CRUISES: The Panama Canal, Eighth Wonder of the World

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

It is April 1994.The great white ship glides into the first step at Gatum Locks and into the 20th Century’s most stupendous feat of engineering until Man walked on the Moon. Twenty six million gallons of fresh water pour in from Gatum Lake and eight minutes later a 390-ton gate swings open before the Sky Princess (today sailing as Spain’s Pullmantur’s Sky Wonder). The 789-foot long cruise ship eases into the second step. The process continues: the third gate now opens and discharges the 46,000 gross tonnage vessel into the largest artificial fresh water lake in the world, 85 feet above sea level.

The passengers, 1200 strong, crowd the rails as the ship sails silently on. The commentary from the bridge spotlights the adventure of this cruise: the Panama Canal is one of the most popular itineraries that Princess Cruises offers. The numbers are impressive. Each year 15,000 ships transit the Panama Canal and more than 700,000 vessels have passed through it since it opened in 1914. The bills charged are staggering: the Sky Princess paid $100,000 toll for our passage and its larger sister, the Regal Princess, was recently charged $143,000 for its access. The smallest fee ever levied was 36¢ when the famous 1930s’ explorer, Richard Halliburton, swam the canal to world acclaim. The sum charged liners is not all profit. About $450 million is spent each year to operate the canal, a waterway whose control the United States government will yield to Panama in 1999. The United States completed the canal—after the French failed—in ten years at a cost of $387 million. In all, our nation has invested $3 billion in the enterprise, to date recovering only two thirds of that sum.

Gatum Lake stretches for 24 miles, the result of damming a river, the Chagres, that previously could rise in the wet season 60 feet after two days’ rain. The Chagres is the only river in the Americas to cross the Continental Divide and run in two directions into two oceans.

Now we enter Gaillard Cut, the eight-mile trench through Gold Hill, 587 feet above sea level that was the most difficult challenge to the canal engineers. “From it,” says our commentator on the bridge, “enough rock and shale was removed to build a Great Wall of China from New York to California—via Texas.” Ahead Pedro Miguel Locks  lower the ship 31 feet to the man-made Miraflores Lake. Finally its massive 730 ton, eight-story high gates swing open and our ship slides almost silently into the little port of Balboa on the mighty Pacific.

Many cruise lines offer this itinerary. P&O Princess Cruises, however, takes more passengers through Panama than any other cruise line. “We’re the largest operator for the Panama Canal, and two of our ships, the Sky Princess and the Royal Princess, are completely dedicated to the canal except for the oppressive summer months,” says Julie Benson, director of public relations for Princess Cruises, explaining her line’s success. “It’s the same canal for every line,” she continues, “only the ships are different, and that’s the key—how you get there.”

One difference is the skipper of the Sky Princess, Captain David Lumb, who has been sailing with P & O, the London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company Inc. since 1955. He is proud of the traditions of his parent company yet delightfully informal and accommodating. He willingly posed one night at dinner for a passenger’s photograph with the stuffed toy parrot she’d purchased perched on his shoulder. Sky Princess purser Richard Harries, in turn, has served P&O for 35 years. “P&O carried the colonists to Australia, the traders to Hong Kong, the tea planters to Ceylon and the rubber planters to Malayasia,” grins Harries proudly. “Our line offers its passengers the best—the men of the Merchant Marine, the officers of the Royal Navy and the gentlemen of the P&O.”

Formerly staffed completely by British personnel, the company now provides an international crew though, says Harries, “We recognize Italian professionalism in the kitchen and dining room. “We have in the Sky crew,” he says, “nineteen nationalities all living and working together in harmony. Would the world could do the same.”

The Sky Princess is ideal for a Panama Canal cruise because, big when built in 1984, it is by today’s standards compact enough to come alongside its ports of call unlike the new megaships which are often too large to dock and have to anchor off shore and tender in. Despite this the Sky has one of the largest show rooms amongst liners. Its shows have been widely copied within the industry and its Love Boat Dancers draw wild applause every night they perform. Billy Hygate, the cruise director, provides entertainment to appeal to all ages from disco music for teenagers to card classes for the elderly. His ship has found the ideal balance for a cruise—busy days in port followed by a quiet day at sea for relaxation. He’s particularly proud of all the nooks and crannies the Sky has. He finds the same persons each day in the same place forming little colonies of fellow travelers they get to know and enjoy. “They’ve found the things they like to do,” he says, ”Yet it’s not like what they do at home. We’re different. We’re a floating village.”

The eight-hour transit of 50 miles through this 1800 square mile watershed saves ships 3000 miles if sailing from the east coast of North America to Japan and the Far East. The value of such a canal had been conceived as early as 1534 when Charles I of Spain ordered the first survey of the Isthmus of Panama. His engineers reported a canal impossible but created a three-foot wide path, the Royal Highway, through the jungle from Portobello to Panama. This overland route was kept busy during the California Gold Rush; prospectors paid $5 in gold to tackle the path on foot hoping for greater riches at the other end.

The French came in 1880 led by Ferninand de Lesseps fresh from his triumph in Suez. De Lesseps arrived for his preliminary research during the dry season forgetting it rains 10-16 feet a year in Panama. He was defeated by jungle, mud, rain and disease. Yellow fever and malaria were endemic. Three out of every five in his workforce succumbed. Of his 24 nursing sisters, 22 died. It was found later  that the policy of standing the legs of hospital beds in shallow pans of water to discourage ants, created ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes. The French acknowledged 20,000 deaths but some historians say those were only the deaths in hospital; the total number might have been double. The French venture failed not from just loss of life but also from lack of money. When de Lesseps retreated from Panama it was the largest business loss in financial history.

Teddy Roosevelt got the United States involved though yellow fever was still rampant: The chief engineer and his wife even arrived with their own coffins. Thanks, however, to the medical officer, Col. William Gorgas, who had served with Walter Reed, the priorities were changed. Gorgas said he wanted, first, the place to be fit to live before fit for work. He ordered widespread mosquito control and drainage of swamps. The U.S. engineers had 50,000 workers, 20,000 from Barbados alone, when finally the project began three years later. It was completed in seven years at a cost of 5,000 lives. The locks were made big enough for future maritime needs. They can take ships up to 106 feet wide and 965 feet long. Of the world’s 27,000 ships, 25,000 can transit the Panama Canal.