The Panama Canal (Spanish: Canal de Panamá) is an artificial 82-kilometer (51-mile) waterway in Panama that connects the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. It cuts across the narrowest point of the Isthmus of Panama, and is a conduit for maritime trade between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Locks at each end lift ships up to Gatun Lake, an artificial fresh water lake 26 meters (85 ft) above sea level, created by damming the Chagres River and Lake Alajuela to reduce the amount of excavation work required for the canal. Locks then lower the ships at the other end. The original locks are 33.5 meters (110 ft) wide and allow the passage of Panamax ships. A third, wider lane of locks was constructed between September 2007 and May 2016. The expanded waterway began commercial operation on 26 June 2016. The new locks allow for the transit of larger, Neopanamax ships. An average of 200,000,000 litres (52 million US gallons) of fresh water is used in a single passing of a ship. The canal is threatened by low water levels during droughts. The Panama Canal shortcut greatly reduces the time for ships to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, enabling them to avoid the lengthy, hazardous route around the southernmost tip of South America via the Drake Passage, the Strait of Magellan or the Beagle Channel. Its construction was one of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken. Since its inauguration on 15 August 1914, the canal has succeeded in shortening maritime communication in time and distance, invigorating maritime and economic transportation by providing a short and relatively inexpensive transit route between the two oceans, decisively influencing global trade patterns, boosting economic growth in developed and developing countries, as well as providing the basic impetus for economic expansion in many remote regions of the world. Colombia, France, and later the United States controlled the territory surrounding the canal during construction. France began work on the canal in 1881, but stopped in 1889 because of a lack of investors' confidence due to engineering problems and a high worker mortality rate. The US took over the project in 1904 and opened the canal in 1914. The US continued to control the canal and the surrounding Panama Canal Zone until the Torrijos–Carter Treaties provided for its handover to Panama in 1977. After a period of joint American–Panamanian control, the Panamanian government took control in 1999. It is now managed and operated by the Panamanian government-owned Panama Canal Authority. Annual traffic has risen from about 1,000 ships in 1914, when the canal opened, to 14,702 vessels in 2008, for a total of 333.7 million Panama Canal/Universal Measurement System (PC/UMS) tons. By 2012, more than 815,000 vessels had passed through the canal. In that year, the top five users of the canal were the United States, China, Chile, Japan, and South Korea. In 2017, it took ships an average of 11.38 hours to pass between the canal's two outer locks. The American Society of Civil Engineers has ranked the Panama Canal one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
History
Early proposals in Panama The idea of the Panama Canal dates back to 1513, when the Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa (c.1475–1519) first crossed the Isthmus of Panama. He wrote in his journal the possibility of a canal but did not take action. European powers soon noticed the possibility of digging a water passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans across this narrow land bridge between North and South America. The earliest proposal dates to 1534, when the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V ordered a survey for a route through the Americas in order to ease the voyage for ships traveling between Spain and Peru. In 1668, the English physician and philosopher Sir Thomas Browne specifically proposed the Isthmus of Panama as the most convenient place for such a canal. The first attempt to make the isthmus part of a trade route was the ill-fated Darien scheme, launched by the Kingdom of Scotland (1698–1700), which was abandoned because of the inhospitable conditions. In 1811, the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt published an essay on the geography of the Spanish colonies in Central America (Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne; translated into English as: Political essay on the kingdom of New Spain containing researches relative to the geography of Mexico). In the essay, he considered five possible routes for a canal across Central America, including Panama, but concluded that the most promising location was across Nicaragua, traversing Lake Nicaragua. His recommendations influenced the British to attempt a canal across Nicaragua in 1843. Although this attempt in the end came to nothing, it resulted in the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty (1850) between the United Kingdom and the United States, in which the two nations bound each other to joint control of any canal built in Nicaragua or (by implication) anywhere in Central America.
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