- [Narrator] One of the
great engineering wonders of the world.
- It has allowed for the movement
of well over a million ships back and forth
from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean.
- [Narrator] Carrying a quarter trillion dollars
worth of cargo.
- There was a huge boom in American economy.
- [Narrator] But a little over a century ago,
the Panama Canal doesn't exist.
- If you want to get from New York to San Francisco,
you got 13,000 miles to go by ship.
- [Narrator] The dream to build it
is an unrelenting 35 year struggle.
- 160 Million cubic yards of material
would have to be excavated and then dumped somewhere.
- It's a kind of bonkers idea.
- [Narrator] Battling natural disasters.
- Whatever's underneath it is gonna get smashed.
- [Narrator] And each other.
- He gets the workers to fight amongst themselves.
- You're fired.
- This is an assignment he's not gonna survive.
- [Narrator] And eradicating
the deadliest creature on earth, the mosquito.
- The Spanish for yellow fever is the black vomit.
Because at the same time, you turn yellow,
you begin vomiting blood.
- [Narrator] It's a heated competition
between the world's most powerful nations.
- Sorry the Americans can't present today.
- For De Lesseps he is motivated by money.
There's a lot of money to be made.
- This was the biggest real estate transaction
in the history of the world.
- [Narrator] In a race to engineer the impossible.
- Failure is not an option.
- There's no other project of that scale and magnitude,
it was an endeavor like none other.
- [Narrator] This is the story of the Panama Canal.
(Dramatic music)
The world's economy is growing in the 1870s
and the introduction of the steamship
sparks an unprecedented rise in international trade.
Goods can be transported faster,
no longer reliant on sailing ships
at the mercy of the winds.
- Global trade was booming.
You had goods from Asia, Africa, Europe, North America,
East Coast, West Coast, South America,
moving around the planet by ship.
- [Narrator] But there's no direct route
to get products from the Atlantic to the Pacific by sea.
(dramatic music)
From Europe to California is a staggering 14,000 mile trip
around the Southern tip of Chile.
- If you were trying to ship something
from Newfoundland Canada to San Francisco,
you almost literally go from one Arctic circle to the other.
It's an extraordinary distance to go.
- [Narrator] A shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific
would be a game changer.
Reducing a three week journey to just 12 hours
and saving hundreds of millions in shipping costs.
But who will build it and where?
- There are two countries that are most interested
in building a canal in the 1870s.
The US and France.
- [Narrator] The US wants to build their canal in Nicaragua,
the French, in Panama.
- The French envision themselves
as the world's premier canal builders.
They've already completed a giant project
in the Suez in Egypt and so the French saw an opportunity
to take that engineering know-how, apply it to Panama,
and gain a kind of regional influence and power.
(ominous music)
- [Narrator] In 1879, top engineers from 22 countries meet
to officially decide who wins the bid to build the canal.
But the French have a secret weapon.
- Ferdinand Lesseps' claim to fame is the Suez Canal.
He organized the Suez canal project,
he oversaw the engineering, he oversaw the financing,
he was the man who United Europe and Asia.
He was a national hero.
- The Suez canal was one of the most successful
engineering projects in history.
By digging a trench from the Red Sea to The Mediterranean,
ships, coming from India and Asia sail straight
into the European markets.
- The Americans wanna go through Nicaragua.
They wanna build a lock canal
but that will be impossible to build
on such a scale as this.
- So when contemplating a canal,
there are really two choices.
The French were very successful
with what's called a sea level canal,
just digging a trench all the way through.
The Americans had some experience in
building canals too in the great lakes.
They relied on locks, which float a ship up
as they pump water in underneath it
and then let the ship down on the other side,
they're water elevators.
- We need a sea level canal as great as the Suez.
- Ferdinand Lesseps is motivated by money
and there's a lot of money to be made.
If you can get investors to invest in a Panama project,
that he will then be responsible for constructing,
he stands to make billions of dollars.
- [Narrator] After a week spent evaluating
the feasibility, cost and time to build each proposal,
the Congress reaches a decision.
The project goes to France.
(audience applauding)
- Lesseps is an incredible salesman.
This man has the gift of gab.
But there are a number of engineers who go,
that is a terrible idea, that will not work.
But De Lesseps is such a good salesman,
people buy into his idea anyway.
- [Narrator] While most estimates were over 200 million,
De Lesseps claims the canal will take just 12 years
and cost half that.
$2 billion today.
Now, he needs to somehow find the money.
- He tries to raise money from big institutional investors
and most of them say, no, this is crazy.
So what he does is he starts to use his fame from Suez
to persuade over a hundred thousand small investors
to give him $57 million dollars in tiny little bonds
that will pay off when the Panama Canal starts operating.
- [Narrator] The bonds are expensive,
costing roughly the annual salary
of the average French citizen.
But within a year, he's raised enough money
to begin construction
(dramatic music)
(suspenseful music)
After arriving the French team quickly realizes
they underestimated the challenge.
- The French run into every problem imaginable
in trying to build a sea level canal.
Partially because it's a kind of bonkers idea.
- [Narrator] Unlike the Suez,
Panama isn't flat sandy terrain.
- The issue with creating a sea level canal in Panama
is that Pacific and Atlantic oceans are at different levels.
- [Noel] On the Pacific side of it
is this ridge of mountains about nine miles across.
- [Narrator] The mountain pass
becomes known as The Culebra, Spanish for snake.
And they will attempt to cut it 210 feet down to sea level.
- All of that material, 160 million cubic yards of material
would have to be excavated and then dumped somewhere.
No one in human history had ever attempted
to move that much material.
- [Narrator] But after two years,
they only managed to cut three feet.
- It turns out to be a lot harder
to dig this trench than expected.
- [Narrator] And incredibly dangerous.
- Lots of soil is clay-based,
which means when the rainy season comes
there are these enormous mudslides.
They bury all their equipment, kill hundreds of men
and let months of work be evaporated in just minutes.
- [Narrator] By 1883, only 660,000 cubic meters of earth
have been excavated,
barely 10% of what's been promised by this point.
And that's not the only setback they're facing.
(ominous music)
- Yellow fever is a horrible disease
and it was endemic in the region.
In English it's called the yellow fever
mainly because after several days of intense sickness,
your liver fails and you become jaundiced and turn yellow.
(man coughs)
The Spanish for yellow fever is the black vomit.
Because at the same time, you turn yellow,
you began vomiting blood.
- [Narrator] And they have no idea what's causing it.
By 1884, 400 workers die of the disease
and several hundred others demand
they're returned to France.
De Lesseps is desperate to calm worried investors
and keep the project going.
- De Lesseps pays off reporters.
He spends about 12 to 13 million francs
which is about 1% of the overall budget,
basically buying good press for the canal.
- [Narrator] It's money he can't afford
and even worse, the bribes don't work.
- The news of his failures is beginning to leak out.
It's becoming known that he's behind schedule
and over budget and that with every step forward,
he takes two steps back.
- [Narrator] By 1887, the French have removed just 10 feet
from the Culebra Cut.
A year later, just 20 and De Lesseps
is finally forced to pull the plug
In less than a decade 20,000 men have died
and De Lesseps has burned through $287 million dollars
equal to over 8 billion today.
- The Panama canal bankruptcy
is one of the largest in history up until this point.
It may have been one of the largest ever.
It is massive enough that the phrase, kelp Panama,
what a Panama becomes a synonym in French
for what a mess or what a failure for decades to come.
- In this these eight years they've managed only
to dig a quarter of the way.
800,000 investors are bilked of their money.
It's a failure of global scale
and a disaster personally for De Lesseps.
- [Narrator] Despite France's spectacular failure,
people around the world wonder,
will anyone be bold enough to take on building
the Panama Canal?
One man is, and he's about to become
the president of the United States of America.
At the Dawn of the 20th century,
innovations in electricity, mining and steel production,
make the US the world's largest exporter
of manufactured goods.
- In 1850 total American exports
amount to about $147 million dolars.
By 1900, that's more like 1.45 billion.
So it's a tenfold increase.
- If you want one word to think about
the United States in this period,
think about overproduction.
Our factories are really good.
We have a lot of resources.
We don't have as many buyers of our products.
We need more places to sell.
- [Narrator] When Theodore Roosevelt
becomes president in 1901,
he's determined to build a canal,
but not only to boost foreign trade.
- His philosophy is to speak softly and carry a big stick.
And a part of that means being able to defend the nation.
So for him, having a vibrant, strong Navy is crucial
and an important part of that strong Navy
is the ability to be able to get to the East or West Coast.
- [Narrator] By 1902, Roosevelt has the support of Congress
to start construction but quickly hits a roadblock.
Panama is still a Colombian province
and Colombia refuses to sign a treaty.
- Teddy Roosevelt is not the most patient man on earth.
If you wanted to design a negotiating strategy
to antagonize Teddy Roosevelt,
you could not have done better than the Colombian strategy.
- [Narrator] Roosevelt makes an audacious move.
He collaborates with Panamanian separatists
to start an uprising.
- This is probably one of the most
sleazy national origin stories that one could find.
Literally a separatist revolt is planned in a hotel room
because Teddy Roosevelt is finally sick and tired
of the Colombians dragging out the negotiations.
- He stations the gunboat USS Nashville
off the coast of Panama as a show of force.
And without a shot fired Roosevelt gets his way.
On November 3rd, 1903,
the Panamanian succeed in forming their own nation.
And a year later Roosevelt spends 50 million
to take over the project.
- Panama would get $10 million in exchange
for ceding control of the entire 50 mile canal zone
but also the French company that was there previously
would get 40 million US dollars for all the assets
and the remainder of whatever they left behind.
When the Americans got there, however,
they realized that perhaps they've been swindled.
And the equipment the French left behind
had all been left to the elements.
What wasn't buried in mud had rusted out.
- [Narrator] Even Roosevelt's hand-picked Chief Engineer,
John Wallace, isn't optimistic
about his chances for success.
- It's said that he brings two coffins with him,
one for himself, and one for his wife,
because he assumed based on what he's heard
about how dangerous and what the conditions are in Panama,
that this is an assignment he's not gonna survive.
- [Narrator] When construction begins
familiar problems arise.
- Progress was slow.
They've met all the same obstacles the French did.
There was nothing different, nothing new in their approach
to cutting through Panama.
- [Narrator] After two difficult years,
the chief engineer quits.
- He did not cite anything publicly,
other than he had family issues,
but privately he was exhausted.
- 128 Million into the project
and Roosevelt's bold gamble in Panama
is already on the verge of failure.
- Roosevelt faces a lot of criticism
and people are already referring to it as Teddy's folly
or Roosevelt's folly.
- But this is where Roosevelt's stupendous ego
comes into play.
In his mind failure is not an option.
- [Narrator] Roosevelt knows strong leadership
could be the key and looks for a chief engineer
who is as tough as he is.
(dramatic music)
- John Frank Stevens was an engineer's engineer.
-Come on, let's pick up the pace!
He had built some of the most challenging railroads
in north America.
This guy lived to build ambitious infrastructure.
- He's not just accomplished as an engineer
in terms of design,
he's accomplished in terms of what we today
would call project management.
He actually thinks wholistically about what is needed
and what needs to be done and that appealed
to Theodore Roosevelt.
- Tell the President I'll let him know tomorrow.
- Stevens is being asked to go to Panama
to manage a construction disaster.
You gotta go down to a tropical country
that's disease-ridden, far from your family,
and you're not actually getting paid
huge sums of money to do this.
- It took his wife to convince him
that every engineering project he never completed
had led him to this one moment, the big project.
Larger and more consequential
than anything he had taken on before.
(soft music)
- Stevens knows if he succeeds he'll do what neither
the French nor America's best engineer could do.
- You almost really have to appeal to somebody patriotism
and sense of mission to get them to accept this.
This nightmare job.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] On July 26th, 1905,
John Stevens arrives in Panama to take over the challenge.
(dramatic music)
- Steven's comes in and looks at this thing and says,
this is a excrement show.
It's a rolling disaster.
On the other hand, I think he's a little relieved
because the problems are so big that he thinks,
okay, I know how to fix this.
This is like such a disaster
that it is not rocket science to sort out the mess
that's - happening over here.
- Tell everyone to stop.
- But the first thing he did is stop the digging completely.
He knew from his days in the railroad,
that a happy and safe workforce
was a much more productive one.
So instead of focusing on cutting further,
he built towns, he built bakeries.
he built bars and schools and churches and roads.
- Stevens decision to stop the work,
increasing their comfort, therefore their motivation,
their productivity, their efficiency
was an absolute must do.
- [Narrator] But Steven still faces the biggest threat
to the Canal's progress, disease.
With hundreds of workers dying every month,
Stevens turns to a specialist.
- Dr. William Gorgas is hired as the sanitation expert
for the project.
He came from a time in Cuba
in which he fought yellow fever there
and had an idea about how to handle it in Panama
but it was controversial.
- Most people thought that disease
was likely transmitted by ants.
So what's the solution if you are worried about ants?
You put everything you own
in little standing pools of water.
The ants can't get past the water,
it's a brilliant solution.
Little did they realize of course,
that they were creating the perfect breeding environment
for the thing that was actually killing them.
- William Gorgas is the first major believer in the idea
that major diseases in the tropics are transmitted
parasitically through mosquitoes.
- [Narrator] Under Gorgas'
leadership, a huge team, over 4,000 workers,
forge an all out war against mosquito breeding grounds.
- And he moves to get rid of still bodies of water,
where mosquitoes lay their larva.
He's spraying water with oil to create a film on top
that will prevent larva from being able to hatch.
He's also trying to get screens added to all buildings,
he wants screens over beds.
- Gorgas' plan is expensive.
Screening the living quarters alone
cost the equivalent of 2.5 million today,
and few believe it will work.
- People have deep skepticism about Gorgas' methods.
They think that he is some kind of experimenter
who's more interested in getting his name published
in scientific journals than actually bringing
the canal project to fruition.
- [Narrator] For Stevens, supporting Gorgas' plan
is an enormous risk, of time and money.
- Stevens is a brave man.
He's willing to risk his reputation.
He's willing to risk criticism
to do what he thinks is right.
So whether that means attacking mosquitoes,
trying to stop the problem of disease,
he's willing to take these bold risks when he's convinced
that they're the right thing to do.
- [Narrator] And if it fails,
so will, America's dream for a canal.
(dramatic music)
It takes several months,
but Dr. Gorgas' unprecedented war on the mosquito
has infection rates across the canal zone plummeting
and amazingly in November, 1905,
Panama has its last case of yellow fever ever.
- Gorgas manages to reduce death rates
from yellow fever and malaria by a factor of 10.
And without it, it's quite likely that the Americans
would have faced a disaster on the scale of the French.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] 18 Months into construction
the workforce grows to 24,000 men
and Chief Engineer, John Stevens,
can finally resume trying to cut through
the 200 foot Culebra Mountains.
- In order to build this canal,
they have to remove enough dirt that will be comparable
to building 117 Empire State Buildings or 92 Colosseums.
- The big elephant for Stevens is waste disposal.
You're digging these giant trenches.
You're cutting down a mountain.
You need to get rid of all the detritus.
- [Narrator] The French had relied on a system
of steam shovels to move dirt
but it's a painfully slow process.
(ominous music)
- What are tracks doing all the way out here?
- Its the old railroad.
(ominous music)
- Transoceanic railroad.
Ain't that something.
- [Narrator] Steven's begins rebuilding
the old Panama railroad,
seeing potential that the French didn't.
And spending 9 million to get it back up and running.
(dramatic music)
- Rehabilitating the railroad
and using it to move the dirt was genius.
I mean, it was a very practical use of something
that was in existence, that made sense and it worked.
- So he actually creates special train wagons
that have sides that collapse into a flatbed
and then he creates a plow that allows the dirt
to be moved off this cart.
So that allows him to progress in a much more efficient way
than what the French have done before.
- [Narrator] Soon workers are digging in a single day,
what the French dug in a month.
But a year and a half into his time on the canal,
there's still one thing
Stevens hasn't been able to conquer.
(dramatic music)
(ground rumbling)
- The jungle itself is what holds
the soil together in Panama
and so when they start digging away
and exposing it and it gets wet,
it no longer has that cohesiveness
and becomes basically just like a sticky fluid
that's gonna flow downhill.
Whatever's underneath it is gonna get smashed.
- [Narrator] Steven's and his workers
face nearly 10 mudslides a year which erase any progress
cutting the mountains down to sea level.
- It'll never work.
The sea level canal will never work.
- You could tell it was a sisyphean task.
They would dredge out this channel,
but then more mud and rocks would slide in
and fill in all the work they just done.
- We can't go through the mountain,
we'll have to go over it.
- [Narrator] Stevens is convinced the only way to
succed is to build a lock canal instead
to raise and lower boats over the mountains.
But in order to put his more expensive plan into action,
he'll have to do something more difficult
than moving a mountain.
(dramatic music)
Convince the United States government
to completely change course.
After barely a year, Frank Stevens is on the verge of being
the second American engineer to fail
at building a canal through Panama.
His only hope, somehow convince members of Congress
to make a change.
- A lock canal will take eight years,
a sea level, 18 if it can be done at all.
- Stevens claims that while his new plan
will cost over 150 million,
it will save a hundred million in the long run.
- He made it very clear what the stakes were.
If there was to be a canal at all,
it had to be a lock design.
The only answer was to change designs
and move in a different direction.
- So if there's one thing people in Washington,
don't like it's hearing bad news,
especially when the bad news comes in the form of,
hey, this thing that we spent a lot of money on,
isn't gonna work.
- A few days later, a skeptical Senate casts its vote.
- There are moments in our American history
in which there is only one right decision
to accomplish the goal and this was the moment.
Pivotal crossroads in which America very easily
could have gone the way of France
and made itself an embarrassment.
- By a thin margin of 36 to 31, the lock canal passes.
- Stevens new the right way and he convinced the Senate
that he knew the right way.
- The projected cost of the new canal is astronomical,
$375 million dollars, nearly 9 billion today.
And with Congress setting the deadline for 1914,
just eight years away, Stevens has no room for error.
- A lock canal required a lot of more diverse skills.
If you think of a sea level canal,
it's just excavation and dirt disposal.
Building locks required a lot of engineering.
There were no computers and there's no materials
in Panama so everything has to be imported.
- [Narrator] For Stevens' plan,
160 feet of The Culebra Mountains
will still need to be excavated.
40 feet less than the French were attempting,
and then flooded.
Two sets of locks will be built on the Pacific side.
One on the Atlantic side which can raise and lower ships
to 85 feet above sea level.
They'll sail between the locks
using the largest man-made lake in the world but creating it
will mean building the largest earthen dam in history.
(dramatic music)
- Stevens and his team came up with a plan to dam
the Chagres River, turn a major part of the interior
of Panama into a giant lake.
This was brilliant for several reasons.
For one, it helped them control the mudslides
that had been wiping away equipment
and causing all kinds of problems.
Two, they didn't even have to dig the canal
through Central Panama because for more than 20 miles,
the boats could just sail across this giant lake.
- [Narrator] Within months, dirt trains
are carrying soil and rock to build
the gigantic earthen wall but progress is still slow
and there is worry that the lock canal
might also be impossible to build.
- As the canal continues to go forward,
Stevens has brought to bear his gifts and talents.
He's made this more of a railroad project.
He's put infrastructure in place,
and now things aren't moving as rapidly as Congress
and other powers would like it to.
Undoubtedly he's feeling stress and pressure.
- You have to imagine it's at this moment
that he thinks or fears maybe
that he's not the man for the job.
- [Narrator] For Stevens, the timing couldn't be worse
for a visit from the president.
- In 1906 Roosevelt decides that he needs to go down
to personally inspect the progress of the canal.
And so as with anything with Roosevelt,
it's gonna be a political and media spectacle.
- Roosevelt wants to go to Panama to prove that it's safe.
The timing of his visit comes at a moment
when the canal project is under serious threat.
Roosevelt believes that the only way to reinspire the public
and to inspire Congress that this project can be completed,
is to go there in person.
- It's the first time a sitting president
has ever left the United States
and it's a huge morale boost
marked by an iconic photo opportunity.
- Roosevelt gets into the construction machinery,
how he keeps that suit so pristine white,
I have absolutely no idea.
He shows himself to be Action President.
It's a huge triumphal visit for him.
- But for the chief engineer, it's just another obstacle.
- Stevens lacked the skill of managing
and massaging superiors who wanted to stick their nose
in what you were doing.
He did not tolerate unwarranted interference.
He was in charge.
He knew better.
It drove him crazy.
(dramatic music)
- Two months after Roosevelt's visit
Stevens writes him a six page letter.
- [Stevens Voiceover] For the past several years
I've had my methods questioned by people
I wouldn't wipe my boots on.
I have given up hundreds of thousands of dollars of income
time with my family.
- Steven's decision has to be one of heartbreak.
But it's another instance
in which he probably faced the facts.
He looked at himself hard and decided
that this is the wrong direction
and he can't work on the canal anymore.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Less than 20 months into his tenure,
America's second Panama Canal Chief Engineer resigns,
leaving the world to wonder
whether it can ever be built at all.
(dramatic music)
By 1907, just one year into Congress's eight year deadline
to build a lock canal,
President Teddy Roosevelt loses another chief engineer.
But for his replacement,
rather than look for someone who won't quit.
(dramatic music)
Roosevelt, find someone who can't.
He names George Washington Goethals chief engineer.
- Goethals was an army engineer
and so he wasn't going anywhere.
He knew the chain of command.
He knew how to follow an order.
He wasn't going to stop until he was told to stop.
So if ever there was a person to finish a job,
it would be an army man like Goethals.
- George Washington Goethals
is an incredibly meticulous engineer
with a reputation for being what you could call a hard ass
in getting results.
He is your stereotype of a military officer
in terms of his desire and need for order.
- Break time's over, get back to work.
- [Narrator] But not everyone welcomes him with open arms.
- Well?
- Workers really liked Stevens.
So not only is Goethals coming in as the new guy,
who's replacing the former popular boss,
but he's also military and for a lot of these workers
that's not a positive thing.
So in this moment, some of the steam shovel operators,
they see this as their time to try and push back.
And the vast majority of them go on strike.
- Then go. All of you.
You're fired, get out of here.
- [Narrator] Rather than give in to their demands,
Goethals has the European steam shovel operators deported.
- Goethals starts to bring in West Indian workers,
primarily from Barbados to replace the Spanish
who are making too many demands and going on strikes.
Goethals seems to think of the workers merely
as pawns on a chess board
- Goethals' no nonsense style earns him the nickname,
the Czar of Panama and the workers fall into line.
But to have any hope of finishing in less
than seven years,
Goethals' men still need to get the Culebra Cut
down to 40 feet above sea level.
- And the only way to do that is with dynamite.
And what they're doing is they're taking this knowledge
from mining, they're taking this knowledge
from the transcontinental railroad
where going through mountain ranges requires
the use of a huge amount of explosives.
- In engineering terms, Goethals comes up with techniques
to better use explosives in the Culebra Cut.
To drill deeply into the rock,
set off dynamite and clear the resulting rubble.
They eventually use as much explosives in terms of tonnage
as great Britain produced
during the first year of World War I
- [Narrator] Ultimately, more than 60 million pounds
of dynamite will be used in building the canal.
But there's a downside.
- On December 12th, 1908, the last dynamite charge
is being set up for excavation and there's a huge explosion.
23 people are killed instantly and 40 others are injured.
It's an enormous tragedy.
(dramatic music)
- Goethals' reaction is extraordinarily cold.
He just comments about the flesh flying everywhere,
but not a whole lot changes in the wake of this accident.
- Look, Goethals is a soldier.
And this isn't to say that he has no concern for human life,
but he sees a unfortunate by-product of the line of work
that they're in.
He kind of just keeps chugging along.
- [Narrator] Goethals orders 6,000 men to keep digging
Culebra Cut around the clock.
But for Roosevelt, the progress is bittersweet.
He leaves office in March of 1909,
just a few months before construction begins
on the first set of locks.
the Gatun Locks on the Atlantic side.
(dramatic music)
The locks for the Panama canal,
will be the biggest built in history,
1000 feet long, and 110 feet wide,
large enough to hold an object the size of the Eiffel Tower.
- This was one of the first projects
that used millions of cubic meters of concrete,
which previously had really been limited
to home construction, maybe some foundations
or basements and things like that.
- [Narrator] More than 2 million cubic tons of concrete
needs to be poured.
Enough to build six Empire State Buildings
and Goethals is struggling with how to do it.
- The challenges of building the lock walls
out of concrete are pretty large
because the wall is quite large itself.
So traditional stone working techniques
of placing block by block, it would be a nightmare.
- [Narrator] Rather than make concrete blocks
and stack them, Goethals creates a series of cables,
stretching some 800 feet to suspend the buckets of concrete.
Each bucket weighing nearly six tons is swung
through the air high above the locks,
dropped into position and dumped.
- It's an easier concrete delivery
method in order to create
such massive walls and also your equipment and everything
is localized to where you're conducting the pour
and it's it's right there on site.
So you can pour faster.
- [Narrator] Over the next three years,
Goethals completes the Gatun locks on the Atlantic
and Pedro Miguel Locks on the Pacific.
But by 1912, concrete isn't done being poured
on the final set of locks
and the Culebra Cut is still being excavated.
(ominous music)
- Now, this right here will be finished
in six years, not two.
- For a soldier who wants to take orders and execute,
accomplish them, this puts a lot of pressure on him.
- [Narrator] To have any hope of finishing on time.
Goethals needs a miracle.
(dramatic music)
It's two years until the Panama Canal
is supposed to be finished and Chief Engineer Goethals
is struggling to stay on schedule.
He has an idea to separate his workers into two groups
and use a psychological strategy to motivate them.
- Gentlemen, on the other side of that lake
are a bunch of soldiers who are too soft for real battles.
- He tells the civilians that there's no way
they could beat the military guys
and he tells military workers
that they're lagging behind the civilians.
- On the other side of that lake
are a bunch of soft railroad workers
who think they can pour concrete faster than you can.
- Soon enough, there's a full fledged competition
between the two groups, each one vying to outdo the other.
- Prove them wrong.
- [Narrator] Now, the re-energized workforce turns
their attention to the massive iron gates
that will seal the water in the locks.
- The huge lock gates in the canal are an engineering Marvel
in and unto themselves because they're so big,
but they're hollow.
And it's a structure that is massive,
but also light and nimble.
To move these huge gate locks
it only takes about 25 horsepower,
which is basically like a riding lawn mower.
- [Narrator] By May, 1913, a year ahead of schedule,
all three sets of locks are finally completed.
- The whole construction of the Panama Canal
was like mission impossible
when you think about where it was built, when it was built.
The engineers that designed this locks went to school
in the 1800s.
So it's a pretty amazing technological endeavor.
- [Narrator] On the afternoon of October 10th, 1913,
the newly elected president Woodrow Wilson presses a button
in Washington that blows the center dyke.
Waters from the Gatun Lake immediately begin filling
the Culebra Cut creating a single path
of water 51 miles long and as much as 1000 feet wide.
It's the culmination of centuries of dreaming
and a decade of hard work
(dramatic music)
On August 15th, 1914,
The SS Ancon becomes the first ship to travel
through the Panama canal.
- Nothing is ever the same again.
The world is utterly transformed.
We go from having an Atlantic and a Pacific ocean
functionally to having one global ocean.
(soft music)
- [Narrator] But it's at a huge cost
with over 30,000 lives lost,
it's the third deadliest construction project in history
after the Suez Canal and Burma-Siam Railway
and one of the priciest.
- During its 10 years of construction,
the us spends $352 million dollars on the Panama Canal.
This is four times the cost of the Suez Canal
and yet it's 23 million under budget.
- Five years after the canal opens,
Theodore Roosevelt passes away
having never seen it completed in person.
While John Stevens is seldom remembered
for his contributions,
George Washington Goethals is celebrated as the engineer
who did the impossible.
- Both Goethals and Stevens broke very strong track records
in their own separate spheres
and both of them accomplished a lot
and Goethals stands on the shoulders of Stevens.
So I can see Steven's saying,
sure, you might be finishing this off but you're welcome,
I laid the track.
- The Panama Canal produced big economic benefits
from the United States.
Those benefits came from moving cheap oil from California,
and cheap timber from the Pacific Northwest
and moving them to markets in the East Coast.
And that was a huge boon for the American economy.
(ominous music)
- [Narrator] In the last decade,
giant new locks have been constructed alongside
the originals to accommodate a new generation
of super container ships.
- The Panama Canal is one of those ideas
that is literally world changing.
And even though there was plenty of failure,
even though it was very expensive,
there was something inevitable about it, it had to happen.
And it almost had to happen at this time
and it almost had to happen for this nation.
It changed the world.
(triumphant music)