible Wonder of the World”  by Ron Armstrong
 
Mr. Armstrong has written a very good book on the Canal.  It contains photographs from the Archives of George Goethal’s collection at West Point.  Some photos you haven’t seen before.  This book is a great edition to your Panama Canal collections.

This book is currently available for your iPad via iBooks and soft cover from http://theinvisiblewonder.com 

 

From the Introduction:
 
This book is a pictorial history of the construction effort to build the Panama Canal.  It is not about the politics, disease, mosquitos, intrigue, treaties, the other possible locations for such a canal and a host of other peripheral subjects. All these various topics readily lend themselves to written descriptions and there are literally dozens of books that describe those subjects very well indeed.
 
It is virtually impossible to do justice to the effort in written word. This book is intended to give the viewer a hint of the massive effort that today goes mostly unseen.  It is primarily about the American construction but includes a bit of the failed French efforts.  A good deal of the French effort was used, by the Americans, to advantage but much of it was for naught since Gatun Lake covered it forever. The French excavations in the Culebra Cut were not in vain.  They reduced the American effort yard for yard.
Generally the book follows a traveler transiting from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  Within the sections described on page 4, the photos are loosely arranged by date or place within the section. Precise chronological order is impossible because of the time sequences of photos taken from a particular place.
 
On the back cover and page 1, is a 1913 quote from J. Saxon Mills.  There is another quote, of a similar nature, on page 85, by “Zone Policeman 88”, Harry Alverson Franck, from his 1914 book “Things as They are in Panama.”  Those comments were brought home by a friend who said of a recent transit, “There wasn’t much to see.” This book, hopefully, will help to readers to overcome such expressions.  It is my desire that the traveler will realize a bit of the effort expended to make smooth sailing between two continents possible.
Up to 50,000 men were working at one time. The number who spent some time working on the canal is unknown. 22,000 laborers died under the French effort, mostly to disease.  Most of their grave markers are numbered without their names.  Under the Americans, over 5,000 died, mostly to accidents.  Everyone who worked for any time on the canal lost friends and coworkers.  In total, 27,000 men died, that is over 540 per mile, or one for every 10 feet from deep water to deep water.  For a little more perspective consider that in the length of an average cruise ship, 100 workers died, ship length by ship length, for the 50 miles.  Such sacrifice begs that people using the canal should remember the effort for many millennia, but in less than a lifetime the memory has faded to a blurred dream.
 
Work continued from 1881 until 1914 when the first large ship traversed ocean to ocean.  No sooner had ships begun to pass through the canal than slides, of massive proportion, completely blocked it, on more than one occasion.  As the mountains slid into the canal, the attitude was “We’ll just keep moving earth until the mountains run out of rock.”
The cost of the Canal was staggering but none of reputation could hold that the expense was not worth it.  Today, most of the ships on the seas are not built larger than the Panama Canal will allow.  Ship owners rarely build a ship over the 1000’ long and 106’ wide, thus allowing them to pass through the locks.  Ships of that size are called Panamax Ships.
The cost of original construction was $350,000,000 but keep in mind that those were gold dollars at $20 per ounce.  In 2012 with gold at $1600 per ounce that figure would be $28,000,000,000 or over a half billion dollars per mile.
 
This book is dedicated to the men of every race, religion, color, and creed who labored to make the Panama Canal possible.  For that reason there is no discussion of any other aspects of the canal.