Panama Canal: Worthy 'American Experience'
Using an extraordinary archive of photographs and footage, interviews with canal workers and first-hand accounts of life in the Canal zone, "Panama Canal: American Experience" unravels the story of one of the world's most significant technological achievements. Credit: PBS
First the French tried to blast their way through the Isthmus of Panama and failed, miserably. Then, it was Teddy Roosevelt's turn. After taking office in 1901, he determined American hegemony could be achieved only by knitting together the world's great oceans. Simple!
Colombia, which owned Panama, said no, and Teddy backed a short, sharp revolution that turned Panama into a separate country and U.S. puppet. Now, the hard part: There was a vast jungle, endless swamps and a river called the Chagres that turned into a horizontal Niagara Falls a few times a year . . . but how was one to build a canal across a mountain range, the Culebra?
Teddy thundered that it could be done, and workers arrived - mostly West Indians paid about 10 cents a day. Someone named William Gorgas proposed beating Yellow fever - which killed thousands - by killing mosquitoes. (Teddy had to be convinced to hire him; at a fateful meeting in Oyster Bay, his personal physician told him Gorgas should be hired. Gorgas' triumph may have saved the canal.) The chief engineer, John Stevens, proposed getting over the mountains with a series of locks.
MY SAY
Most of us haven't given much thought to the Panama Canal recently. The Ditch is still there. Boats still go through. And the sun also rises. As such, "Gateway to the American Century" is a well-placed poke at our complacency and myopia - or at least at mine - and a dramatic reminder of how great feats of imagination and enterprise can change history and lives. Also, this broadcast is surprisingly moving.
BOTTOM LINE
A terrific yarn of American know-how and human fortitude. Watch this and you'll think it would have been easier to just keep sailing around the Horn; it almost would've been easier to swim.
GRADE
A
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