Linking the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans, the Panama Canal cuts a path across the isthmus of Panama and traversing it is an experience only the well travelled will know.
You don't have to be a budding engineer to marvel at the extraordinary achievement its construction represents. The story of its creation speaks for itself.
The dream of a Frenchman, Ferdinand de Lesseps, the Panama Canal proved an undertaking of epic proportions.
For this presented a very different challenge to the Suez Canal. Not surprisingly, the unforgiving climate, impenetrable jungle and deadly diseases took their toll on its workers.
After eleven years of work the project fell victim to a combination of these factors and bankruptcy, coming to a halt in 1889.
The fifty miles across the isthmus is therefore perhaps the hardest ever won by human endeavour, with an amazing 29,000 workers falling foul of yellow fever and malaria. It is said that once contracted, a worker with yellow fever had less than a fifty percent survival rate.
It was the United States that, in the twentieth century, resumed the project, convinced of its value and political importance. The canal was eventually completed in 1914.
The average time spent in transit between the two oceans is approximately ten hours.
Each Panama Canal Cruise vessel is raised 26 metres in the locks to Gatun Lake and each lockage uses 197 million litres of fresh water, which is ultimately flushed to the sea.
It is this sense of hardship and history which makes sailing through this 80km ‘short-cut’ an unforgettable experience. As your Panama Canal Cruise ship is guided through the lock, just inches from the canal’s sides, you can look out to the hostile jungle beyond. Watch the tropical birds overhead and take in the chatter and shrieks of the rainforest’s wildlife as you go.
For more information or to book Panama Canel Cruises, please either click on a Panama Canel Cruise Line logo or visit our home page.
