Feb 24, 2008 - 04:05:34 CST
Before I begin, I want to assert unequivocally that we 144 North Dakotans cruising between San Diego and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., had nothing whatsoever to do with the resignation of Cuban President Fidel Castro. I think that clears it up.Yesterday, if I may put it in Rooseveltian terms, was one of the great days of my life. Between dawn and dusk, my fellow passengers and I made the transit through the Panama Canal. For 12 hours straight, I sat up on the highest deck of the ship in a white linen suit and a Panama hat trying to take in everything, from the color of the Panamanian jungle to the Lego-like stackings of bright container ships all around us, trying to sear the whole experience onto the hard drive of my memory. I took hundreds of digital photos.
Although it was not an especially hot day, I took in way too much sun, until I looked like a bright red Idaho Mr. Potato Head in a white linen suit.
We passed through the landmass of the Americas from the Pacific to the Atlantic in one half of a single day.
It was thrilling. And moving. I felt a strange kind of pride in the audacity, creativity, and industrial ingenuity of humankind.
Now we are in the Caribbean, fabulously blue and much choppier than the aptly named Pacific.
Think of it this way. For more than a week, we have been cruising “at large” over the Pacific Ocean. Whole days have gone by in which we do not see another boat of any sort. Our 720-foot ship has been swallowed up by the immensity of the Pacific Ocean.
Suddenly, at dawn, we wake up to find ourselves in a cluster of 100 ships in a bay, all of them determined to take a shortcut through the Americas. We all line up dutifully like school children in single file and inch our way through a concrete slot (you might almost say slice) precisely 50 miles wide. On one side is the Pacific. On the other side is the Atlantic.
I use the word “inch” advisedly. Not only is the transit a kind of slow-motion crawl in which locomotives (called “mules”) actually drag the massive ships through the locks, but the fit is so tight that the larger ships actually fill the canal wall to wall, in some cases with only inches to spare on either side. The big cargo ship ahead of us actually got stuck a little. That slowed our transit by approximately two hours.
The canal has been variously described as “a bridge of water,” a series of water tank escalators that move a ship up over the Continental Divide and then back down to sea level, and one of the engineering wonders of the world.
There are thousands of canals worldwide, some of them mighty impressive, but only two are absolutely essential: the 101-mile Suez Canal (completed 1869), a sea-level ditch that connects the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, thus cutting the distance from Europe to the Far East by half; and the Panama Canal (completed 1914), which uses locks to lift ships 85 feet above sea level and down again to shorten the distance between New York and San Francisco by almost 8,000 miles.
It was inevitable that somebody would build a canal across the isthmus that separates North and South America. After the French failed (1881-89), the list of nations that could actually accomplish something so monumental was tiny: Germany, Britain and the industrial adolescent, the United States. Theodore Roosevelt decided that the greatest engineering feat in human history was going to be accomplished by the new kid on the global block.
The story of how America tried to browbeat Colombia (which then owned Panama) into cooperating with our canal plans, then served as midwife at the “birth” of the independent republic of Panama (November 1903), and finally acquired the Canal Zone on extremely favorable terms, is exciting without being very honorable.
Among other things, it reminds us that Theodore Roosevelt was sometimes not so different from the great robber barons he tried to chasten as America’s first trust buster.
In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt became the first president to leave the United States during the course of his time in office. He and his wife Edith visited the Panama Canal zone in mid-November 1906. Roosevelt behaved in a thoroughly Rooseveltian fashion.
Happily drenched by the worst rainstorm in 15 years, he sloshed around in the mud at a number of construction sites inspecting everything, stopping black laborers to ask them if they were being treated fairly, if they had any complaints, if he could to anything to improve their living and working conditions.
He canceled a formal luncheon that had been planned for him and — entirely unannounced — took Edith instead into a common workers’ mess hall for a 30-cent meal: soup, beef, peas, mashed potatoes, plumb pudding, ice cream and coffee. It wasn’t the best meal he ever ate, Roosevelt admitted, but it was, as he put it, as good as any 50-cent meal at an average hotel in America.
Because he wanted to see construction of the Gatun Dam from the best possible vantage point, he clambered up a hill overlooking the site. Engineer Frank Maltby later recalled, “We, together with three or four Secret Service men, charged up the hill as if we were taking a fort by storm.” By Jove! On our wimpy 21st century visit, the only thing we have charged up is the buffet line.
At mid-morning yesterday, we were eased into the Pedro Miquel locks. That’s precisely where TR actually talked his way into a 95-ton Bucyrus steam shovel on Nov. 16, 1906, where for half an hour he actually helped dig the Panama Canal.
At the base of a hill overlooking the Pedro Miguel locks, we spotted a modern diesel shovel digging where the canal is being expanded from two to four lanes. As we took photographs of the Caterpillar and its operator, we all imagined — with sweet pride — our fellow North Dakotan Theodore Roosevelt sitting in the cab, working the controls, digging his canal, and in doing so announcing America’s bold entry in the world arena.
I would have given anything to be down there in that Caterpillar scooping up a load or two of Isthmian mud, but the “anything” would have involved jumping to my death from the ship to the canal rim — bad way to end a cruise — or spending the rest of my life in a Panamanian prison in a white linen suit in a post 9/11 world.
Three cheers for that authentic man, Theodore Roosevelt.
(Clay Jenkinson is the Theodore Roosevelt scholar-in-residence at Dickinson State University. He lives in Bismarck. Contact Jenkinson at jeffysage@aol.com.)
Jeff Boatright wrote on Mar 4, 2008 1:08 PM:
As for successes, right off the top of my head, I'd say that they have better healthcare than we do. It does come at a price in taxes, about 10% higher than ours. I wonder what we pay in insurance and how it compares to that 10% difference. I'm not sure how to factor in the difference in access, but France has it all over us in that department, too, and it's a meaningful consideration on a practical level. "
Jud wrote on Mar 1, 2008 5:56 PM:
expositor wrote on Feb 26, 2008 10:18 AM:
International Bob wrote on Feb 26, 2008 12:47 AM:
Good thing he did or we would have had an Iraq experience in Egypt and much of Latin america for the past 30 years. It works well; it's profitable; the Panamanians will finance the needed expansion & we benefit from the goodwill we got returning an integral part of the Republic to its owner. "
Thomas Elliot wrote on Feb 25, 2008 7:20 PM:
REX wrote on Feb 24, 2008 3:27 PM:
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