We found it fascinating going through locks and spent most of the day watching from the balcony and watching the front of the ship on the TV. The ship is only about a foot less width than the lock. They are building new locks that will accomodate larger ships. The cruise ships pay a lot so that they have a booked time to go through the locks, the ships and boats can wait up to a week to get through. These engines below, cost almost 2 million dollars and help guide the ships through the locks. The target is used to practice throwing the ropes to the ships.
Imagine: before the construction of the Panama Canal, a ship heading from California to New York would have to travel 14,000 miles, circumnavigating the entire continent of South America! Once the Panama Canal was completed, the same voyage took (and still takes) just 6,000 miles.
The 48 mile-long (77 km) international waterway known as the Panama Canal allows ships to pass between the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean, saving about 8000 miles (12,875 km) from a journey around the southern tip of South America, Cape Horn.
Although the French had attempted construction of a canal in the 1880s, the Panama Canal was successfully built from 1904 to 1914. Once the canal was complete the U.S. held a swath of land running the approximately 50 miles across the isthmus of Panama.
The Panama Canal was an enormous feat of engineering. Construction of a canal in Panama was first attempted by the French in the 1880s, but their efforts resulted in disaster – over 22,000 men died. The United States began their own attempt at the turn of the century, after assisting Panama in gaining independence from Colombia. Following years of backbreaking effort, landslides, disease and thousands more deaths, the Americans completed construction of the Panama Canal in 1914.
