US Army's Role in Panama Canal: Officers & Health Challenges, Study notes of History

Download US Army's Role in Panama Canal: Officers & Health Challenges and more Study notes History in PDF only on Docsity! The Panama Canal Pe nee MY.’ S ck NebcEsRs PRT SE Center of Military History United States Army Washington, D.C., 2009 Panama Canal A N A R M Y ’ S E N T E R P R I S E The iv v role and to carry the narrative forward to cover the defense of the canal in the following decades. The authors—Jon T. Hoffman, Michael J. Brodhead, Carol R. Byerly, and Glenn F. Williams— have done a commendable job summarizing a well-known story, but also bringing to light new information. Their work is a fitting commemoration of this signal accomplishment that marked the beginning of America’s global prestige and power. JEFFREY J. CLARKE Chief of Military History iv v Contents Page Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii The Panama Canal: An Army’s Enterprise . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Charting the Path. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Army Engineers Take the Lead . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Sidebar: Maj. Gen. George W. Goethals . . . . . 13 Conquering Yellow Fever . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Sidebar: Yellow Fever Work in Cuba . . . . . . . 28 Sidebar: William and Marie Gorgas—A Partnership Against Yellow Fever. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Battling Malaria and Other Threats. . . . . . . . . . . 41 Digging Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Sidebar: Steam Shovels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Building Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Working on the Railroad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Sidebar: Frederick Mears—Soldier and Builder. . . 67 Completing the Mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Defending the Canal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Transitioning to a Panamanian Canal . . . . . . . . . 90 The Legacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Suggestions for Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Maps No. 1. Isthmus of Panama, Pre-Canal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2. Panama Canal, Environs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 3. Panama Canal, Military Installations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Illustrations The USS Arizona makes its way through a lock. . . . . . . . . 2 Maj. Gen. George W. Goethals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Living quarters for silver roll workers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 A yellow fever patient in a screened enclosure in the hospital . . 30 Maj. Gen. William C. Gorgas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Workers operate tripod drills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 vi Page A steam shovel digs out a slide at Cucaracha . . . . . . . . . . 53 Dredges work at the Cucaracha slide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Work proceeds on the Pedro Miguel Locks . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Col. Frederick Mears . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 A Bucyrus pile driver and crew build a railroad trestle . . . . 70 Crews man a pair of 12-inch mortars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Soldiers and mules move a pack howitzer along a jungle trail . . 84 A 14-inch railway gun defends the canal . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Illustrations courtesy of the following sources: pp. 2, 47, Library of Congress; 13, West Point Museum Art Collection; 24, 53, 58, 64, 68, Army Corps of Engineers; 30, 80, 84, 88, Life Magazine; 36, National Library of Medicine; 70, William P. McLaughlin. 1 The Panama Canal An Army’s Enterprise Almost from the moment of the European discovery of the Americas, the search for a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pa- cific Oceans became a fixation for rulers, entrepreneurs, and ad- venturers. The list of explorers who sought it includes such mem- orable pathfinders as Jacques Cartier, Sir Francis Drake, Henry Hudson, Capt. James Cook, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and Sir John Franklin. The drive to expand the United States from sea to sea during the nineteenth century added impetus to the effort, as did the discovery of gold in California in 1848. When it became clear that the arduous and dangerous journey around South America’s Cape Horn was the only water route available, planners began contemplating the construction of an interoceanic canal across Nicaragua or at Central America’s narrowest point, the Isthmus of Panama. A passage of that sort would shorten the 13,000-mile trip around the horn from New York to San Francisco by several weeks and 8,000 miles. While commercial and political concerns remained major driving forces for a canal, the Spanish-American War validated a new rationale. Naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan had argued in his 1890 book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, that a Central American canal was an integral part of American national defense. Eight years later, the highly publicized voyage of the USS Oregon dramatically illustrated the point. One of the newest and strongest battleships in the fleet, it was stationed on the Pacific coast, far from the expected scene of action around Cuba as con- flict threatened between the United States and Spain. The Atlantic Squadron needed the additional fighting power, so the warship de- parted San Francisco on 18 March 1898. Sixty-seven days later, fol- lowing an epic voyage around Cape Horn that kept the American public spellbound, the Oregon finally arrived off Florida in time to help defeat the Spanish fleet in the critical Battle of Santiago. The end of hostilities brought the Philippines and other Pacific pos- sessions under the control of the United States, reinforcing the re- quirement that American soldiers and ships be able to shift rapidly from one side of the globe to the other. It was now obvious to all that national strategy dictated the need for a canal. 2 3 The U.S. Army played a critical role in the development of the canal. By the time the work was done and the first ship had transited the canal in 1914, the project had not only become the most expensive public work ever built, it had also set the bar for a new epoch in the advance of technology and medical discov- ery that was just beginning. Even more, completion of the canal put the world on notice that it now had to reckon with the United States as a global power. The USS Arizona makes its way through a lock. One of the driving forces behind construction of the Panama Canal was the requirement to move the military might of the United States rapidly from one side of the world to the other. Charting the Path Army engineers had been involved in the effort from its beginning, usually in response to the interest of Congress or the president in the latest idea for connecting the two oceans. In 1839, the chief of the Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers, 2 3 Col. John J. Abert, directed one of his officers, 1st Lt. Thomas J. Lee, to estimate the amount of material that would have to be excavated in order to build a canal through Nicaragua. Lee, who appears never to have gone to Nicaragua, acknowledged that his “very imperfect” estimate could “barely serve to give an idea of the magnitude of the work.” A decade later, when a company proposing to build a railroad across Panama applied to Congress for financial aid, the House of Representatives so- licited Abert’s views. In 1849, the American promoters of the Panama Railroad secured the services of an Army topographical engineer, Bre- vet Lt. Col. George W. Hughes, to survey a roadbed across the Isthmus of Panama, which was then a province of Colombia. He presented the company with plans, profiles, and maps and authored an optimistic report that minimized the many diffi- culties of building such a line. Between 1850 and 1855, a U.S. corporation completed the Panama Railroad. The resulting sav- ings in time and distance proved extremely attractive to travel- ers and shippers, making the venture an instantaneous com- mercial success. Even so, most cargo—and all warships—still had to go round Cape Horn, so the need for a canal remained ever-present. (Map 1) From 1857 to 1860, a joint Army-Navy party surveyed a po- tential canal route from the Gulf of Darien, located on present- day Panama’s border with Colombia, to the Pacific. Heading its topographical unit was another of Abert’s officers, 1st Lt. Nathaniel Michler, who produced an impressive 461-page report. In 1860, another Corps of Engineers officer, 1st Lt. James St. Clair Morton, served as the head of the topographical division in a U.S. Navy in- vestigation of the Isthmus of Chiriquí, located on Panama’s border with Costa Rica. The U.S. government gave even more serious consideration to establishing a maritime link between the two oceans in the 1870s, during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant. In 1852, Grant had crossed the isthmus as a junior officer with the 4th Infantry regiment and had seen the necessity for an easier route himself. The railroad was only partially completed at the time, so it carried the troops only halfway. They had to finish the trip on foot and mule and in native canoes. The regiment suffered some one hundred and fifty deaths from disease among the troops and their families during the trek—one-seventh of those making the 6 7 passage. “The horrors of the road, in the rainy season,” Grant wrote his wife, “are beyond description.” From 1872 on, the president prodded Congress to create a succession of boards, associations, and commissions to study and recommend feasible routes. Most of those who approached the issue favored a route to the north across Nicaragua. While that country was much wider than Panama, a canal there could connect rivers and Lake Nicaragua and potentially require much less digging. The high- est terrain to be crossed also appeared to be much closer to sea level than in Panama. In 1880, a group of U.S. investors formed a corporation and obtained an agreement from Nicaragua for the use of a right-of-way, but nothing came of it. In 1887, the nation granted a second concession to a different U.S. corpora- tion, but that organization ceased operation in 1893 for lack of funds. The vice president and general manager of the company during its final years was Capt. George W. Davis, a self-trained engineer and infantry veteran of the Civil War who was on leave from active duty. While the Americans studied and surveyed and sought fi- nancial backing for their effort in Nicaragua, the French began to build a canal of their own in Panama that promised to beat all competitors. The famous builder of the Suez Canal, Count Ferdinand de Lesseps, had charge. Starting in 1880, he planned to repeat his success in Central America by constructing a lock- less, sea-level waterway in just twelve years at an estimated cost of $132 million. By 1888, however, the project had consumed twice that amount, covered only one-third of the required dis- tance, and had resulted in the deaths of an estimated 16,500 workers (the vast majority succumbing to various diseases com- mon in the region, such as yellow fever). In that year, de Lesseps grudgingly converted his design into a lock canal, which vastly decreased the amount of digging required. By that point, how- ever, financial resources had begun to dry up and he made little further progress. With accusations of mismanagement, alarm about high disease rates, and large cost overruns mounting, the project came to a halt in 1889. In 1894, the French formed another company to finish what de Lesseps had started. American Henry L. Abbot served on its technical committee. Commissioned in the topographical engineers in 1854, he had earned a brevet promotion to captain for gallantry at the First Battle of Bull Run, had risen to the rank 6 7 of brevet major general of volunteers by the end of the Civil War, and had recently retired from the Regular Army as a colonel after a distinguished career in the Corps of Engineers. Abbot championed the new corporation and its plans for a lock and dam system in articles in U.S. magazines. He urged his countrymen to think no more about a route through Nicaragua, arguing that a canal across the Isthmus of Panama was clearly the right choice. What difficulties there were, he contended, mainly involved cutting through the Continental Divide, regulating the Chagres River, and operating in the region’s tropical climate with its enervating heat and deadly diseases. None of these, he believed, was of enough consequence to prevent the successful completion of the project. Abbot’s arguments notwithstanding, the new company made little more progress than its predecessor, serving mainly to hold the ground until someone stepped forward to buy its assets. Throughout the French effort, Americans continued to de- bate the best location for a canal. Since de Lesseps’ failure in Panama seemed to provide ample evidence of that route’s un- suitability, Nicaragua remained the lead candidate in the eyes of most interested parties. In 1895, the U.S. government created the Nicaragua Canal Board, also known as the Ludlow Com- mission after the board’s chairman, Lt. Col. William Ludlow of the Corps of Engineers, to study the viability of that alternative. During his service with the group, Ludlow personally examined the Suez, Kiel, and Corinth Canals, as well as waterways in the Netherlands. All three members of the board visited Nicaragua, but they felt they had too little time and money to make any firm recommendation. Congress chartered a new group in 1897, the Nicaragua Ca- nal Commission headed by Admiral John G. Walker. The group’s other members were a serving Army engineer, Col. Peter C. Hains, and a former Army engineer, Professor Lewis M. Haupt. After two years of work, the commission produced a 325-page report, which concluded that a Nicaraguan canal was feasible but fraught with construction challenges. In 1899, with the French effort in Panama winding down, President William McKinley appointed Admiral Walker to head a new group to restudy the options. Known as the Isthmian Canal Commission, the association’s nine members included three Corps of Engineers officers, Haupt, Hains, and Lt. Col. Oswald H. Ernst. 8 9 Although Nicaragua remained the likely spot in the minds of most Americans, the new board’s name indicated that receptivity had grown to the idea of a canal located elsewhere in Central America. This interest became even more evident when the entire commis- sion traveled to Paris to review information on the French work in Panama. The commissioners conferred at length with Philippe Bunau-Varilla, a former French Army officer who had been the chief engineer of de Lesseps’ operation. Bunau-Varilla was a tireless champion of a canal across Panama. The commission ultimately recommended a waterway across Nicaragua, but that was mainly because the French canal company was asking $109 million for its holdings in Panama, which the Americans valued at only $40 million. In addition, much of the work the French had done seemed of limited value to the project the group had in mind, and much of the equip- ment de Lesseps had left behind was too small or outdated to be of much use in the new effort. Overall, nonetheless, it was clear that the commissioners largely favored Panama from a practical standpoint. A canal across the isthmus would be one-third the length of its Nicaraguan competitor, require fewer locks, and be easier to navigate and cheaper to operate. Panama also boasted better harbors on both coasts. Strong sentiment favoring Nicaragua remained in Congress and elsewhere in Washington, but Bunau-Varilla and a New York attorney who represented French interests, William Nelson Cromwell, eventually convinced President Theodore Roosevelt of the advantages of the Panama route. When the French com- pany agreed to sell its assets and the Panama Railroad for $40 million, the commission reversed its ruling and recommended Panama. The eruption of Mount Pelée in Martinique on 25 April 1902 and subsequent earthquake and volcanic activity in Nica- ragua all but ratified the move. Two months later, in June 1902, both Houses of Congress passed what became known as the Spooner Act, which authorized work on a canal across Panama. Roosevelt signed it into law right away. Before construction could resume, however, the United States had to negotiate an agreement with Colombia ceding a right-of- way across the nation’s territory. Representatives of both countries signed the Hay-Herrán Treaty of 1903, which offered Colombia an initial $10 million in gold upon ratification and annual pay- ments of $250,000 beginning nine years thereafter. The U.S. Senate 10 11 a massive construction effort. Their lack of expertise and the group-decision-making structure they adhered to rendered the body cumbersome and ineffective. A year later, Roosevelt dissolved the board and replaced it with the Second Isthmian Canal Commission. Still obliged by the Spooner Act to appoint seven members, he circumvented the requirement by naming three of its members to serve as an executive council that would wield the real power. The chief en- gineer and the governor of the Canal Zone, both in Panama, filled two of those posts. A civilian, Charles E. Magoon, replaced Davis in the latter job. Brig. Gen. Peter Hains and Col. Oswald Ernst received appointments to the reconstituted commission, serving primarily in technical advisory capacities. On 29 April 1904, President Roosevelt announced the ap- pointment of John F. Wallace as the commission’s chief engineer. Wallace concentrated initially on providing water and sewer sys- tems and building better housing for workers. Replacing much of the equipment left by the French with sturdier, more efficient American models, he then ordered the resumption of digging and the continuation of a survey to determine the center line of the canal. Exasperated by the red tape the commission required, fearing for his health, and lured by a higher-paying position elsewhere, Wallace resigned in June 1905. His successor was John F. Stevens, a capable, energetic, and self-educated engineer and former general manager of the Great Northern Railroad. Under this new management, the pace of construction increased dramatically. Stevens’ first pri- ority was to establish the necessary infrastructure to support effective work on the mammoth project. Arriving at Colon in July 1905, he set about revamping the sadly deteriorated Pan- ama Railroad and reorganizing the engineering and construc- tion bureaus. Stevens made substantial headway in surveying the canal’s route; conducting soil borings at projected lock sites; acquiring better equipment; and building the necessary docks, warehouses, and workshops. He moved the project’s headquar- ters from Panama City to Culebra, where he could directly ob- serve work on one of the greatest challenges he faced—digging through the highest point on the canal route. He expanded Wal- lace’s programs for municipal improvements and worker hous- ing at Panama City, Colon, and other communities in the zone. He also created commissary and hotel systems and provided 12 wholesome food at reasonable cost and recreational facilities for the labor force. Meanwhile, Governor Magoon established a police department, schools, a court system, churches, and post offices. Army Engineers Take the Lead For reasons never entirely clear, Stevens submitted a letter of resignation on 30 January 1907. Having seen his first two chief engineers walk off the job, President Roosevelt resolved to fill the vacancy with an Army engineer who would remain at his post until ordered to do otherwise. His decision proved wise, as well, in terms of skill and experience. Both Stevens and Wallace had been railroad men, and so, too, had most of the staff they had chosen to fill key positions. The group had established a highly efficient rail system in support of the ex- cavation, but the construction of locks and dams required in- dividuals more thoroughly versed in hydraulics and the use of concrete. With the founding of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1802, the Army had established one of the na- tion’s premier educational institutions for engineers, and its top graduates generally went into the Corps of Engineers. Begin- ning in 1824, Congress charged the corps with the mission of improving the nation’s navigable waterways, a job that evolved over time to include the construction of dams, locks, reservoirs, and levees. Thus, no body of professionals in the United States had more training and experience in those fields than the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In addition, Roosevelt had decided to protect the canal by building fortifications, a job for which Army engineers were also well suited. On 4 March 1907, Roosevelt appointed 48-year-old Maj. George W. Goethals as a member of the Isthmian Canal Com- mission. An engineer with close to three decades of experience, Goethals had worked on several water projects and had visited the isthmus with Secretary of War William H. Taft in 1905. One month after making the appointment, the president restructured the organization in Panama yet again. Abolishing the position of governor, he made Goethals chairman and chief engineer of the canal commission and president of the Panama Railroad Com- 12 pany. By so doing, he placed all the authority for the project in the hands of one man and turned the commission into a rubber stamp for his decisions. Maj. Gen. George W. Goethals Goethals, by Brig. Gen. Chester Harding. Harding, a fellow Army engineer who worked on the Panama Canal project, painted this portrait in 1930. The son of Belgian immigrant parents with a distinguished heri- tage, George Washington Goethals was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1858. He graduated second in the West Point class of 1880 and went on to further training at the Engineer School of Application at Washington Barracks in Washington, D.C. His first independent mis- sion as an officer involved the construction of a bridge over the Spo- kane River in Washington State to replace one swept away in a storm. It was “the hardest job I ever tackled,” he would later recall, even including the Panama Canal, because he had “never built a bridge” 13 16 17 of Panama was the Caribbean Sea, but the project officially dubbed that the Atlantic end of the canal.) The Pacific Division embraced the area from the sea-level entrance at Panama Bay to the Pedro Miguel Locks. The Central Division covered the bulk of the route, encompassing Lake Gatun and the massive Culebra Cut. The new organization was fully in place by July 1908. Maj. David D. Gaillard was Goethals’ choice to head the Cen- tral Division. His was probably the most demanding and daunting engineering responsibility of the entire project, as it would liter- ally involve moving a mountain of rock and dirt under conditions complicated by climate, topography, and geology. Gaillard, who was soon promoted to lieutenant colonel, was a native of South Carolina and an 1884 graduate of West Point. He came to the task with a rich background that included resurveying the border with Mexico; service on the Army’s General Staff; command of engi- neer troops during the Spanish-American War; and work on a number of civil water projects in Florida, Washington, and Alaska, and around Lake Superior. In addition to his construction expe- rience, Gaillard had authored a respected work on the effects of wave action. His assistant in running the Central Division was a civilian, Louis K. Rourke. Gaillard’s West Point classmate and roommate, Maj. William L. Sibert, was already on the project. A member of the canal commis- sion and the head of both the Department of Lock and Dam Con- struction and the Division of Hydraulics and Meteorology, he took charge of the Atlantic Division as part of the reorganization. Follow- ing three years of study at the Engineer School of Application, Sibert had worked at the Sault Ste. Marie Canal in the Great Lakes and had directed river and harbor improvements at Cincinnati, Little Rock, and Pittsburgh. Besides constructing numerous locks, he had commanded engineer troops in the Philippines and had also served as general manager of the Manila-Dagupan Railway. His combina- tion of rail and waterway experience made him ideal for this assign- ment. His primary assistants in running the division on the Panama project were also Army engineers. Maj. Chester Harding directed work on the Gatun Locks, while Majs. Edgar Jadwin, James P. Jervey, and George M. Hoffman, and Capt. Horton W. Stickle served as resident engineers. One of Goethals first acts had been to lure Sydney B. Williamson to Panama. The two had worked together at Muscle Shoals and had built the famous locks there. Goethals had been 16 17 most impressed then by his subordinate’s leadership, demonstrat- ed when Williamson had gone down into a deep hole perilously close to collapse and had wielded a shovel alongside laborers who had refused to work in the dangerous location until he led the way. Goethals selected him to direct the Pacific Division. Although a ci- vilian at the time, Williamson was an 1884 graduate of the Virginia Military Institute who had served as a captain in a volunteer engi- neer regiment during the Spanish-American War. In 1903, he had left government service to work for engineering firms in New York and Baltimore, where he studied the use of reinforced concrete. A combination of concrete poured around a framework of steel rods, this building method provided a much stronger structure than concrete alone. It was just coming into significant use, but its heavy employment on the Panama Canal would dwarf any type of reinforced concrete project for the next couple of decades. Williamson’s staff had no military personnel. Goethals had guessed, correctly as it turned out, that his reliance on geograph- ic rather than functional divisions and the civilian-military mix would result in energetic competition as each group sought to out- shine the other. Another engineer officer detailed to duty in Panama was Lt. Col. Harry F. Hodges. An 1881 graduate of West Point, Hodges had initially served in Washington as a member of and purchasing officer for the canal commission. In that role, he had overseen a vast web of contracts for the acquisition of equipment and sup- plies. In 1907, he moved to Panama, where he served as the proj- ect’s assistant chief engineer and as acting chief engineer whenever Goethals was absent from the zone. He also supervised the design of locks, dams, and regulating works. Without Hodges, Goethals believed, the canal could never have been built. Army engineer Capt. Frank C. Boggs replaced Hodges in Washington as the com- mission’s purchasing officer. Beginning in 1909 and for several years thereafter, the Corps of Engineers sent newly commissioned officers to the canal, where they could gain valuable experience in water projects. One of them was Goethals’ son, 2d Lt. George R. Goethals. Immediately after graduating from West Point in 1908, the young officer had served under his father in relocating the Panama rail line. Later, he worked in the railroad’s transportation and operations depart- ments. Becoming the assistant engineer of the Pacific Division af- ter that, he helped direct the construction of locks and dams at 18 19 Balboa and Miraflores. As his last task, he oversaw the fortification of the Canal Zone. Officers from outside of the Corps of Engineers also filled significant roles in the project. Maj. Carrol A. Devol of the Quar- termaster Department became chief quartermaster of the Canal Zone. Capt. Robert E. Wood, a cavalry officer, served as his as- sistant. Lt. Col. Eugene T. Wilson, a coast artillery officer, was in charge of feeding the huge workforce and running the commis- saries. Maj. Tracy C. Dickson, an ordnance officer, served as the inspector of shops. First Lt. Frederick Mears, another cavalry- man, handled the task of relocating the Panama Railroad. Person- nel from the Army Medical Department, led by Col. William C. Gorgas, would prove indispensable to the successful completion of the canal. Navy Cdr. Harry H. Rousseau, in charge of terminal construction, had responsibility for designing and building ware- houses, machine shops, wharves, docks, and coaling stations at both ends of the canal. That so many of the senior leaders of the project had a com- mon background in the Corps of Engineers and the Army did little to foster harmony within the group. The relations between Goethals (who was promoted to colonel in 1909) and some of his principal subordinates were strained from the outset. Sibert frequently disagreed with his chief ’s engineering decisions while Goethals found his subordinate “cantankerous and hard to hold.” At one point, the colonel considered replacing Sibert. The two of- ficers spoke to each other only when necessary, but Sibert stayed with the project until its completion. Gaillard, Sibert, and Gorgas, all southerners, felt that Goethals had a sectional bias against those from the south that made service under him almost unbearable. From the chief engineer’s perspective, “everybody down here seems to develop a large crop of corns and it is difficult to step without treading upon one.” Others ascribed the frequent irritability of Americans in Panama to the climate, with one medical officer asserting that “the effect of constant heat and moisture, without change of season, is to induce a condition of nervous and physical depression.” Some of Goethals senior subordinates did get along well with their boss. Hodges, his chief assistant, was a primary example. The relationship between Goethals and Williamson was not only pro- ductive but also close, despite Williamson’s status as a southerner 20 21 as slides in Panama because of their frequency). The many that occurred, particularly in the Culebra Cut, brought frustration and heartbreak throughout the years of canal building. Slides and all manner of accidents caused injuries and fatalities. Tem- peratures that ranged over 100˚F meanwhile posed a constant risk of illness and even death from heat prostration. A wide va- riety of insects and poisonous reptiles also made life miserable and sometimes dangerous. The task of obtaining workers to build the canal presented an issue. From the beginning of the project, there had been a de- bate over what sort of labor force would be best. General Hains, one of the early commissioners, had dealt largely in ethnic ste- reotypes. He dismissed the Panamanians as too lazy. As for the Chinese laborer, Hains asserted that he was inclined to open a store once he had earned a little money. The West Indian black was “fairly industrious” and “not deficient in intelligence” but drove a hard bargain, demanded too many holidays, and was overly conscious of his rights as a British subject. Hains recom- mended the hiring of blacks from the American South because he felt they were accustomed to hot weather, spoke English, had temperate habits, demonstrated resistance to disease, and were “intelligent, industrious, and ambitious.” The commission ad- opted advice Hains offered that the government hire person- nel and manage the work itself rather than rely on contractors. Otherwise, his opinions carried little weight. In the end, the question of who should build the canal seems to have settled itself. People came from everywhere. By the time Goethals took control, about 24,000 were employed in the zone, a number that grew to more than 40,000 before the project ended. Ninety-seven countries were represented, with a majority of the unskilled coming from Barbados and other Caribbean islands. Some 10,000 Spaniards, Italians, and Greeks also signed on. In the initial years of the American effort, many workers returned home because of insufficient pay, inadequate housing, unsatisfactory food, poor sanitation, and fear of disease. Stevens initiated dramatic improvements in some of these areas, but they applied unevenly across the workforce. Contrary to the view of Hains, Stevens thought poorly of the Caribbean blacks, citing what he considered the “natural indolence of these people.” In a sys- tem not unlike the Jim Crow segregation in effect in the American South, he and the canal commission divided the workers into two Map 2 PANAMA CANAL ENVIRONS ——— Canal Chane! ° Miles o 10 Kilometers 26 27 on the same footing and listened patiently to their problems be- fore rendering a verdict or launching an investigation. He also started a weekly newspaper to keep workers informed about the project and its progress. Among other items, it published sta- tistics on the performance of excavation crews, leading to fierce competition to set new records and a substantial increase in pro- ductivity. Perhaps the most important personnel issue for both super- visors and the workers was the state of the workers’ health. In addition to the sometimes dangerous work, tropical Panama pre- sented the continual threat of a wide range of deadly illnesses, a scourge that had played no small part in defeating de Lesseps’ at- tempt to build a canal. In this, the Army engineers were ably sup- ported by Army medicine and Colonel Gorgas, but several years of hard work, innovation, and sheer determination lay ahead. Conquering Yellow Fever By the end of the nineteenth century, most American cit- ies had been able to control diseases such as typhoid, plague, cholera, and dysentery with improved sanitation. Meanwhile, in the southern states, malarial regions were diminishing and yellow fever was becoming increasingly rare. When Americans entered new overseas territories during and following the Span- ish-American War, however, the nation acquired fresh medical problems, both familiar and exotic. The arrival of large num- bers of outsiders in these places tended to induce epidemics among the visitors, who were not as well adapted as the in- digenous populations to the local pathogens—the bacteria and viruses that cause illnesses. This situation was particularly the case in Panama, long considered one of the unhealthiest places on earth because it harbored such deadly diseases as yellow fever, malaria, bubon- ic plague, and typhoid. Thousands of canal workers also fell victim to pneumonia, and accidental explosions and railroad wrecks killed hundreds more. Gorgas and his Army medical officers thus fought sickness and injury on a number of fronts. Their experience with trauma on the battlefield and tropical medicine during campaigns and occupations would serve them 26 27 well in this environment. Similar to their mission in wartime, they had to keep as many men as possible healthy and effective in order to win the fight. Yellow fever was one of the most intimidating tropical dis- eases. Although outbreaks were infrequent, they were terrify- ing. Symptoms included high fever, chills, headache, jaundice (hence the name yellow fever), and at times hemorrhaging into the stomach and intestinal tract, causing the horrifying “black vomit.” Mortality rates ranged from 10 to 60 percent of those infected, and death typically occurred between the seventh and tenth day of the illness. An attack could be mild, however, and would induce lifetime immunity to the disease. Because frost killed the mosquitoes that carried yellow fever, it was not en- demic in the United States and usually arrived in U.S. ports from tropical areas where it persisted year-round. The most extensive yellow fever epidemic in America struck in 1878, be- ginning in New Orleans and moving up the Mississippi River, causing more than 100,000 cases and killing from 13,000 to 20,000 people. In addition to the toll on health, large-scale outbreaks could devastate the economy. Gorgas, a veteran of many yellow fever ep- idemics, observed: “When this disease was announced in a town, everybody left who could. The sick were frequently left without care, and often a great deal of cruelty and cowardice was shown.” People who became ill were treated like lepers and “all business is entirely paralyzed, the quarantines not allowing any commu- nication between the affected districts and those not affected.” In regions where yellow fever was endemic, such as Panama, it was rare among adults, since the vast majority had immunity from surviving a bout with it as a child. Extensive outbreaks occurred only when “non-immunes” arrived in an area—such as when the Americans came to construct the canal. Gorgas, one of the first Americans to go to Panama in 1904, was an expert in this disease. He had acquired promi- nence following the Spanish-American War, when the surgeon general sent him to Cuba to run a yellow fever camp. He stayed on in Havana, developing a program to implement the Reed Commission’s historic findings that the Aedes aegypti mosquito transmitted yellow fever. His efforts succeeded in a matter of months in eliminating the disease from the city and also greatly reducing malaria. Yellow Fever Work in Cuba The names of two Army medical officers are linked forever by their fight against yellow fever—Walter Reed and William C. Gorgas. Reed led the effort that unlocked the key to yellow fever; Gorgas put the new knowledge to practical effect. The story began when the United States occupied Cuba in 1898 and had to deal with Havana, a city of 250,000 long considered a source of epidemic outbreaks. At the time, medical experts believed that filth caused many diseases, so when yellow fever persisted even after the city had been scrubbed, Army Surgeon General George M. Sternberg appointed a commission to inves- tigate the cause of the scourge and how to prevent it. Headed by Army bacteriologist Reed, the group included three other specialists in infectious disease, James Carroll, Aristides Agra- monte, and Jesse W. Lazear. The three were serving with the Army as contract doctors, but Carroll had begun his career as an infantryman in 1874, become a hospital steward in 1883, earned a degree in medicine in 1891, and would finally receive a commission in the Medical Corps in 1902. In a dramatic series of experiments beginning in June 1900, the commission proved that yellow fever was spread not by filth, but by female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which carried the virus from person to person with their bites. To achieve this break- through, the commission first disproved a hypothesis that bacte- ria caused yellow fever, and then tested several theories regarding the role of mosquitoes. For almost twenty years, Cuban physician Carlos Juan Finlay had argued that the Aedes aegypti transmitted yellow fever to humans, but he had never been able to demon- strate this in laboratory conditions. In 1898, during a yellow fever outbreak in Mississippi, Public Health Service scientist Henry R. Carter was able to show that a period of ten to fourteen days elapsed between the appearance of the first case of yellow fever and subsequent cases. This, he theorized, was due to some sort of external incubator. Now working in Cuba, Carter told com- mission members of his findings and they turned to mosquitoes as the culprit. They contacted Finlay, who gave them eggs of the type of mosquito he believed carried yellow fever. 28 30 31 surgeon general to send him to Panama. Instead of fighting insects in a single city such as Havana, however, he now faced a battleground consisting of two small urban areas and the 500 square miles of an elongated zone of jungle and swamp that separated them. “While there was a considerable difference in the conditions and environment at Havana,” he explained, “still I believed that the methods worked out at Havana could be so modified as to be applied successfully at the Isthmus.” The Americans were well aware that several thousand workers had died in the 1850s while building the railroad across Panama, and Gorgas later estimated that 22,000 people died and one-third of the workers were sick annually when the French attempted to construct a canal. But Gorgas and his contemporaries believed that new scientific knowledge and techniques would enable them to succeed where de Lesseps had failed. As it turned out, the political opposition would prove to be more daunting than the mosquitoes. The Panama Canal Treaty gave the United States the authority to manage public health measures in the cities of Panama and Colon and throughout the Canal Zone. Responsibilities included maintaining the health of the canal workforce, caring for the sick and injured, and implementing sanitation measures such as street cleaning and garbage collection. The medical department oversaw an extensive hospital system, which included two large, well-equipped facilities in Ancon and Colon, medium-sized buildings of twenty to one hundred beds in each of the public health districts, and smaller ones in forty villages throughout the zone. The Panama Railroad even had a special car to transport the seriously sick and injured to the two major hospitals. Beyond these more typical medical responsibilities, Gorgas also believed that his duty required killing mosquitoes and he set out to learn more. He had begun preparations for the proj- ect in 1902, attending a tropical medicine conference in Cairo, traveling to the Suez Canal to consult with the British about mosquito control there, and going to Paris to discuss the health problems the French had encountered in the 1880s. Mean- while, the American Medical Association had urged President Roosevelt to include a “medical sanitarian” such as Gorgas in the Isthmian Canal Commission. Roosevelt had declined, how- ever, and Gorgas thus went to Panama as the chief public health 32 33 officer in an advisory capacity, reporting to the commission, but having little real authority. When the United States took possession of the Canal Zone, Gorgas surveyed the region to determine what kinds of resources he would need to tackle yellow fever. He developed a million- dollar proposal for a program similar to the one he had executed in Havana. The plan laid out requirements for the professional staff of the hospitals and medical system; the labor required to screen and fumigate homes and barracks, drain swamps, eliminate mosquito propagation areas, and inspect the results; and supplies such as screening, lumber, and insecticides that the department needed to carry out the enormous task. Admiral Walker, head of the canal commission, was con- cerned about costs and skeptical of the need to control mosqui- toes, so he only authorized Gorgas a staff of seven and $50,000 for supplies. Marie Gorgas later wrote: “It is hardly an exaggeration to say . . . when they landed at Panama to engage in the mighty task of ridding this jungle of disease, [they] had little more than their own hands and their own determined spirit to work with.” Her husband nevertheless took up the challenge: “In June, 1904, however, we all commenced work with a great deal of enthusiasm, determined to do the best we could under the circumstances.” Gorgas’ team included several key individuals. Henry Carter, in addition to his valuable research on yellow fever, had worked with Gorgas in Cuba. Joseph A. Le Prince had overseen the teams that had destroyed mosquitoes in Havana. Marie Gorgas would refer to Le Prince as “one of Dr. Gorgas’ most effective lieutenants at Havana and Panama.” In the new campaign, Carter served as director of hospitals and chief quarantine officer, while Le Prince became the chief inspector. Mary E. Hibbard was chief nurse for the hospital system. The public health department’s first inspection found mos- quito larvae in almost every house in Panama, revealing the need for an army of inspectors and a mountain of supplies. Whereas General Wood had supported Gorgas’ work in Cuba, members of the canal commission thought Gorgas should be cleaning up filth in the cities, instead of chasing insects. The commission’s view seemed justified when the first Americans arrived, because initial- ly there was no yellow fever present. Gorgas, however, knew that yellow fever was a “strangers’ disease” and that, with the addition of thousands of workers, an epidemic would occur. He also un- 32 33 derstood, as Marie Gorgas later wrote, “that all the blame for the outbreak of disease would be charged to his negligence.” The first yellow fever case appeared on 21 November 1904, and six more developed in December, but no one died. In January, out of an- other six cases, two proved fatal. Gorgas fought the disease by screening patients and killing mosquitoes, but did so with inadequate resources because the com- mission still repeatedly refused or ignored his requests for supplies and personnel. For example, fumigation involved clearing build- ings of all people and pets, sealing them airtight with paper and wood framing, and then burning an insecticide such as pyrethrum or sulfur. But when Gorgas requisitioned tons of newspaper for this purpose, commissioners misunderstood and denied it, believ- ing it was too much reading material for his department. When he asked for one hundred trained female nurses, the commission approved only forty. The senior leaders also rejected his requests for ambulances and laboratory equipment. Weeks went by without buildings being screened against mosquitoes. Le Prince told of a young architect, charged with designing structures for the canal project, who ridiculed the public health crew for their insistence on screening the doors and windows, until he himself got yellow fever and paid with his life for his erroneous view. In January, Gorgas provided Army Surgeon General Robert M. O’Reilly with an upbeat assessment, noting that the quaran- tine and hospital departments were organized and working well. “We have accomplished everything which could have been accom- plished with what has been allowed by the commission.” He then proceeded to outline his problems obtaining staff and getting sup- plies and construction projects approved by other elements of the bureaucracy. While his efforts had decreased the mosquito popu- lation, he regretted that his goal to “free this Zone from malaria and yellow fever” would take some time, because, “what I hoped and wanted when I came down here was to bring this result about in six months rather than two or three years.” As yellow fever cases continued to appear, Secretary Taft sent his friend, Charles A. L. Reed (a physician and former American Medical Association president) to investigate. Reed toured Panama for fifteen days, reviewing health conditions and the public health department’s work. Gorgas provided him with a memorandum dated 17 February 1905, describing the commission’s failures to act on his requests for supplies, personnel, and authority to carry officer: “I either had to acquiesce to the sanitary ideas of Gen. Davis and Mr. Grunsky, or be constantly advising pretty strong in the directions they did not like.” He chose to stick to what he knew to be right, because “I could see, from the Cuban ex- perience, that in following the tack they were [,] we would be exposed to a great [deal] of criticism, and that to save myself I must get on record as advising differently.” Science would bear him out. Moreover, he vowed: “I know that yellow fever and Gorgas cannot exist at the same place.” William and Marie Gorgas A Partnership Against Yellow Fever Maj. Gen. William C. Gorgas at work as the Surgeon General of the Army during World War I. Without Gorgas’ confidence in his science and his determination to implement a thorough program of preventive medicine, disease and death would have imperiled the project in Panama. Yellow fever played a key role throughout William Gorgas’ life, beginning with the introduction of his parents. His mother, Amelia 36 Gayle, the daughter of a former Alabama governor, and his father, Josiah Gorgas, a West Point graduate, met when his mother fled to an Army arsenal during a yellow fever epidemic in Mobile. Their son, William, was born there in 1854. Josiah went on to serve as a general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. As a young man, William Gorgas wanted to pursue a military career, as well. He was so determined that when West Point rejected him, he decided he would become a physician so he could be a sol- dier. He enrolled in Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York City, graduating in 1879. He joined the Army Medical Department the next year. He met his wife, Marie Cook Doughty, in a fashion similar to his parents’ introduction, during a yellow fever epidemic at Fort Brown on the Texas-Mexican border in 1882. She became so ill with the disease that her family began to make funeral preparations. William, called to treat her, soon got yellow fever himself. The two ended up convalescing together and acquired permanent immunity to the vi- rus. Married in September 1885, they began a partnership in the fight against yellow fever. For the next several years, they lived in a number of posts where Gorgas pursued the study of the disease. To yellow fever, one of his colleagues would later observe, “he owed wife, op- portunity, fame and great place, and the personal immunity which enabled him to walk without fear in the shadow of death.” When William was assigned to Havana, Marie and their daugh- ter Aileen joined him there. He would confess to a colleague that he “got weak in the knees and was afraid to keep our small girl down here, even though we had no infected mosquitoes.” The family also went with him to Panama, despite its reputation for unhealthful con- ditions. During the dark days of early 1905, when William was en- during a firestorm of criticism in Panama, Marie returned to the Unit- ed States to undergo radical surgery and X-ray treatment for cancer. William wanted to resign his post in Panama to be with her, but she encouraged him to stay in the fight and she rejoined him after her own medical battle. During their nine years in Panama, Marie served as hostess to the scores of visitors who came through the zone during construction. Aileen would marry one of her father’s assistants, W. D. Wrightson. Marie’s nephew, Theodore C. Lyster (whose life William had saved from yellow fever) came to Panama as an Army medical officer and would go on to become the founder of the U.S. Army’s aviation medi- cine program during World War I. 37 38 39 Despite his rise to power and fame, Gorgas preferred the field to the office and the fight against yellow fever to the struggles with bureaucracy. He traveled to Ecuador, known as the pest hole of the Pacific, to advise on prevention of yellow fever and plague; worked with the British government in South Africa on the con- trol of pneumonia; and served on the Rockefeller Foundation’s In- ternational Health Board, traveling with members of his Panama team to Central and South America to educate others on the pre- vention of yellow fever. Marie usually accompanied William and, according to a friend and colleague, “intelligently helped him in his work.” Upon retirement from the Army in 1918, the couple contin- ued their effort. When he and Marie were passing through London on their way to Africa to investigate yellow fever there, he suffered a stroke in May and died on 4 July 1920. The King of England knighted Gorgas before he passed away. His body came home to a hero’s welcome, lying in state in Washington, D.C., before being buried in Arlington Cemetery. Honorary pallbearers included the secretary of war; members of Congress; and official representa- tives from Peru, Ecuador, and, of course, Panama. Honors contin- ued in 1921 when Panamanian and American medical officials established the Gorgas Memorial Institute for Tropical and Preven- tive Medicine in Panama, and in 1928 when Congress renamed Ancon Hospital the Gorgas Hospital. After William’s death, Marie sought to guard his legacy against critics by writing his biography. Her book also provided “some of the earliest first impressions of Panama as recorded by one of the American canal force.” Having survived yellow fever and cancer, Marie died suddenly in 1929 and joined William in Arlington Cemetery. With commission support and resources, the public health department attacked the problem of yellow fever in Panama as if at war. They fought simultaneously on several fronts—identifying all victims of yellow fever and screening them off from mosquitoes to prevent the spread of the disease, killing as many Aedes aegypti mosquitoes as possible, destroying their larvae and breeding ar- eas, and inspecting the work continually to ensure effectiveness. 40 41 only incentives and penalties in his program, but also diplomacy (or, as one visitor put it, “tactful policy”) in enforcing public health regulations. Part of this tact was Gorgas’ gentle and reassuring manner. He also made a good impression because his name was Spanish, he spoke the language to a limited degree, and he soon became friends with Panamanian physician Manuel Amador, the first elected pres- ident of the country. Gorgas also was a student of intelligent public health practice. For example, in Cuba, when he became convinced that clothing and bedding did not transmit the disease, he stopped the disruptive practice of disinfecting homes of the sick because it often damaged property and discouraged reporting of infectious disease. He instead employed the less-invasive approach of fumi- gating homes against mosquitoes. As he wrote Walter Reed: “From my experience here in municipal sanitation, I think this is of the greatest importance, viz: To put people to as little inconvenience and loss as possible by methods of disinfection.” He explained that “the destruction of mosquitoes in a building can be accomplished with very little annoyance to the inmates but the thorough de- struction of fomites [material objects thought to be contaminated with germs] causes a great deal of inconvenience and some loss.” Similarly, when his researchers confirmed that yellow fever vic- tims were not infectious after three days, Gorgas stopped quaran- tining patients on the fifth day of their illness. He also required his staff to be considerate. When the Office of the Surgeon General told him he needed stronger assistants in Panama, he replied with some emotion, “I do not want any man who will make anybody clean up his back yard; I want him to persuade him to clean up his backyard; that is the key to my business.” Battling Malaria and Other Threats Once he got yellow fever under control, Gorgas turned to what he considered an even greater menace to the construction project—malaria. Although it did not have as high a mortality rate as yellow fever, Gorgas told a medical conference in 1906 that “malaria in the tropics is by far the most important disease to which tropical populations are subject,” because “the amount of incapacity caused by malaria is very much greater than that due to all other diseases combined.” He could speak firsthand to its ravages, having 42 43 suffered through both diseases: “The mental depression caused by this general sickness can hardly be appreciated by any one who did not see it.” Although yellow fever and malaria were both transmitted by mosquitoes, they were quite different. Yellow fever was an acute, short-term disease caused by a virus. It struck in epidemic epi- sodes and was often fatal. Malaria, on the other hand, was a chron- ic, long-term illness caused by parasites called plasmodia that took up residence in the bloodstream. While malaria could at times be deadly, it more commonly generated high hospitalization rates. Yellow fever patients were contagious for only the first three days of the illness and survivors acquired lifetime immunity, whereas malaria victims could recover but continue to harbor plasmodia in their blood, resulting in subsequent episodes of illness and provid- ing a reservoir of pathogens for mosquitoes to transmit to other people. Even the mosquitoes that carried them were different. Aedes aegypti were urban and domestic, confining themselves to inhabited areas, whereas malarial Anopheles were country cousins preferring swamps and forests, which made them much more dif- ficult to find and destroy. Marie Gorgas aptly characterized the dif- ference: “Making war on the yellow-fever insect is like making war on the family cat, while a campaign directed against the malarial parasite is like fighting all the beasts of the jungle.” The malaria campaign in Panama had two approaches, to de- stroy the parasites in the victim’s body, as well as the adult mos- quitoes and their larvae. By 1904, medical scientists had identified four different parasites or plasmodia that caused the disease. All varieties fed upon and destroyed red blood cells, causing a cycle of fevers and chills every two days, clogging arteries in the brain and kidneys, and often enlarging the spleen. The most common and malignant parasite was the Plasmodium falciparum. Although relatively helpless against a case of yellow fever, physicians did have medicine to treat malaria. Quinine, made from bark of the chincona tree, could reduce the plasmodia in the blood, thereby serving as both a therapeutic remedy and a preventive drug. When people suffering from malaria first arrived at the hospital in Ancon or Colon, medical personnel examined their blood to identify the parasite and screened them in to prevent mosquitoes from spreading the infection. They then injected the patient with large doses of quinine, switching to an oral version as the patient recovered. While the drug rarely cured malaria, it did 42 43 help people regain enough strength so they could return to work. Researchers also found that three grains of quinine could suppress plasmodia levels in the blood enough to keep a person relatively well and reduce the chance of transmission to the noninfected. As a result, the health department began dispensing quinine to Canal Zone employees. Its use was controversial, though, and not always popular. In addition to its bitter taste, it could cause side effects. Gorgas later asserted: “No attempt was ever made to force anyone to take this prophylactic quinine, but explanation and persuasion were used to their fullest extent.” But here diplomacy may not have been that effective. In 1906, Gorgas reported 40,000 doses of quinine were consumed daily by 40,000 workers, but by 1909 the department was distributing only 20,000 doses daily to 45,000 employees. Getting rid of the mosquitoes was an even bigger challenge. The fumigation, screening, and draining of water sources em- ployed against yellow fever’s Aedes aegypti also helped reduce ma- laria mosquitoes, but Anopheles needed additional measures. For this, research teams set out to learn more about the enemy. In one of the first experiments, men laid on cots in a ward in the Ancon hospital with pill boxes and a clock. “Each time a mosquito bit them, or tried to, it was captured and placed in a pill-box and the date and hour written on the box,” explained Le Prince. The re- searchers found that the Anopheles attacked men at rest all hours of the day and “at night they became too numerous to make the work pleasant.” The Anopheles, they also saw, “absolutely refused to follow a man out into the bright rays of the sun.” Another research group surveyed the Panamanian population to assess the extent of malaria infection. In 1906, they collected blood samples from the residents of the towns of Bohio and Gatun and found that more than 60 percent harbored the plasmodia parasites. Since the infected individuals were functioning well, however, researchers figured that they apparently had acquired enough immunity to survive and continue working. In an ingenious study, Le Prince and his crew dyed mosquitoes blue and released them into the environs. They then set traps throughout the vicinity to see how far the mosquitoes migrated and where they fed and bred. Confirming that Anopheles disliked bright light and finding that it typically did not fly more than 200 yards, workers needed only to cut grass and drain standing water for that distance around inhabited areas in order to effectively reduce malaria. Researchers 46 47 Other hazards remained, chief among them pneumonia. It was especially prevalent among the West Indian laborers. By April 1906, Gorgas would report that “pneumonia is by far the heavi- est cause of death among the employees, 32 having died from this disease.” The workers’ poor standard of living, he believed, was to blame: “They seldom have more clothing than they have on their backs. . . . When they come home in the evening their clothing is soaked. They go to bed at night, sleep soundly and as the air gets chilly the men get thoroughly chilled.” This, along with poor nutri- tion, was “amply sufficient” to cause pneumonia. Gorgas would speak on this subject for the rest of his career. In 1914 he explained to a business club in Cincinnati: “That pover- ty was the greatest single cause of bad sanitary conditions was very early impressed upon me.” If he would again encounter a situation such as in Cuba or Panama, and was “allowed to select only one sanitary measure,” he told them, “I would select that of doubling wages.” Taxing these wages, however, would put workers back where they began, so Gorgas supported a special levy on land that would “increase wages without increasing the burden on labor. Thus, it will lower death rates and increase health and efficiency rates.” Although he could not implement those ideas in Panama, Gorgas introduced places for workers to dry out their clothes be- fore going home, and sought to reduce crowded housing by mov- ing laborers out of barracks into shacks scattered throughout the zone. These changes seemed to produce results, and reported deaths from pneumonia fell from 416 in 1906 to 47 in 1913. Another significant cause of death in Panama was workplace mishaps. In 1908, for example, 46 employees drowned, 23 died in dynamite explosions, and 181 succumbed to “accidental trauma- tisms.” Thus, as the public health department got infectious dis- eases under control, accidents became more important as a per- centage of mortality. Department figures showed that in January 1906, disease accounted for 95 percent of all fatalities, but in Janu- ary 1912, only 60 percent. When the overall death rate increased from 10.64 per 1,000 employees in 1909 to 10.98 in 1910, Gorgas pointed out that the rise “is due to the increased number of deaths from external violence, the death rate from disease being less than that of 1909.” That year there were 3,950 hospitalizations for “ex- ternal violence,” about 10 percent of the canal employees at the time. According to another estimate, on average ten workers were killed each month during the construction period; and deaths by 46 47 drowning, suicide, explosions, railroad mishaps, homicide, and accidents of various kinds accounted for one-fifth of the roughly 5,600 fatalities during canal construction. Workers operate tripod drills in the foreground. Other crews filled the holes with dynamite. The resulting explosions loosened the earth for the steam shovels, visible at work in the background. The official weekly newspaper, the Canal Record, reported many of these incidents. A story in September 1908 told about four men—Rejelio Castillo, Juan Sanchez, Coementi Gonzales, and Rivio Arios—who were killed when two engines fell off a tres- tle crossing a river. The next month, two explosions made the news in one week—one when a steam shovel struck the cap of an unex- ploded charge buried in the ground and the other when lightning detonated a cache of dynamite. The blasts killed twelve men—ten black laborers and two white engineers—and injured eighteen. In another accident in late 1909, a steam shovel struck a “soft place in the track bed” and turned over. The paper reported in a matter- of-fact tone: “In falling, the shovel caught David Thomas, a Bar- badian, killing him almost instantly.” Completion of construction ended the dangers of explosions, but in 1915, the Panama Canal authority was still struggling to reduce railroad accidents—costly 48 49 in dollars and time, as well as lives. “By increasing the thorough- ness of investigation and of discipline in cases of operating acci- dents on the Panama Railroad,” the Canal Record explained, “the transportation department has been able to reduce considerably the number of accidents.” Although train mishaps fell from 57 in December 1914 to 17 in March 1915, the Canal Zone would re- main a hazardous place to work. As early as October 1906, when yellow fever seemed to be under control, Gorgas wrote, “I do not argue that in the Rio Grande reservoir we have found Ponce de Leon’s spring of per- petual life, but merely that Panama is not so bad a place, from the health point of view, as is generally believed.” By 1911, the Journal of the American Medical Association suggested that Pan- ama was an “ideal health resort” because its death rate of 12.48 per 1,000 compared favorably to the U.S. figure of 16.10. The New York Times made a comparable analogy. Measures worked out by Army public health officers in Panama paid dividends elsewhere. Public health officials were able to contain yellow fe- ver in New Orleans in 1905, and make it the last such outbreak in the United States. Despite all this success, in some ways the years 1907–1914 were troubling ones for William Gorgas. In February 1907, after Roosevelt visited the Canal Zone and praised Gorgas’ work, the president appointed a new commission composed almost entirely of Army officers, including Gorgas. But he gave the primary authority to Goethals and thereby set the stage for discord between the two colonels that was “intense almost from the outset.” The reasons for this hostility are not completely clear, but Marie Gorgas believed, with some justification, that Goethals jealously sought and guarded his power and resented the independence of the health department. Gorgas, however, wanted an entirely free hand to implement sanitary policy as he saw fit. The secretary of the canal commission would observe at the time that, among its members, there was an “acute sensitiveness as to the preservation of prerogatives.” A primary source of dispute was Goethals’ objection to the price tag of public health projects. Gorgas countered by emphasiz- ing how his organization saved both lives and money. In 1910, he conducted a survey of hospital expenses in major U.S. cities and found that the cost per patient per day of running his medical fa- cilities in Panama compared favorably with Stateside counterparts, 50 51 Digging Down As the work expanded under Goethals, he oversaw a number of significant changes in the plan. The width of the bottom of the channel through Culebra Cut increased from 200 to 300 feet to ease the flow of two-way traffic through this chokepoint. The size of the lock chambers also grew to 110 feet by 1,000 feet, to accommodate the largest U.S. Navy vessels—the Pennsylvania- class battleships—and soon-to-be-completed commercial ships such as the Titanic. On the Pacific terminus, planners added a seawall across the mudflats to Naos Island (a distance of three miles) to block silt-laden currents that otherwise would choke the mouth of the canal. A similar new barrier on the Atlantic side would protect Limon Bay and Colon Harbor from stormy water. Finally, the site of the two-step locks and man-made lake on the southern end shifted from La Boca to Miraflores, a move necessitated by unstable ground at the initial location. This last modification also was desirable from a military standpoint, since relocating the locks further inland made them less vulnerable to naval bombardment. The most challenging and disheartening construction task was digging the Culebra Cut, where the first American steam shovel had begun operating on 11 November 1904. This aspect of the project also received most of the public’s attention. The area of work extended for nearly nine miles, crossing the Continental Divide at its lowest point of 333 feet above sea level in a saddle between Gold Hill on the east (540 feet high) and Contractor’s Hill in the west (410 feet tall). Workers would have to dig out a substantial portion of both peaks as they went down. This would be the narrowest segment of the canal (other than the locks) and form the southern arm of Gatun Lake. Years of toil and heartache passed before the cut reached completion. The French had made some headway in the excavation of the massive trench, as had the Americans under Wallace and Stevens. Yet what they had done was trifling compared to what Gaillard and his Central Division workers eventually achieved. Merely preventing the waters of the Chagres River from entering the cut during excavation required a temporary barrier, known as the Gamboa Dike, which was a large construction project in its own right. 52 Each day some six thousand men labored on the great man-made canyon. Officially, they worked every day but Sunday; in actuality, on the cut as elsewhere on the canal, there was usually something that needed to be done on Sundays, as well. Most employees were on the job from seven in the morning until five in the evening, but there was round-the- clock activity. Dynamite crews performed their task during the midday break (from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.) and after five in the evening. Repair crews worked at night, tending to the steam shovels and other pieces of equipment, while others brought in coal by rail to replenish fuel for the gigantic machines. At the Central Division office in the town of Empire, managers carefully coordinated all phases of the work to prevent the various activities from getting in the way of each other. The chief means for attacking the daunting task were dynamite, steam shovels, dirt trains, dredges, and pneumatic rock drills. Air to power the latter came through miles of pipes from large compressors at Rio Grande, Empire, and Las Cascadas. Three hundred of the drills, all noisy, were in operation on a typical day. They created the holes—in an average month, 345,223 feet or 65 miles worth—for dynamite charges that loosened the rock and soil for excavation. These explosions routinely punctuated the continuous cacophony of machines, providing onlookers (including sightseers from throughout the world) with dramatic evidence of progress on the cut. Most of the 61 million pounds of dynamite used on the canal were employed at Culebra. About half of the workforce there was involved in the blasting effort in one form or another—drilling the holes, hauling the explosives, and placing the charges. The dynamite arrived by ship from the United States, with some of the vessels carrying as much as a million pounds of the dangerous cargo. Laborers transferred it by hand to rail cars, which transported it to concrete magazines where it was stored until needed. Workers placed dynamite sticks by hand into the drill holes and gingerly laid the fuses to simultaneously set off entire fields of buried charges. Premature blasts accounted for numerous deaths and injuries. The worst of these disasters came on 12 December 1908, at Bas Obispo, where 23 men were killed and 40 injured when an undetermined cause detonated a series of charges without warning. The project used so much dynamite on 52 a daily basis that the engineers could observe, experiment, and develop new methods as they went along. As the work progressed, these improvements in handling the dangerous material reduced the number of accidents. Steam Shovels A steam shovel digs out the latest slide at Cucaracha and piles dirt on flatcars with one open side. The efficient system of moving spoil and the eagerness of crews to compete against each other made it possible to move a mountain at Culebra in less time than planned. The workhorse and conspicuous symbol of the canal project was the steam shovel. More specifically, it was the 95-ton behe- moth manufactured by the Bucyrus Company. Widely published photographs of President Roosevelt seated at the controls of one during his inspection tour of the Canal Zone in 1906 made a last- ing impression on the American public. And the big machines lived up to their gargantuan reputation. 53 56 57 French attempt to carve out a route through the Continental Di- vide, made life a living hell for Colonel Gaillard and all those toiling on the cut. The slides buried equipment, rails, and struc- tures, and wiped out thousands upon thousands of man-hours of hard work. A particularly bad slide occurred during the French period at Cucaracha, on the east bank of the cut and south of Gold Hill. It happened there again early in the American period, on 4 October 1907. Heavy rains sent mud and rocks plummeting into the excavation, destroying two steam shovels and burying railroad tracks. Slippage continued at the rate of ten to fifteen feet a day. At the end of ten days, half a million cubic yards lay at the bottom of the dig. Recalling the ice floes he had observed in Alaska, Gaillard called the slides “tropical glaciers.” On 22 October 1910, a slide at the same place buried sixteen flatcars, two locomotives, and two steam shovels. Slides hit Cucaracha twice more in 1910, after which Gaillard announced his be- lief that the problem was largely a thing of the past. More and worse, however, was to come. From 1911 until the completion of the canal, increasingly severe slides occurred—twenty-two all told. The most damaging struck at La Cascadas, Empire, Lir- io, and East Culebra. Slides eventually accounted for more than one-fourth of the total material excavated at the cut. And the problem never completely disappeared. Fresh slides occurred for years after the canal was in operation. To carry off some of the water that contributed to the prob- lem, Goethals directed the Central Division to dig diversion chan- nels parallel to the cut, a remedy also attempted by the French. One of the large ditches extended for five and one-half miles; another required the excavation of one million cubic yards. Unfortunately, the planners put them too close to the cut; water seeping from the trenches into the shoulders of the main excavation quite likely caused even more slides. At first, the slides came, not unexpectedly, after heavy rains, and were termed gravity slides. Later types, called structural breaks and deformation slides, came during the dry season. They were caused by unstable rock formations, the steepness of the slopes, and the incessant blasting. They lasted anywhere from an hour to several days. Sometimes water came boiling out of the fissures in the exposed rock surface, causing panicky workers to believe that they were uncovering a volcano. 56 57 Desperate for a solution to the problem, the engineers ex- plored many possibilities, several suggested by outside experts. Nothing worked, including plastering the slopes with concrete. All that could be done was to continue cutting back the sides until the excavation reached an angle of repose—“the angle of maxi- mum slope at which a heap of any loose solid material (as earth) will stand without sliding.” Until reaching that point, all Gaillard could do was to comply with Goethals’ directive following a mas- sive slide on 19 January 1912: “Hell, dig it out again.” Gaillard never saw the completion of the Culebra Cut. In the summer of 1913, major slides seemed to have unhinged him. He began talking incoherently and suffering from memory loss. Goethals and others assumed that a nervous breakdown was the cause. He sought treatment in Baltimore, where an examination revealed that he had a brain tumor. After unsuccessful surgery, he died on 5 December 1913. His widow attributed the death to overwork and blamed Goethals for the loss of her husband, even though the tumor had nothing to do with the strain of the project. Nevertheless, members of the Gaillard family continued to shun Goethals and his family. In recognition of what the much-admired Army engineer had achieved, President Wilson ordered in 1915 that the channel through the mountains henceforth be known as the Gaillard Cut. Dredging was less dramatic than the blasting and digging, but no less essential. Wherever there was a body of water and appropriate geology, dredging provided an added element of ef- ficiency, since there was no need to constantly shift and rebuild track for steam shovels and dirt trains. In all three geographical divisions, a variety of specialized vessels scooped up and removed mud, silt, sand, and loose or soft rock. At first, the Americans used Belgian- and British-built dredges originally employed by the French (in many cases raising and restoring vessels that had sunk after years of neglect). Later, they ordered new and more powerful American-built types like those the Corps of Engineers had been using in its river and harbor work in the United States. Depending on the kind of material being removed and where the spoil would be deposited, the canal builders employed lad- der, pipeline suction, five-yard dipper, clam shell, seagoing suc- tion, and hopper dredges. Suction dredges, for example, handled soft material such as silt and sand; ladder and dipper types dealt with harder strata, such as coral rock and argillaceous (clay-like) sandstone. The French had often aptly named their ladder-type 58 59 machines after burrowing animals, such as Badger, Mole, Gopher, and Marmot. Other types drew monikers from Panama geogra- phy; Chagres, Mindi, and Gamboa were a few examples. Some had only numerical designations, such as “French Ladder Dredge No. 6” and “Pipeline Suction Dredge No. 83.” Dredging operations were significant on the old French chan- nel on the Atlantic side; the sites for the Gatun, Miraflores, and Pedro Miguel Dams; the harbors at Cristobal and Balboa; gravel bars on the Chagres; and the site for the Colon seawall. Probably the biggest task of this type was the removal of 39,962,470 cubic yards of material to create the eight-mile sea-level channel from the Pacific to Miraflores. Relatively little dredging took place in the Central Division, where steam shovels did all of the excavating until water filled the cut, at which time dredges took over the task of handling the ongoing slides. At the large Cucaracha slide, dip- per and suction dredges worked around the clock for months in order to clear the channel. Dredges work at the Cucaracha slide in December 1913 after the flooding of Culebra Cut three months earlier. Though less glamorous than the steam shovels, these waterborne machines made their own large contribution to moving dirt for the canal. 60 61 streams—a portion of the old French canal and its West Diversion channel. The largest earthen dam in the world, it rose to a height of 105 feet above sea level or 20 feet higher than the 85-foot level of the lake. At its base, it measured almost half a mile thick. At the top, it tapered to 100 feet. Near the center, in the form of a 740-foot-long arc, was a spillway that released excess water from frequent heavy rains into the remaining stretch of the Chagres. The spillway’s fourteen openings allowed a discharge of 140,000 cubic feet per second. This part of the dam had called for 225,000 cubic yards of concrete. The enormous lake that the dam brought into existence sub- merged 164 square miles of jungle, many miles of the old Panama Railroad line, part of the French canal, much of the Chagres River, and numerous villages and farms. (The inhabitants were compen- sated for their loss, but after the failure of the French, many refused to actually move until the rising waters lapped at their doors.) The lake extended for thirty-two miles from Gatun Dam through the Culebra Cut to the dam at Pedro Miguel. At that time the largest man-made body of water on earth, it also went far beyond the bor- ders of the Canal Zone, covering significant areas in the remainder of Panama. An important component of the dam and lake was the hy- droelectric plant erected at the spillway. Water from the lake, fall- ing about seventy-five feet, would generate all the power needed to open and close the locks, light the system, operate the Panama Railroad, and run many other activities vital to the success of the canal. It would replace oil-fueled steam turbine plants at Gatun and Miraflores that had provided electricity during the construc- tion phase (although the latter would remain in place as a backup). The heavy reliance on electricity was itself a pioneering effort, since the primary motive force for industry at that time was still steam. The wisdom and sheer elegance of the decision to dam the Chagres River were now on full display. Instead of being an im- pediment, as the French had viewed it, the Americans had found a way to make the river serve as the vital cog in the canal. The lake created by the river’s basin was the longest and most easily navigated portion of the route, stored the water to fill the locks by the simple force of gravity, and generated the electricity to power nearly all aspects of the canal. The Pacific Division erected four dams in all, one on either side of its two sets of locks. At Pedro Miguel, the dams 62 63 contained the waters of Gatun Lake at the south end of Culebra Cut and, in Sibert’s words, “simply connect the locks with the sides of the cut.” The west dam was an earthen structure that measured about 1,400 feet long and 50 feet wide at the top. The east dam had a concrete core wall. At Miraflores, the west dam contained 1,758,423 cubic yards of hydraulic fill, while the east dam was a concrete structure approximately 500 feet long. The area between these dams would become Miraflores Lake. Minuscule in comparison with its cousin at Gatun, it covered only 1.6 square miles. It would play a similar role, however, both forming a navigable part of the canal route and providing water to fill the Miraflores Locks. Work on the equally immense task of building the locks went on simultaneously with the construction of the dams. That effort started on the three locks at Gatun on 24 August 1909, on the single lock at Pedro Miguel one week later, and on the two at Miraflores on 30 May 1910. Each lock consisted of a pair of parallel chambers to allow two-way passage for vessels going through the canal. The inside of each chamber measured 1,000 feet long by 110 feet wide and 81 feet high. At its base, each exterior side wall was from 45 to 50 feet wide; at the top, only 8 feet. A wall 60 feet wide separated each of the side-by- side chambers. The thickness of the floors varied from 13 to 20 feet. The lock walls were reinforced concrete, a relatively new building material at the time. Workers first constructed a form, out of wood or metal sheets, corresponding to the ul- timate shape desired for a 36-foot section of the lock. Inside the form, they erected a skeleton of steel bars and then poured the wet concrete around them. After the mixture hardened, they stripped away the forms and began the process anew for the next section. No other reinforced-concrete structure in the world then in existence approached even a fraction of the size of the Panama Canal locks. The Gatun trio would consume 2 million cubic yards of concrete, those at Pedro Miguel and Miraflores required 2.4 million. The concrete itself was a mixture of water, sand, gravel, and portland cement. The canal commission ultimately pur- chased 5 million bags and barrels of the latter component from the Atlas Portland Cement Company, all shipped from Jersey City. An order by Goethals for workers to shake every 62 63 cement bag after it was emptied saved an estimated $50,000. Each coastal division had a plant dedicated solely to crushing rock. On the Atlantic side, it was at Porto Bello, twenty miles up the coast from Colon. On the Pacific, they quarried stone and made it into gravel at Ancon Hill. The sand, which had to be of a particular quality, came from farther away on both coasts. Barges brought the gravel and sand via the French channel (and later the American-built waterway) to Gatun, while the Panama Railroad provided the means of transport in the Pacific Divi- sion to get the material to Pedro Miguel and Miraflores. Each division came up with its own system of handling the concrete. Major Jervey directed the work on the Gatun Locks. He had a dedicated plant that mixed concrete and deposited it into large buckets, each capable of holding six tons. A small train of flatcars, each loaded with two buckets, transported the wet concrete to the lock construction site. There eight movable towers (four on each side of the locks) supported a system of overhead cables. The cableway (another Lidgerwood product) picked up the buckets and brought them over the forms, then dumped the mixture inside, where laborers ensured that it filled every nook and cranny. The sites at Pedro Miguel and Miraflores were not condu- cive to a cableway system. Instead, Williamson employed eight huge cantilever cranes that were visible for miles. Four were known as berm cranes. These self-propelled giants moved on tracks laid along the sides of the lock excavations. A long arm picked up sand, gravel, and cement and deposited them into mixers at the base of the crane. Another arm transferred buck- ets of concrete to the chamber cranes, so-called because they operated, also on rails, within the locks. They, in turn, dumped the concrete into the forms. Once the concrete shell was finished, crews had to install the large steel gates devised by Henry Goldmark. On 12 May 1911, the McClintic-Marshall Construction Company of Pitts- burgh, a bridge-building firm, started fashioning the gates onsite out of parts manufactured in the United States. Each gate consisted of two leaves that swung on hinges like double doors; when closed they formed a flattened V shape. Each leaf weighed from 300 to 745 tons, stood up to 82 feet high, and was 65 feet wide and 7 feet thick. They consisted of a watertight metal skin on a girder frame, which meant that they floated when submerged 66 Working on the Railroad The first modern method of transit across the Isthmus of Pan- ama had been the forty-eight miles of railroad built by American investors between 1849 and 1855. De Lesseps’ company acquired it in 1881, though Americans continued to operate it. The U.S. government took possession of it as part of the French assets pur- chased in 1904, along with the associated steamship line, which sailed between New York and Colon. Although the canal was supposed to largely replace the railroad, Stevens’ background had allowed him to see what de Lesseps had overlooked—that the line could play an integral role in constructing the waterway. But it had to be bigger and better to do so. In the half century of the Panama line’s existence, railroading in the United States had leapt forward in capability while the isthmian company had stagnated. Stevens immediately began replacing old equipment, ties, and rails with newer, heavier American versions. Although much of the work would be done under Goethals, Stevens initiated projects that double-tracked the existing line for thirty-seven miles and added more than eighty miles of sidings and spurs to facilitate spoil removal and the movement of men, equipment, and supplies. His plans also included rebuilding bridges; installing new signal, telegraph, and telephone systems; erecting warehouses, repair shops, and locomotive sheds; and procuring thousands of larger cars and 150 more-powerful engines. To operate the rejuvenated system, he recruited a completely new group of personnel—everyone from superintendents to switchmen—all experienced in running the type of large, efficient rail lines that crisscrossed the United States. The mid-1906 decision to construct a lock canal added a new facet to the railroad rebuilding effort. The existing line had followed the lowest suitable terrain across the isthmus—areas that in most places would be inundated by Gatun and Miraflores Lakes. The fi- nal plan thus required the relocation of almost all of the track bed. Keeping the line in operation to support the construction of the ca- nal added complexity and challenge to the task. In 1904, the railroad handled 17 million ton miles of freight. By 1910, the movement of supplies and spoil had increased the total to 300 million ton miles. In July 1906, two parties working from each end of the Canal Zone began surveying a new right-of-way for the rail line. They 66 completed the work in March 1907. Construction began soon af- ter but there was relatively little early progress because of a lack of funds and the need to create an organization to carry out the proj- ect. Ralph Budd, chief engineer of the Panama Railroad, took on the job of supervising the initial work. In 1909, Lieutenant Mears replaced him and completed the mission. Ultimately the railroad company employed much the same sort of manpower model as the overall canal project. In addition to its regular employees, it contracted with a few skilled workers and hired large numbers of West Indian laborers, many of them doing excavation. Mears ob- served that they “cooperate, some doing digging and loading and some dumping and spreading. They work hard and steadily until their ‘task’ is done.” Frederick Mears—Soldier and Builder Frederick Mears’ background was not altogether different from that of the West Point–trained Army engineer elite. The son of a career Army officer, he was born in Nebraska on 25 May 1878, and went on to graduate in 1897 from the Shattuck Military School of Fairib- ault, Minnesota. It was the same institution his father had attended and it modeled its program after that of the U.S. Military Academy (with somewhat similar technical classes, although Shattuck was at the high school level). A fellow student and best friend was the son of John Stevens, and Mears grew enamored with engineering and rail- roading during frequent visits to the Stevens home. At age 19, Mears went to work for the senior Stevens on the Great Northern Railroad as a laborer on a survey party. As he proved his capability, he quickly advanced, becoming a resident engineer for the company within two years despite his lack of substantial formal training in the field. During the Spanish-American War, Mears wanted to pursue his other dream of being a soldier, but he felt compelled to finish a job he had started on a new railroad line in British Columbia. By the time he was done, so was the war, but a new conflict had broken out with insurgents in the Philippines. Mears enlisted in the Army in 1899 and joined Company K of the 3d Infantry, which promptly sailed to join the campaign against the Filipino rebels. He made the same meteoric rise that he had in railroading, 67 69 quickly climbing to sergeant, then earning a commission as a second lieutenant in 1901. He returned to the States in 1903, was a distinguished graduate of the Army’s Infantry and Cavalry School in 1904, and immediately went on to complete the Staff College. Mears was serving in a cavalry regiment in 1906 when John Stevens requested that the 28-year-old lieutenant be detailed to Panama to serve as track foreman at the Culebra Cut. He shifted to the railroad relocation project later that year as Budd’s primary as- sistant and in 1909 succeeded him as chief engineer of the Panama Railroad, serving in that capacity until 1914. During his final two years on the project, he also became general superintendent of the railroad and its steamship line. Col. Frederick Mears in 1918. He began his military career as a private in the cavalry and fought in the Philippine Insurrection before gaining his commission and spearheading the rebuilding of the Panama Railroad. Following the success of the canal project, the government was planning to build a railroad in Alaska. President Woodrow Wilson deemed the venture the “key to unlocking” the territory’s resources. Initially he hoped Goethals would take on the task, but 68 70 71 sion of the work at Culebra, with steam shovels, dynamite, and spoil trains contributing to the effort. The largest one had a maximum depth of 95 feet. (The Culebra Cut, by contrast, had dug down about 300 feet.) The last major segment of the rebuilt railroad system was the Gold Hill Line. Plans originally called for laying track along the east berm of the Culebra Cut, ten feet above the projected water level. But repeated slides within the cut made that proposition dubious and Goethals appointed a board of engineers to study the question. The panel’s report recommended that it be built outside of the foot- print of the cut altogether. Goethals agreed. The final choice was to begin at a point near the Gamboa Bridge over the Chagres River and from there climb to the Continental Divide, crossing it at an eleva- tion about 240 feet above sea level on the east side of Gold Hill. This area would be the steepest grade on the new line. Tunneling through rock and dealing with slides made this section as difficult as any. Nevertheless, workers completed the 9¼-mile segment in May 1912 and turned it over to the railroad company that month. The relocated right-of-way became the logical route for a high- tension power line, especially since planners believed that eventual- ly the hydroelectric plant at Gatun would supply electricity to oper- ate the trains. Steel transmission towers rose alongside the tracks at 300-foot intervals (250 feet on the curves). Also running along the route, in underground concrete ducts to prevent disturbance from the power lines, were cables for the telephone, telegraph, and the automatic signal systems. As construction moved forward on the track, other workers were building new facilities, such as passenger stations at Colon and Panama City and freight yards at Cristobal and Balboa. Even with restoration of normal operations in 1913, other work remained to be done, including construction of a rail- road trestle to Naos Island, completed in November of that year. Despite the disruption from construction, throughout the project trains had maintained a hectic pace in support of the ca- nal effort and also continued to serve their original purpose as a means of interoceanic transportation. In 1910, for example, the railroad carried over 2 million passengers (primarily canal work- ers), hauled more than a million tons of commercial freight, and moved almost 40 million tons of spoil. The 1906 report calling for a lock canal had estimated the cost of the railroad relocation at $3.7 million. The total reported by Mears at the completion of the effort came to $8,786,566.58. By far the most 72 73 costly item was the work of cutting and filling, which accounted for $6,431,484.39. Responding to concerns over the unexpected tab, the Army lieutenant cited the expense entailed in putting the line above the water levels of the new lakes and routing it outside Culebra Cut. Even so, the amount was not that much higher than the $7 million cost in the 1850s for the original, less-capable line. According to Mears, the rebuilding of the Panama Railroad had been “a necessary part of the plan, not only to furnish a sys- tem of transportation during the period of canal construction, but to provide a suitable means of crossing the isthmus at all times, linking the important points along the canal one with the other.” He further underscored the vital role of the railroad—and the sig- nificance of his work—by noting that throughout the entire canal project there was “no other highway across the Isthmus of Pana- ma—no road or trail which could be used by man or beast to pass between the oceans.” Completing the Mission Army engineers had long believed that a lock canal would be safer, straighter, and cheaper than a sea-level canal, plus it could be completed sooner. Even before the final decision in 1906 on the type of canal, everyone was determined to finish the job as quickly as possible. Stevens had announced during his tenure that the wa- terway could be operational on 1 January 1915. When Goethals took over, he publicly adhered to that date. Privately, however, he believed that the goal could be achieved even earlier and he set a pace calculated to do so. His subordinates came to share their chief ’s optimism as the work progressed rapidly. As the end of the project was coming into sight, several events seemed to threaten the objective. In August 1912, while the Ga- tun Dam was still under construction, an 800-foot section of it settled 20 feet (reminiscent of a similar occurrence with one of its toes in November 1908). On 20 January 1913, three days af- ter the disastrous Cucaracha slide, a 300-foot bluff south of Gold Hill fell, taking a half million cubic yards of rock into the canal. During the first two weeks of October that year, an earthquake and forty aftershocks rattled the zone. Another earthquake in May 1914 damaged buildings in Panama City and Balboa. Fortunately, the tremors did not affect any canal structures. In fact, none of 72 73 these incidents seriously slowed the progress toward finishing the project before January 1915. Meanwhile, several preliminary actions remained before the waterway became fully operational. These consisted mostly of eliminating the dikes, dams, and diversion channels that had been preventing water from entering various segments of the canal while they were under construction. The removal of each major obstacle occasioned cheering and celebrating by workers and on- lookers. The most thrilling came in early September 1913, when workers departed the Culebra Cut in preparation for flooding it. The first water into the excavation came from Gatun Lake through drain pipes in the earth dike at Gamboa. To complete the task, on 10 October President Wilson, in Washington, touched a button that sent an electrical signal to eight tons of dynamite at the dike. The explosion opened a hole greater than one hundred feet wide, sending a torrent of water rushing into the cut. Dredges removed the remainder of the broken dike. That did not immediately al- low vessels to traverse the canal, since the slide at Cucaracha still blocked the cut, but dredges finally completed the task. Well before the first official transit of the canal, vessels were ply- ing parts of the route. On 26 September 1913, Gatun, a seagoing tug, made the initial trip through the locks of the same name. The pioneer passage on the Pacific side took place on 14 October when the tug Miraflores rose through the twin locks into Miraflores Lake. The first passage of a vessel through the canal from ocean to ocean was singu- larly lacking in drama. A crane boat, Alexandre La Valley, had come up through the Atlantic locks to Gatun Lake to perform a task. Much later, on 7 January 1914, it went down through the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores Locks to take on a fresh assignment. There was still a month to go before Gatun Lake rose to its projected 85 feet. The unofficial opening of the canal came with the 3 August 1914 test voyage of Cristobal. She had spent recent years at the lowly task of carrying cement for the project from New York to Colon, but she was also the first ocean-going ship to make the passage in a single voyage. The grand opening of the canal came on 15 August 1914, when Ancon, an equally humble sister ship of Cristobal, made the passage. Aboard were the president of Panama, other Panama- nian dignitaries, and personnel of the diplomatic corps. American passengers included canal officials, as well as officers of the infantry and coast artillery units in the zone. Notably absent were the U.S. president, secretary of war, and members of Congress. L' a ea Coco ono mE France Field’ [Port Gulickt s fy Fort Davis Gatun? NS ZF oth, \ Map 3  PANAMA CANAL MILITARY INSTALLATIONS . Military Installation —— Canal Channel ha tt } +o Kilors 78 79 grew to four battalions under the personal command of Brig. Gen. George F. Elliott, the commandant of the Marine Corps. Half of this force camped at Bas Obispo, near what would become the Gamboa Dike. After the initial threat of Columbian retaliation faded, Elliott and many of the troops went back to the States in February 1904. The size of the force fluctuated thereafter, with elements depart- ing to handle other regional emergencies and units coming in when- ever the situation in Panama required it. The biggest crisis occurred in the fall of 1904, when the Panamanian Army (a battalion of former Columbian soldiers that had sided with the breakaway province in return for money) plotted to overthrow the government. The Ameri- cans backed the Panamanian president and saw to the disbandment of the force. During more peaceful times, there were fewer than 200 marines protecting the zone. Civil disturbances in May 1906 and elec- tions in the summer of 1908 warranted temporary reinforcements. When Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson submitted his annual report for 1911, he noted “continued satisfactory progress of the work on the Panama Canal.” With the waterway nearly a reality, he believed: “The exits and locks of the Panama Canal must now be protected, and it has become necessary to send a mobile force of at least one brigade to the isthmus as well as coast artillerymen for this purpose.” In turn, this Army commitment would set “the Navy free for its legitimate functions.” With the redeployment of six infantry regiments from the Phil- ippines, the troops were available in the United States. Stimson or- dered the 10th Infantry to the Canal Zone that year. The force, at a peacetime strength of fewer than a thousand men, arrived on 4 Oc- tober 1911. While the War Department usually kept overseas units at full establishment, the lack of adequate quarters limited the number of personnel in Panama. Secretary Stimson observed: “In view of the time necessary for such construction, it is of the highest importance that such work should be begun at once.” In the interim, the regiment went into temporary facilities made available by Goethals at Las Cas- cadas (near Camp Elliott). The soldiers named their home after Maj. Gen. Elwell S. Otis, who had commanded American forces in the Philippines during much of the insurrection there. Although Goethals’ gold roll workers had most of the comforts of home, military men in Panama initially had no such amenities. In addition to the threat of disease, one officer described what the or- dinary soldier or marine could expect: “Drinking places, where vile liquor was dispensed, were everywhere; immoral women, many of 80 81 an “adequate submarine mine defense.” These were complemented by “a defensive line of field fortifications for the protection of the more vulnerable portions of the canal from injuries by raiding par- ties.” The project also involved “filling, clearing, and drainage to secure healthful surroundings for the troops detailed for the de- fense of the canal.” Construction was soon under way on the bat- teries, and the first guns and their carriages arrived in June 1913. Most of the installations were complete by 1915, at a cost of $15 million. At the time, they were “regarded as the most powerful and effective of any [seacoast armament] in the world.” The coast artillery sites on the Pacific side, built on landfill as part of the Naos Island breakwater, became Fort Grant, named for the U.S. general and president. Nearby installations on the mainland were dubbed Fort Amador, after the first president of an independent Panama. Batteries on the west bank entrance of the canal were known as Fort Kobbe, after William A. Kobbe, a private in the Civil War who eventually retired in 1904 as a major general. On the Atlantic end, heavy batteries on the northwest shoulder of Limon Bay became Fort Sherman, after the famous Civil War general. Fort de Lesseps was a tiny installation with a handful of coastal guns surrounded by Colon. The final defensive base on the Atlantic side was Fort Randolph, located on Margarita and Galeta Islands and named after Maj. Gen. Wallace F. Randolph. In 1913, Army planners established the “minimum peace gar- rison” as three regiments of infantry, one battalion of field artillery, one squadron of cavalry, eighteen companies of coast artillery, and ancillary supporting units. As the fixed fortifications at either end of the canal neared completion, the 81st Coast Artillery Company landed on 22 December 1913. During 1914, four additional com- panies manned fixed fortifications, while the 5th Infantry joined the mobile forces and set itself up near Empire. The following year saw the arrival of three more coast artillery companies; the 29th Infantry; the 1st Squadron, 12th Cavalry; Company M, 3d Engineer Battalion; and a signal platoon. On 6 January 1915, the War Department established United States Troops, Panama Canal Zone, as part of the Army’s Eastern Department, to provide com- mand and control. The forces in the zone conducted their first real alert for potential combat in April 1914 when the United States occupied Vera Cruz and conflict with Mexico seemed likely. The second 82 83 came soon after when war broke out in Europe in August. The American military presence further increased in 1916 with the arrival of the 2d Battalion, 4th Field Artillery, and another five coast artillery companies. Elements of the 5th and 10th Infan- try regiments combined to form the 33d Infantry, which took station at Gatun. By the time the United States entered World War I in April 1917, it was clear that there was no significant conventional military threat to the waterway, since Britain’s Royal Navy had bottled up the German Imperial Fleet in its home ports. How- ever, there remained the distinct possibility that a hostile na- tion might sabotage the canal by blowing up a ship laden with explosives in one of the locks. To prevent such an act, soldiers boarded every ship and accompanied it during the transit. Al- though the 7th Observation Squadron and two support battal- ions arrived, the requirement for forces in Europe prompted the redeployment of the 5th, 10th, and 29th Infantry regiments back to the United States for assignment to combat brigades. Other units less suited to the needs of the western front re- mained in the Canal Zone, and there were still some 5,000 sol- diers there at the end of the war in November 1918. The global conflict highlighted one area of concern in the canal defense structure—unity of command. As the United States edged closer to being drawn into the war in 1916, both Governor Goethals and Brig. Gen. Clarence R. Edwards (the commander of Army forces in the zone) sought clarification from the president on their responsibilities. They each anticipated that danger (particularly in the form of sabotage) might develop before a formal declaration of war, thus making it essential to establish a clear chain of command in peacetime. Goethals argued that his office was the logical one to take charge, as it was “clearly the duty of the Governor to determine and take the necessary precautions to prevent surreptitious damage to the canal and to resist any action that may be undertaken with hostile intent.” Wilson responded with an executive order making the governor responsible for defense until such time as the president should appoint an Army officer to assume command of both military and government functions. (Although Goethals and his successors were Army officers, subsequent events demonstrated that the provision implied that a combat arms officer would replace an engineer.) The 82 83 directive explicitly required both Navy and Army commanders in the zone to place their forces at the disposal of the governor to maintain the security of the waterway. On 9 April 1917, two days after the United States declared war on Germany, Wilson gave the Army commander in Pana- ma complete military and civil authority over the zone. General Edwards argued that this was the only logical course not only in war, but also in peace, since there too often were differences of opinion between the governor and the military commander that impacted on defense. He cited as examples the determi- nation of the location of field fortifications and bases for the mobile forces, as well as the use of canal assets to transport troops during exercises. The War Department made one addi- tional change, creating a new territorial command by activating the Panama Canal Department, thus giving the military com- mander a direct line to Washington. In January 1919, following the end of the global conflict, President Wilson returned civil authority to the Canal Zone governor, with military leaders reporting to that office. Despite the minimal threat to the waterway in World War I, cutbacks inherent in postwar demobilization, an isolationist public sen- timent, and austere budgets that grew even leaner with the on- set of the Great Depression in the 1930s, the Army continued to see the defense of the canal as a priority mission. To facili- tate planning for the next conflict, in 1923 the Army and Navy created a Local Joint Planning Committee headed by the com- manders of the Panama Canal Department and the 15th Naval District. At first the body did not include the governor, but he became a member in 1925. The configuration of forces in Panama during the inter- war years evolved with changes in possible threats and military technology. Coastal artillery remained the centerpiece, at first, but a mobile force of soldiers retained a major supporting role. In recognition of that defensive scheme, the treaty with Panama allowed U.S. forces to operate beyond the Canal Zone. Peace- time training in those areas enabled the troops to become ex- perts in jungle warfare and thoroughly familiar with the terrain over which they were likely to fight. The task was never easy, as one soldier recorded: “Trail reconnaissances are experiences that try the souls of men, and incidentally, their vocabularies also. Who can forget the first one? . . . Success crowned this 86 87 numerous times since 1912, to restore civil order or ensure fair elections. While the new agreement achieved the positive goal of reducing friction with Panama, it made it much more dif- ficult to obtain use of sites outside the zone. In particular, the Army Air Corps wanted to develop a landing field at Rio Hato, some sixty miles from the canal. Rising world tensions in the mid-1930s provided addition- al impetus to improve defenses. Authorized strength for Army forces in the zone increased to over 13,000 in 1936, and plan- ners advocated new and improved roads to allow the mobile force to respond more rapidly to any threatened point, as well as more housing for additional troops. As part of the prepara- tion for potential war in 1939, Congress appropriated $50 mil- lion for improvements, such as upgrading the main runway at Albrook Field to accommodate newer, heavier bombers, the first of which began deploying in June. The Army also stepped up its operational security measures, banning photography near key installations and again placing armed guards on ships transiting the canal. The outbreak of war between the European powers at the beginning of September 1939 triggered more steps. President Roosevelt transferred full responsibility for military and civil matters from the zone’s governor to the Army’s Panama Canal Department. Authorized troop strength in Panama increased dramatically to 31,400 during the course of the year. Among the major units to arrive was the 18th Infantry Brigade with its component 5th and 13th Infantry regiments, plus additional antiaircraft units and fighter squadrons. The high expectation of an attack on the zone was evidenced by the evacuation of all military dependants during 1941. The issue of joint command proved a vexing one, exac- erbated by the growing role of aviation. The Army recognized the need to expand its defensive horizons outward, creating the Caribbean Defense Command in January 1941. The gen- eral heading the Panama Canal Department took on this new role as an additional duty and assumed control of Army forces throughout the region. Simultaneously the Army sought outly- ing bases to establish long-range air patrols and early-warning stations. Planners knew that they could not wait until enemy planes reached Panama to intercept and stop them. The Navy, on the other hand, was more concerned with antisubmarine 86 87 warfare and organized its forces in the region into two coastal sea frontiers, one centered on Panama and other covering the rest of the Caribbean. President Roosevelt sided with the Navy view in December 1941, dictating the creation of two joint commands. That gave the Army operational control over Navy forces in and near Panama, but put the Navy in charge of Army forces and territory elsewhere in the region needed to defend the canal in depth. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 precipitated the United States into World War II. In this global conflict, the canal was more critical than ever. Within days, the War Department ordered two infantry regiments, a field artillery battalion, two barrage balloon units, radar equipment, and 1,800 coast artillery replacements to Panama. By the end of the next month, more than 47,000 troops were in the country. Soldiers ar- rested and interned Japanese and German nationals in Panama, while the entire zone instituted nightly blackouts against possible air attacks. In addition, the defenders prepared chemical smoke pots to obstruct target acquisition by hostile aircraft, emplaced fields of antiship mines near both canal entrances, and installed antisubmarine and torpedo nets at the locks. A main fear was that bombs or torpedoes would breach the lock gates or the dams and cause Gatun Lake to drain away. By the end of 1942, almost 67,000 Army personnel were in Panama. They manned nine airfields, ten major ground bases, and more than six hundred other sites for searchlights, antiair- craft guns, and miscellaneous uses. The early threat had moti- vated Panama to agree to lease a number of areas to the United States, among them land for the aviation base at Rio Hato. Allied success elsewhere that year, however, spelled the end of the ca- nal’s favored status. The Battle of Midway in June, the campaign in Guadalcanal starting in August, and the Torch landings in North Africa in November put the Axis forces on the defensive and made it highly unlikely that any conventional attack would strike the canal. During 1943, the United States began to divert forces to the active fronts and by February 1944 troop strength in Panama was cut in half. Soon after, the coastal artillery bat- teries were no longer manned. As the zone became a backwater in the conflict, it began to serve primarily as a training area for jungle warfare. The only casualties in Panama during the war came as a result of malaria, which sickened more than 88 89 10 percent of the forces stationed there, primarily those in re- mote jungle posts. One of two 14-inch railway guns defending the canal. A rarity in the American arsenal, they were well suited for Panama because they could shift from one coast to the other as needed and occupy prepared positions. For a time during the war, defense requirements almost brought about a major new construction effort that would have cost as much as the original canal project. The existing locks were not big enough to accommodate a new class of battleships planned by the Navy, while the Army remained concerned that a ship tran- siting the canal could be blown up to destroy one or more locks. The solution both services supported was the building of a third set of larger locks at some distance from the existing pairs. They would be an alternate if the main ones were ruined by sabotage. Although preliminary work got under way in 1940, the Navy eventually cancelled the super battleships and the Army decided that the new locks would primarily be an additional point to be breached by an aerial attack designed to empty Gatun Lake. The