Also, more white Americans were involved than was ever fully realized in the United States. White American technicians arrived along with equipment purchased in the United States. Nearly all the mechanics were Americans. American contractors arrived, bringing their own people, and the Panama Railroad was run by Americans-engineers, conductors, stationmasters, telegraph operators.
There were German, Swiss, Russian, Italian engineers, Dutch and English contractors. The Gamboa camp had a Belgian cook. Looking back, Tracy Robinson could recall no country that was not represented.
IV
The actual digging of The Great Trench– La Grande Tranchee- -began at Emperador on Friday, January 20, 1882, with much champagne and dynamite. Thereafter the work at Emperador proceeded by steam shovel and by pick and shovel–mostly by pick and shovel–and it moved faster than expected, the ground in the vicinity being unusually soft. It was again the dry season.
In February, Couvreux, Hersent et Compagnie agreed to subcontract the dredging of the Atlantic end of the canal to an American firm, Huerne, Slaven & Company, and later, in November, a second American firm, the Franco-American Trading Company, was signed to start at the Pacific end. Presently other small subcontractors, several of them American, appeared and went to work. Excavation was under way at Culebra, Monkey Hill, Gorgona, and Paraiso. At Colón a gigantic earth platform was built out into the harbor from spoil brought from Monkey Hill. The hospitals were completed; the first fire engine arrived.
But it was a year marked by repeated and entirely unexpected setbacks, beginning with the sudden resignation of Armand Réclus and ending with the complete withdrawal of Couvreux, Hersent from the Isthmus and from all further responsibility for the project. In between, the death toll mounted alarmingly, and the Isthmus was struck by an earthquake.
Réclus’ decision to quit was never explained. The best guess is that he had about reached the breaking point, trying to cope with what he described as “the disorder of details.” Whatever the facts, he returned to Paris to serve as a “consultant” to de Lesseps, his real usefulness ended. Until a suitable replacement could be found, Louis Verbrugghe, a lawyer, not an engineer, became the ranking official in the field. When the new man, Commodore Richier, finally arrived, he proved no more capable of mastering “the disorder of details” than Réclus and soon he too quit.
The most horrendous and immediate problem for anyone in command was the volume and diversity of equipment in use. The display was terribly impressive and terribly confusing–thirty-odd steam shovels, three thousand flatcars and dirt trucks, fifty locomotives, steam launches, tugs, coal lighters, dredges, hundreds of rock drills, pumps, some eighty miles of railroad track–and this was only the beginning. Most of the machinery arrived in parts and had to be assembled at Colon. Most of it was also the best available at the time. The fashion later among American politicians and writers would be to ridicule the European-built machinery and various items ordered by the French engineers for their tropical empire–including “ten thousand snow shovels” to a land “where snow never ever has fallen.”
The problem with the equipment was not its quality, but the bewildering variety of it. The track put down by Couvreux, Hersent had a different gauge than that on the Panama Railroad. French-made railroad cars came in differing sizes and gauges. French and Belgian locomotives, though built like a watch in workmanship, some with all-copper fireboxes, had such a rigid wheelbase that they required track built to the most exacting standards; otherwise, as one American noted, “they just went off and started for somewhere else.”
The French “plant” was in effect something of a mechanical Noah’s Ark, with every imaginable species represented. To get it all working efficiently, according to some kind of harmonious system, seemed nearly impossible. And while in a few instances certain tools and machines proved of little or no use in the tropics, there had been no certain way of knowing that in advance. No ten thousand snow shovels were ever sent out to Panama, as later charged–only a thousand shovels that looked like snow shovels but were in fact specially designed for scooping the ash out of steam-shovel boilers, a use for which they were ideally suited.
The first shock of the earthquake occurred at 3:30 the morning of September 7, and though it lasted but a fraction of a minute, it was the longest and worst ever experienced on the Isthmus. At Panama one of the two towers on the great cathedral crashed through the roof near the main entrance, while a big part of the front wall toppled into the plaza. The Cabildo, or town hall, was wrecked, and the walls of the Grand Hotel were so badly cracked that it was feared another tremor would bring the building down.
Wolfred Nelson, who lived in an annex of the hotel, said it was difficult to see anything at first. He had jumped from his bed and rushed out into the plaza. “It was black with people who had . . . got in the open and away from buildings that were expected to fall. There was still a little light, and the moon was in its last quarter. The hum of voices and excitement was something astonishing. There they were, people of all classes–black and white–some dressed, and some very hastily dressed, and some had brought chairs with them.” One elderly lady, duenna of an old, distinguished family, was found dead sitting in her chair, the victim of a heart attack.
Damage along the railroad was extensive. In some places the roadbed had sunk as much as ten feet, leaving rails torn and twisted. At Colón, starting at the freight depot, a fissure in the earth, inches wide, ran some four hundred feet down Front Street.
There was another violent tremor the next morning, again before daylight, and the sense of panic this time was worse. All told, five people were killed, including the old lady in the chair. A week was lost getting the railroad back in running order. Cable communication with Jamaica (and the United States) was not resumed for another month.
Of greatest concern among the French officials, however, was the psychological damage the news might have among investors in France, since Panama was supposed to be safe from such natural convulsions. But when the news reached Paris, de Lesseps simply promised that there would be no more earthquakes and one cannot help but wonder if his deceptive propaganda was becoming self-deceptive.
More progress had been made at Panama in the first two years, he told his stockholders, than there had been at Suez in the first six years. And who was to refute such a claim? Those closest to the financial side of the company had already seen their founders’ shares soar from 5,000 francs to 75,000 in the over-the-counter market. The press remained enthusiastic. The public had every confidence that all was well. A first bond issue, to meet the cost of buying the Panama Railroad, had been heavily oversubscribed. Nor was belief in de Lesseps by any means limited to the French. “With $30,000,000 already invested in the enterprise,” reported the New York Tribune, “and with applications for shares showering him from all quarters of France . . . he can now reckon with confidence upon the resources required for so vast a scheme. He can get the money, and unquestionably he has the genius requisite for surmounting the engineering difficulties. Englishmen and Americans may as well reconcile themselves to the situation.”
At the end of the year, when it was suddenly announced that the great firm of Couvreux, Hersent was retiring from the field, leaving the work entirely in de Lesseps’ hands, he again stood unfazed, his leadership unchallenged. Such news could well have been a mortal blow to almost any other venture. His public composure and poise were total.
By its contract Couvreux, Hersent had every legal right to back out. The contract had been drawn up in an atmosphere of monumental mutual trust–for instance, it named de Lesseps as among those who could arbitrate any misunderstandings that might arise–and now the parting was carried off with comparable equanimity. The partners Couvreux and Hersent declared themselves honor-bound to say that the excavation could be carried forward more effectively without them. The canal could proceed faster and at less cost, it was said, by parceling the work out to a number of smaller contractors, each specializing in a
particular task, an arrangement partly in effect and showing excellent results. The canal company henceforth should merely supervise the work on its own.
To this de Lesseps obligingly agreed; the contract was not renewed, and Couvreux and Hersent were out in the clear.
The real reason for the break, however, appears to have been rather different, as revealed by subsequent investigations conducted by the Chamber of Deputies. The death of the resourceful Gaston Blanchet had been a disheartening blow to Couvreux, Hersent et Compagnie. Nor was there anyone else in the firm of comparable ability who was willing to go to Panama and take Blanchet’s place. But much more important was the realization, after two years, that the canal could never be built in anything like the time or for anywhere near the cost foreseen by the exuberant Grand Frangais, whose glowing declarations often as not were derived from figures and forecasts supplied by Couvreux and Hersent.
They could, of course, have made public their disheartening view of the situation. But they chose not to, as they later explained, out of respect for Ferdinand de Lesseps and so as not to add to his burdens. “The truth is,” reads the report issued later by the Deputies committee, “that during the trial period Couvreux and Hersent had been able to form a shrewd idea of the difficulties of the enterprise but were unwilling to undermine the [canal] company’s credit by a frank admission of the motive behind their retirement.”
For the Compagnie Universelle the situation was really quite serious, and it is hard to imagine anyone in de Lesseps’ position failing to go to Panama as soon as possible to determine to his own satisfaction what should be done. However, he saw himself as the company’s major asset–its sole asset–and he believed, as did the financial interests involved, that his visible presence in Paris, at the helm, was essential. Appearances, as always, mattered enormously. There must be no sign of alarm, nothing to suggest that the contractors’ defection had been either harmful or indicative of some deeper, fundamental flaw or anything other than a perfectly natural administrative reorganization.
Also, he had other demands on his time just then. British troops had seized Alexandria, ostensibly to protect the khedive’s government, and de Lesseps had rushed to the scene in a futile, single-handed effort to keep the British from occupying the Suez Canal zone. Later he was in London to negotiate with more success an agreement covering Suez operations, only to rush back to the Avenue Montaigne to be present for the birth of his tenth child. Twenty years before, at Suez, “with jealous personal authority,” he had taken a direct interest in everything that went on. Now, more often, it was Charles who took the initiative, who handled the numerous small decisions that had to be dealt with daily–Charles, who had never set foot in Panama. “With your good judgment you will arrange things as they should be,” reads a line from one of his notes to Charles; “everything you do will have my approbation.”
Thus it was Charles, rather than his father, who departed for Panama in the wake of the Couvreux, Hersent defection–Charles and a new chief engineer, the first Directeur General.
* Trenor Park would have little chance to enjoy his new fortune. A year and a half later, in December 1882, en route from New York to Colón, he died on board the ship. The cause of death was reportedly an overdose of sedatives.
6
Soldiers Under Fire
“We are, gentlemen, soldiers under fire; let us salute
the comrade who falls in the battle, but let us think
only of the fight of tomorrow and of victory.”
–PHILIPPE BUNAU-VARILLA
I
Jules Isidore Dingler–pronounced Danglay in French–was not impressive-looking. In his mid-forties, he was short and bald. He had small, round shoulders, a soft, round face, soft blue eyes, and a drooping mahogany-colored mustache. He might have been a bank clerk or a provincial wine merchant. The appearance suggested neither initiative nor resolution and the appearance was deceiving.
In his student days at the Polytechnique he had been a shining star, finishing near the top of his class and going on to the Ponts et Chaus-sees. As an engineer for the state he had risen rapidly to become a chef des Ponts et Chaussees, a very thorough professional accustomed to the multitudinous demands of large-scale public works. To Charles de Lesseps and his father, he seemed as qualified as anyone could be for the task at Panama; and unlike the three or four others whom they had approached with an offer, he alone had been willing to go. Concerning his own final decision in this regard, it would be said that he had an ambitious wife, that hers had been the deciding voice.
For the next two years, from early 1883 until the summer of 1885, he was to direct the largest, most ambitious engineering effort the world had as yet seen. His decisions were not to be the best always. Before sailing from France he also made the unfortunate declaration that once on the Isthmus he would prove that “only drunkards and the dissipated take the yellow fever and die there.” Still it would be a long time before a more effective chief engineer would be dispatched to Panama–not until Theodore Roosevelt sent John Stevens in 1905– and Jules Dingler was to pay a dreadful price for his devotion to the work.
Yet subsequent histories of the canal would have little to say for Dingler. Quite unjustly, his memorial in most accounts would be the big frame villa built for him on Ancon Hill– “la folie Dingler”
Charles and Director General Dingler reached the Isthmus on March 1, 1883, and were occasion for the predictable round of banquets and spirited oratory. The work was entering its “Second Great Stage”– “The Period of Construction” had begun. Champagne corks popped and Charles, sounding remarkably like his father, promised progress on all fronts. Ferdinand de Lesseps himself, declared the son, would return to oversee the work and a hundred chairs were shoved back in the dining room of the Grand Hotel as everyone rose to drink to the health of Le Grand Français some four thousand miles away in Paris.
Charles stayed on for another month. Dingler got directly to business in the office upstairs in the hotel, where by now the effects of the earthquake had been largely mended. He would begin by restoring order and confidence, both sadly lacking since the departure of Couvreux, Hersent. Paper work was in disarray. To date, one French writer observed, it had been an enterprise of passionate pioneers and mediocre accountants. Dingler was an organizer. Responsibilities needed clarifying; the work load had to be distributed. So at the outset a number of individuals accustomed to the comparative ease and convenience of the head office found themselves arbitrarily reassigned to one of the camps in the jungle. The word spread that the new man had no aversion to stepping on toes and at first chance several of those individuals most offended would take their revenge by spreading stories of the royal comforts Dingler had arranged for himself at company expense.
Dingier was not merely contemptuous of laggards and incompetents, but regarded them as cowardly, disloyal, less than true Frenchmen. “The purge continues,” he would inform Charles nearly a year later. “I can well imagine that in Paris you are getting echoes of the complaints of the victims . . . [but] I never [act] until I am sure of facts.” Later, again to Charles: “It was put into [their heads] that I had come to the Isthmus to martyrize them. Today they must realize that I have hatred towards no one except the idlers and the traitors.”
Having inspected the entire line, having examined all completed surveys, reports on soundings, he prepared a master plan for the canal, the first that had been made in all this time and in fact the only one ever made by the French.
Like all their surveys and maps, the plan was in the metric system. The line from Colón to Panama was 74 kilometers, including a deep-water channel into the Bay of Panama ending near the island of Naos. The bottom width of the canal was to be 22 meters (72 feet); the depth, 9 meters (29½ feet).
To confine the Chagres, a tremendous earth dam, one of the largest ever built, possibly 48 meters (157½ feet) high, was to be stretched across the river valley at Gamboa, several miles above the Barbacoas bridge. T
he river was the heart of the matter, Dingler wrote; it was “the great unknown.” He also had no doubt of success–“it only requires that we quadruple our efforts, which is absolutely possible.” The incoming tides from the Pacific could be handled by a tidal lock that would maintain a constant water level in the canal from Colón to Panama.
His most important change was to reduce the slope of the cutting– that is, he declared that the sides of the canal would have to be sloped back far more than previously foreseen, a change of tremendous consequence since it increased the so-called “cube” of the total excavation by 60 percent.
His estimate was that the final amount of earth and rock to be removed would amount to 120,000,000 cubic meters. This was 45,000,-000 cubic meters more than the Technical Commission had estimated, 74,000,000 cubic meters more than what had been prognosticated at Paris in 1879. Indeed, the difference between Dingler’s estimate and that made at the beginning in Paris was equal to the total amount of excavation required for the entire Suez Canal. Yet when, in the early fall of 1883, he returned to Paris to review the plan with de Lesseps and the advisory board, it was calmly approved in total. Notwithstanding so radical a reassessment of the task, de Lesseps declared no change either for the completion date or the projected cost. Everything was proceeding quite smoothly as planned, he said.
In May alone Dingler signed seventeen new contracts for excavation. Orders for equipment went out to Belgium, France, the United States. The numbers of steam shovels, locomotives, and flatcars in use were to be more than doubled, even tripled, in less than two years’ time. Ware-houses were built, machine shops, locomotive roundhouses, coal depots, a half mile of new docks. He was spending big money now. By September of 1883 the work force was increased to ten thousand men. By the end of the year there were thirteen thousand on the payroll. The harbor at Colón had become so crowded that inbound freighters sometimes had to wait weeks for a turn to unload.
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