275. The Battle To Build The Panama Canal (Part 3)

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0:28Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durrenpool. So the last couple of episodes, you will remember, we spoke to Mark Horton and we were talking about Panama. And the reason, just to remind you, in case you needed reminding, is that we're basically traveling down Donald Trump's shopping list and talking about the imperial histories of all the places that he's got on his to buy list and the Panama Canal being one of them. And one of the things that he has said is that, of course, the Panama Canal should be American again because it was blood, sweat, tears and toil of Americans that went into it.

1:02The Americans gave the Panama Canal to the world, so of course we should have it back. But it is a much more complicated history than that. And an excellent, excellent book. And our special guest today is the author of that book. Hell's Gorge tells a very different story, the battle to build the Panama Canal. Completely wonderful book and just beautifully written, amazingly researched. You just butted in before the big build-up of the author. Wait, it is a wonderful book. I felt we needed to pick it up at all points possible. But let's pick it up with a name because that name is Matthew Parker's name and he's with us.

1:33Hello, Matthew. Hello. Can I just say one of the things that comes across so strongly in your book, a lot is said about the Panama Canal and particularly these days about what a feat of engineering it is. because you have this, you know, the isthmus we talked about with Mark Horton in the last episode, this finger of land that separates two oceans, that connects two continents, but it is such a mountainous area. And to have the human kutzpah, if you like, to think, actually, you know what, I will defeat those mountains. I will defeat those swamps. I will defeat those jungles and build a canal.

2:06It is indeed an extraordinary idea and feat of engineering, but the human cost that goes into defying nature in this way is astronomical, isn't it? Yes. I mean, you can say that it's a sort of two-part story, which I think we'll sort of come to. But it's at one time the greatest engineering disaster in history in terms of the first attempt. And then the second attempt, there's a lot of nuances I'm sure we'll discover, but it really was an extraordinary achievement by the American-led project. I mean, something up until the moon landings, it was the greatest engineering achievement in history. And if you go to the canal, I don't know whether you've been and seen the canal.

2:49I haven't. No, I haven't been lucky enough yet, but I will be going now. It's sort of just very odd. You're sort of there and you see these huge locks with the Panamax ships with sort of inches either side of these huge locks, which were built over 100 years ago and still working fine. I mean, that's an incredible achievement in itself. And then you You rise up through the locks and you go across this lake, and you're going through a mountain on a bit of water. It's just very strange. But if you see the canal before it was filled with the water, it's even more spectacular. The photos, you see little people like ants, and you see all the work going on, and it's almost like a sort of inverted Tower of Babel, if that makes sense.

3:32You know, there's sort of steps going down. One of the things, Matthew, you bring out so astonishingly in your book is the unbelievable cost in wrecked and shattered human lives, these trains just taking away corpses day after day of people that have died in the making of this thing. Yeah, well, if you go right back, you look at the map and you see this great big sort of wall of America standing in the way of travel between Europe and Asia. And this goes back to Columbus and Balboa, of course. And you see this tantalisingly narrow isthmus. And it looks so easy. We'll just clear out this little blockage out of the way.

4:12On a flat map, it looks easy. On a flat map, it looks easy. And this idea sort of gripped people for hundreds of years, sort of poets, engineers, kings and emperors. They all became almost infected by this idea that this was the lure of the isthmus, it was called, or canalitis. And it almost became like a disease, an obsession, even to the extent of people losing their reason following this dream. It was the great unfulfilled engineering challenge of the hundred years. But it's probably the most difficult place in the world to build a canal for lots of reasons. Well, I mean, one of the quotes that made me laugh is, I mean, as you say, sort of hundreds of years ago, ever since there was imperial travel, people have dreamt or had this infection of canalitis.

4:58But when, you know, the first plans were presented to Spain, Philip of Spain said very grandly, well, if God had meant there to be a canal in Panama, he would have put one down. That's a lovely quote. It is. God would have wanted a canal. He would have put a canal there. Yeah, there was a sort of belief at that time that the Pacific and the Atlantic had different sea levels. So that if you built a canal, the Pacific would just pour through, which would obviously cause chaos. The other sort of slightly more realistic concern was, if you build a canal, then you're not only giving access to your ships, you're also giving access to your enemy ships.

5:35And that meant the French and the Portuguese and the English could come through and they could hazard your immense wealth in Peru. This occurs again when we look at the sort of Americans. It's better not to have a canal than a canal under the control of a hostile power. Now, Matthew, in the first episode, we talked about Balboa, who you just mentioned. In the second, we talked about, indeed, the enemies, the English pirates, such as Drake and Captain Morgan, who harassed the Spanish in Panama. Could you, because I know Anita is particularly longing to hear more about Scotsmen. Oh, God. She has a great particular fondness for 18th century Scotland.

6:13Could you just remind us, because we did a whole episode in this last year, but I just longed to hear more, as I'm sure is Anita, about the Darien scheme, which was the ill-fated Scottish attempt to at least found a colony, if not build a canal, which would be able to benefit from moving between the two oceans. Just a very quick outline before we move forward. Well, yes, William Patterson, who was a promoter, and he'd been in the Caribbean, and he had a sort of what now may seem a slightly curious job share. He was part buccaneer, part missionary. Those are two Venn diagrams that only rarely meet.

6:46Yes, but they did in those days, I guess. And he'd been told about a place on the isthmus, which was pretty much free of Spaniards, and there was a remarkable low depression. And he had this sort of vision, and again, it became an obsession, to establish a settlement, and which would be a trade entrepot. And again, there's this curious mixture of idealism and pragmatism. He wanted to set up a community that would open to all creeds, all nations, all religions, free trade. And he told his potential investors, if we establish this, we will have the gates to the Pacific, the keys to the universe.

7:23Which he kind of was right about, and yet the whole thing was a total catastrophe. We haven't given the date. This is 1690, what is it? This is the end of the 1690s, which was, I gather, the coldest decade in Scotland for 700 years. So the idea of the Caribbean might have appealed. But there was also a financial incentive. He said, you know, if we do this, trade will beget trade, money will beget money. We'll all become rich and we'll be able to sort of keep up with the English and their sort of colonising efforts. So he starts raising money. But the English don't really like, you know, they're sort of vested interests, including the East India Company, who are not keen on it.

8:00And so the English investment is withdrawn. So it becomes a patriotic imperative for the Scots. And half the capital in Scotland is sunk into it. Yeah,£400 ,000 or something, which is basically all of the capital, something that 20 % of all currency in circulation is put into this. And they sent a ship with like 1 ,200 people and they've got trade goods and they arrive and they set up a camp in what became, of course, Caledonia Bay, it was called in Darien. But there's a few problems. First of all, too many of the people on the ship are gentlemen. They don't really dig latrines and build huts and this sort of thing.

8:33And also their trade goods is mainly heavy Scottish cloth and 1 ,500 Bibles in English. Yes. Which isn't necessarily what the local Kuna or whoever they're going to be trading with wants. Not the greatest gift-giving mentality from the Scots, yeah. Yeah, it's an absolute catastrophe. and Paterson's wife is one of the first to die. And they suffered starvation and illness and sort of internal dissent. And very soon they abandon the colony and the survivors go to New York. But the idea does not die, does it, Matthew? Because quite soon after that, both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson are very, very keen to take this idea up.

9:13Yes. Benjamin Franklin, when he was in Paris as the United Colony's representative there, He became gripped with the idea of a trans-Istmian canal and actually published on his own press in 1781 a pamphlet written by a French ex-convict called Pierre-André Gargaz, which advocated cutting canals at Panama and Suez. And this, Gargaz proposed, would bring world peace through enhanced commerce and communication. If only he knew. So this is very much the idealistic trend. And then Jefferson, who is there just a few years later in Paris, he also became gripped by this idea, but for much more pragmatic reasons.

9:54He saw it as part of the southwards expansion of the United States. So they very neatly encapsulate this conflict or this mix in the Panama story between this idealism, between transport and commerce and communication, bringing about the end of empires, the end of nations, world peace, and also the sort of hard-headed pragmatism of imperialism and of making money, which is really the same as Patterson. He has this idealistic view, but he also has the idea to make lots of money. And of course, for Paterson, 2 ,000 people die, Scotland's currency is wiped out. This contributes to the end of the union.

10:33The end of an independent Scotland is another way of looking at it. So it's an early but spectacular casualty of the lure of the isthmus. What's really interesting is both Franklin and Jefferson are thinking about Panama, that Panama's taken up so much headspace. When they're having a revolution, they're building a nation. It is like one of the foundation blocks of a new nation. And Jefferson is also driven by is that there had been surveys of a canal route at Panama. He's hearing rumors of it because he's in Paris. He's in this sort of melting pot of intrigue and rumor. And he thinks that the Spanish have got to jump on this.

11:06And he says, I'm assured a canal appeared very practicable. He wrote in 1788 to a fellow US diplomat in Madrid. And the idea was suppressed for political reasons. So, I mean, this is an era of canal building. This is not an empty sort of swirling fairy tale because people are. Technology is moving on. People are making strides in engineering and canals appear to be the thing of the future. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's no coincidence that they were both in Paris when they sort of got infected with this bug, because during the sort of mid-18th century, the French had been sort of making the running on this.

11:41There'd been four or five surveys with sort of explorers going up and down the Isthmus looking for routes. And you're right, it's about to be the Canal Age. You know, the 1820s is when the Erie Canal linking Huntson and the Great Lakes, of course, Telford's Caledonian Canal. Yes, let's connect you back to Scotland, please. Tell us about the Caledonian Canal. The extraordinary Caledonian Canal was considered to be a sort of epic achievement. And it was really the sort of poster boy of the canal. And it sort of launched the canal age in Europe and in the United States. And there's various other technologies.

12:13There's steam, which obviously means you can have steamers towing the ships rather than having towpaths with donkeys and this sort of thing. And there's a general confidence in sort of new technology to sort of solve the challenges that are facing us. And then Telford, like every other sort of engineer, he came up with an Isthmian canal plan. But just to sort of go back to what Anita was saying, the technology is not there yet in order to build the Panama Canal. But they're so close. They're so close. And the dreamers will dream. And they do believe, and they're quite right in believing it, that whoever controls the canal controls part of the world.

12:50that they will have untold riches because they will have supremacy, they will have shortcuts. I mean, even just for the Americans, it's quicker to take that route to get from New York to San Francisco to take a route over Panama than it is to go across country. So it is an incredibly tempting thing to try and hide. I mean, just get your head around that. Rather than traversing your own country, it's easier to bring yourself into the ocean, get to the isthmus, cross the isthmus somehow and then go up the other side of the country. What is also very important, of course, is the Erie Canal, which is 1825 when they joined the Hudson River with the Great Lakes, which is another stupendous achievement.

13:30One thing we haven't talked about though is where is Panama in the world? So it has been under the thumb of Spain for a while, Colombia at its side. I mean, what is the political allegiance and independence or not of Panama at this time? Well, Panama was originally part of Bolivar's Gran Colombia, which included Venezuela and Ecuador. Just explain who Bolivar is. Bolivar is one of the leaders of the independence movement for South America against Spanish rule. Mixed race, an extraordinary fighter and incredibly charismatic figure. That's right. And Panama achieves independence from Spain in 1821, but remains part of Colombia.

14:08But there is a sort of independent spirit, I would say, in Panama. It's very difficult to get from Colombia to Panama because of this very almost impenetrable jungle in Darien, which is still there. I think that's where the trans-American highway kind of peters to a halt. But Bolivar was very aware of Panama. And actually, in 1826, his Latin American conference, he held it in Panama, which he called the veritable capital of the world, the center of the globe. One face turned towards Asia, the other towards Africa and Europe. And he actually envisaged Panama City being a future world capital. Such was its sort of incredibly important position.

14:47And he wanted the canal because up until about 1750, their raison d 'etre had been as a transit route for the Spanish. But then it just becomes with all the pirates. And I think the final straw was Admiral Vernon in 1739, landing in Portobello with 3 ,000 men. So they stopped the treasure ships. So then Panama loses its commercial position. Just explain that again, Matthew, who's Admiral Vernon and what's going on here. This was actually a period of official war with Spain, because obviously in the Caribbean, war didn't necessarily need to be declared. This is the British war with Spain. Yes, that's right.

15:20So Admiral Vernon lands 3 ,000 men in Portobello, and his aim is to cross the isthmus to Panama City, as Morgan had done, but this isn't successful. But it's the final straw for the Spanish moving their treasure across the Panama isthmus, which had brought such prosperity. You know, there was this amazing fair at Nom de Dios. It became a transshipment, you know, for all over the Americas. All that's gone. So by the 1820s, the Panamanians are saying, look, we need some sort of canal or road or something to restore our prosperity. We can't pass Admiral Vernon by without mentioning that his nickname was Old Grog.

16:00That's right. Which is as good a nickname as anyone was ever given. Anyway, so Bolivar actually, he sets up a survey for a canal in the 1630s, which was actually run by an English army captain called John Lloyd. And he came up with a scheme for a sort of river, then a railway, and then at some point a canal. But he gives us a nice little snapshot of Panamanians at this time. This is from the point of view of an English captain, just to warn you. He dubbed them superstitious. Billiards, cockpits, gambling and smoking in low company are their exclusive amusements. Their best quality is great liberality to the poor and especially to the aged and infirm.

16:40So that's just a little picture of Panamanians at this time. We sort of get the impression that he doesn't particularly approve of their soft-heartedness to the infirm and poor because they are poor themselves. And there's an awful lot of judgment, and we'll get to hear more of this as more and more become interested in this isthmus, looking down on Panamanians, on the natives as being somehow not worthy of the geographical gift that God has bestowed on them, that they are poor or they are unruly or they are lazy. They are sort of dispensable in many ways. There's never much truck given in it.

17:17I haven't seen any in the French, the American. In fact, we'll come to it in a little while, but Mary Seacole is positively horrified by the new influx, and we should talk about them now, of Americans who are drawn to Panama and this isthmus. And that is because there is gold in America and they want to get to it from all over America. And as I was saying before, this wild idea that actually this is the quickest route to get from one end of America to another is to go via Panama and cross the isthmus. And the gold rush of 1848 is transformative, is it not? Can you tell us a bit more about that?

17:52We should tell people that we've done an episode on this. If you want to listen to a whole episode on the Californian gold rush, go to episode 162 of Empire Pod and you can have the whole story. But Matthew, carry on. Yeah, this is a key moment in the Panama story, the discovery of gold in California. Because, Anita, as you said, to get to California from the obviously much more populous East Coast, you could take your chances crossing the landmass of the United States, where of course there is not yet a transcontinental railway. You can take the 8 ,000 mile route around the Cape, or it's more expensive, but you can get a steamer from New York to Cologne.

18:28You can cross over to Panama City, and you can be in San Francisco and get in there before everyone else. You've got a rush, it's a gold rush in order to stake out your claim. And so thousands of people took this route, and Panama was completely transformed by this. Transformed, but also rather swamped because Mary Seacole, who at that time is watching these prospectors and what does she call them? Muleteers, is that how you say it? Muleteers. Muleteers, thank God, there you are. But you know, there are this influx of sort of rough and ready young men who are trying to seek their fortune, planning for gold or mining for gold in America.

19:04And they descend on this place in enormous numbers and they're not very well behaved, are they? Yes, if you're a Panamanian with a bar in 1848 or 49, you would make a fortune. They were charging seven times what New York bars would charge, and they had plenty of takers. And very soon, it becomes a proper sort of gold rush vibe. There's something like 200 prostitutes in Chagras, which is where they landed on Colon. Which is not a big place for 200 prostitutes to be working morning, noon and night. Yeah, and some of them have come from as far away as Paris. But such is the lawlessness of this new rush is that the women carried pistols with them at all times.

19:45And one English visitor described it as a very disconcerting experience. She kept hold of her sick shooter the entire time. So it's boom time for people running hotels and brothels and also for the porterage, the people who are muleteers and boatmen, because you can go some of the way on rivers to cross the Isthmus. And it's also boom time for the people who are shipping the steamer company that is bringing people from New York and taking them up to San Francisco. And the people who are running this also have got another business, which is building a railway. And while you're painting a picture of the Wild Wild West, it feels like a Western with saloons, the sound is punctuated by gunfire, you've got a sort of useless local constabulary that's almost as lawless as people who are shooting each other, and women travel fully armed because you have to.

20:33In the middle of all this, watching all of this, is somebody that we're very familiar with in Britain, Mary Seacole, who sort of ends up becoming this great heroine of the Crimea. But this is where she basically makes her reputation as not just a really good businesswoman, because she's one of these people selling grog to those coming through, but also as a healer. Because if you are in Panama, then disease is your companion. Talk a little bit about the kind of things that these travelers were stricken with almost as soon as they arrived. Yes, Panama is host to all sorts of diseases, and particularly for new incomers who bring a lack of defences against that.

21:12And one of the real crises, and this was for not just for the travellers, but for the people who were building the railway, was a big attack of cholera. Now, Mary Seacole, she was from Jamaica, and she'd been in Jamaica in, there was a terrible cholera outbreak in Jamaica in 1850 that killed thousands of people. So she was very familiar with the disease. So when she was working in the hotel, which her brother ran, she became a sort of cholera healer for lots and lots of people. And she used mustard, a lot of mustard, sort of compresses and so on, and gave them cinnamon water to drink, which may sound rather sort of old fashioned.

21:50But she managed to achieve a reputation as a great healer. So she must have helped a lot of people at that time. To the point where, and so for those of you who don't know who Mary Seacole was, I mean, we're familiar with her here, but she was mixed race. And so they would say of her when somebody got sick on the isthmus, take them to the yellow woman because she was lighter skinned. And this would be the reputation she would then get. In fact, this reputation of being a healer goes hand in hand and it will go hand in hand. We should come to the railways now. That somehow people who are from the West Indies have an immunity that you can exploit and they will be the best workers to either dig or hammer or nail, bring them over to do the work because they can withstand disease.

22:34I mean, they had immunity to some things, but not everything, did they? Absolutely not. It was a myth, really, that people from the West Indian Islands were immune to tropical diseases. It's absolutely not the case. Possibly with yellow fever, there might have been a small immunity from a sort of childhood incident because once you've had yellow fever, you are immune for the rest of your life. But no, this is a myth. They got ill and died just like everyone else. I mean, cholera, typhoid, I mean, they took lives in enormous numbers. And let's talk about the railway, because very soon it becomes apparent that there is so much traffic coming along that golden road, if you like, you know, people trying to make their fortunes in the gold rush, that you need a proper railway.

23:17So what is the inception and then the execution of this railway? Well, in fact, a French company had got a concession from Colombia to build a railway a few years earlier. But then all the sort of goings-on in France in 1848 sort of stymied that. And an American New York-based company took over the concession and started building. I mean, this is the first railway ever to be built in the tropics. It was incredibly difficult and absolutely lethal. And there's one example, they brought in 800 Chinese, what they called coolies. They were shipped in horrible circumstances from Shanghai. and as soon as a track is built, the gold rushers want to get on it, even if they have to get off five minutes later and go back to the old-fashioned way of crossing the Isthmus.

24:00It cost something like$9 million and something between 6 ,000 and 9 ,000 people of the workers died during the construction. And this is a 40-mile railway, so it's a life for every Thai is the famous expression. There was a particular disaster because the Chinese coolies, as part of the deal, they're given opium by the company. it's that standard but then this rather sort of do-good american vicar or something causes a huge stir saying oh american companies are drug dealing whatever so they take the opium away which causes chaos and absolute misery and a lot of the chinese actually commit suicide either by drowning themselves or by impaling themselves on sharpened bamboo sticks they're going through withdrawal basically they're in cold turkey they're going massive withdrawal and and also the conditions the conditions are appalling as well it's absolutely miserable So from the 800, only 200 are surviving by the time the railway is completed in 1985.

24:52So let's take a break here and come back after the break. So the idea of a railway suddenly is not enough because the numbers coming through are so great. The fortune that can be made is just too tempting and people start talking about hacking into ROG.