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How the Panama Canal Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you should know from House Stuff
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Josh Clark. Uh with Me is always a Child's de
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: wt Chuck Bryant and that's stuff you should know the podcast.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: The two of us together a couple of months, our voices.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: You know what I've been seeing all day? Of course,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Panma over and over and I just whistled it and
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Jerry's you know, I got that stuck in my head. Yeah,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: when we were growing up, my sister was singing it
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: and I realized that she was singing turn and Run, Like,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: what what she's like that song? That Van Halen song.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Don't be an idiot? She thought that's what they were saying. Yeah,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: that's so interesting because there's so many misinterpreted song lyrics
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: famously over the years, but I never have heard Panama
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: as being one of them. Yeah, especially since the song
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: is named Panama. Yeah parentheses, turn and run? Right, Maybe
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: they were talking about the people who were working on
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: the early French effort to build a canal in Panama. Yeah, boy,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: that didn't go over so well. We'll get to that, Okay, spoiler,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: The French didn't build the Panama Canal. I thought we
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: were gonna get to it right now. All right, do
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: you want to talk about Da Gama Balboa? Which one?
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Which one was? George Costanza's favorite explorer was a da
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Gama or Balboa? Oh man, it was one of the two.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Da Gama was Yeah, I think so okay, um that
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: was a funny conversation though, Um so, yeah. Balboa back
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: in the day was was wandering around in a region
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: called Darien, and he summoned to the peak there and
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: was like, holy cow, if I look this away, I
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: see the Pacific Ocean, and if I look at that away,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: I see the Atlantic Ocean or the Caribbean. And the
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: only thing between these two big bodies of water it's
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: this little isthmus of land. Yeah. I'm gonna have a
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: lot of trouble with that word. That's okay, just say
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: strip okay. So the strip of land here is the
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: only thing in between. And we should figure out a
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: way to use this as a as a thoroughfare. Yeah, yeah,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: because this is it connects the world. It does exactly.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: At the time, the Spanish we're trying to trade with
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the Chinese, and we're doing a pretty good job of
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: it in the Philippines, and the best way to get
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: to that was to come across the Atlantic and go
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: into the Pacific. It worked very, very well, and the
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: idea of just having a place where you could go
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: straight through rather than go all the way down South
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: America and then back up it was just mind boggling.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: It's like you said, it opened up the world. This
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: guy got it immediately. The problem was it would take
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: about four dred more years before anyone finally got around
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: to completing it successfully. Well, yeah, and forget the rest
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: of the world that you know, added states, Just like, Hey,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: I want to ship this by boat from New York
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: to San Francisco. How can I do that? I can
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: just like kind of sneak around Florida, right Nope, blocked? Right, Well,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: then what do I gotta do? You gotta go eight
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: thousand miles nautical miles around South America to get to California,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: right or? Um, you know, when you me and I
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: were in Nicaragua, we were in a town in the
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: nineteenth century was away station for minor forty niners going
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: on to California, and um, they would sail on to Nicaragua,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: take a train and then ship out from Nicaragua up
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: to California, except the handful that was like I think
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: I might just kick it here exactly. Yeah, I bet
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: you there were some d oh, definitely, I'm sure. Um,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: but yeah, there was. There was a continent in the way,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: in the idea that it was just this little narrow
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: strip of land that that made a lot of people
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: say this is the place to be. In the sixteenth
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: you know, the eighteenth century, the Scottish showed up. They
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: tried to establish an outpost, failed spectacular literally, Yeah, that's
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: there's a great um section in about it. Yeah. Um,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: the Spanish were there, the French were there. Uh, they
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: established pretty good outposts there. It was very clear that
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: this little area which was then part of Colombia is
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: now present day Panama, was going to be a hop
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: in spot because there was no thinner portion of the
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: North or South American continents than this one, and everyone
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: needed to figure out a way to get through. Yeah.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't as easy as like, hey, let's just
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: dredge all this sand and let the waters meet, because
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: that's not too hard. It's like dense jungle and mountains
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: and the continental divide. Yeah. So it's it's My first
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: thought was like, how hard could it have been? I
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: didn't realize how treacherous that area was. Yeah, and I
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: think that um that Balboa and a lot of people
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: who succeeded him, I thought the same thing, like how
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: hard is it? But it is like, that's that continental divide.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: That's a tough thing to break through. That's why they
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: call it a divide. Yeah, well that's where two tech
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: time plates come gather and form a mountain range. And like,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: that's you're cutting through not one but two tech time plates.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Everybody wrap your head around that. Seriously. Let's talk about it,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: because obviously we were successful eventually. But the first attempt
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: was not in the first attempt, it was by the French,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: who in the eighteen twenties, I believe, started to undertake
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: a what is known as a sea level canal, which
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: is basically they were going to cut their way straight
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: through the isthmus of Panama. That's right, and canals were
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: all the rage at the time because of steam technology,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, you didn't have to use
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: the very cool and quaint towpath and have a mule
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: walk alongside of a river or canal. Well, yeah, a
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: lot of them now are like jogging trails and stuff,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: you know, which you know, that's great, makes for good thing.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: I don't see any mules on them these days, but
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: it's great that people can use these to pass now too,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like a nature trail. Um. Yes, So
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: the steam technology gave the French the idea that hey man,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: we can we can build a sea level canal here
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: because we can just dig right through it. We have steam.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: We don't need the mules for the towpaths any longer.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: All we need is some good steam shovels. We're gonna
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: cut right through this continental divide, right through this jungle.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: And as a result of this ambition, twenty thou people died. Yeah.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: And um, they were able to you know, get a little,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: a little far thanks to the railroad there in Panama.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Believe it or not, it was the first railroad in
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the world to connect both sides of a continent. Right.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Wasn't very big, but it didn't need to be. It's
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: just kind of great. But that allowed the French to
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: get in there. They we're deciding between Nicaragua and Panama
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: at the time. Um, and they said like you said,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: we can do sea level we don't need these locks. Yeah,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: if you look at a map of Nicaragua and look
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: at Panama, like the idea of going through Nicaragua over
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Panama's just nuts. Yeah, and we'll look plain how the
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: locks work. But it essentially just raises and lowers your ship,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: right for sure, in a little like bay station of
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: water that's flooded and then drained. Right. Actually, that's how
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: lock works. So the French organized this thing called the
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Company Universal d Canal Enter thank you and uh, led
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: by a guy named Ferdinand Lesseps who had created a
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: sea level canal through the Suez connected the Mediterranean and
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: the Red Seas. It was a big deal. So they
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: brought him in and he's like, sure, we'll do another
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: sea level canal. I'm feeling good about this. He's like,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: I did the c S Canal with my eyes closed,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Like I can do this with one arm tie behind
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: my back. Well, he didn't realize is that digging through
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: a bunch of sand is not like digging through two
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: tectonic plates and a bunch of jungle and malaria. Uh.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: And like I said, twenty thousand people died as a
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: result of this like this guy was like, no, we
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: can do it. We can do it. We're gonna do
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: a sea level canal. We can do it. And then
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: finally it was like, I don't think we can do this.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: It was too late. A lot a lot, a lot
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: of people were dead from yellow fever, in malaria, from accidents. Um,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: it's privately financed, so a lot of people lost a
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: lot of money too exactly, and this company goes under.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Well he tried to salvage it though. First he tried
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: to hire Gustav Eiffel of the Eiffel Tower fame right,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: and said, hey, I think we need those locks after all, um,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: and you're good at building big steel things, so can
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: you help. Then he was like, of course I can.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: And then it was too late though that the business
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: was done and they had done a little bit well,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: they had done a lot, Like they made eleven miles
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: of canal up to that point. Not bad. It's about
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: a quarter of the way there, right, But this was
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: the when did they start chuck the eighteen so chuck
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: as we understand that they started in the eighteen twenties
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: and this thing went bust by nineteen o two. I
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: believe well, that's when Congress. I mean, they were busts
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: before that, but that's when the US stepped in and said, hey,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: we'll by your junk. Oh I'm sorry. So in like sixties,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: about sixty years they they had managed to dig eleven
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: miles of canal, build a bunch of buildings, They had
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of equipment and supplies there, um, and yeah,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: the US said, we smell a really, really great opportunity.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: And Congress said, let's spend some cash. We're feeling good
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: about things these days, where we annexed Hawaii recently, Puerto Rico, Philippines.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: What else, How why not take over this very AMBUSHSS project.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Why it's the American century by now, and we can
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: stick it to the French at the same time exactly.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: So they did this in nineteen o two, um, with
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: the one stipulation that said, you know what, you guys
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: have to Columbia controls Panama right now, and you guys
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: have to work out a deal with them. And we
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: tried and that failed. So he said, you know what,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna overthrow Columbia then and give the control
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: to the Panamanians. Yeah, they we supported this Panamanian independ
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: its movement and yeah, throw off the shackles of Colombia.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: And Colombia's like, what did you just do? Because we
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: gained control of that. We we followed that congressional mandate
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: and gained control of this Panama canal zone. Basically, the
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: swath uh that went through Panama was considered American soil
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: thanks to a treaty UM from my believe nineteen o two,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: the hey Bunal Varia Treaty UM, where Panama signed over
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: the canal zone. There was no Spanish translation of this treaty,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: so basically the U S went in over through Colombian
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: control of Panama, supported Panamanian independence and then rob Panama
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: of its canal in one fell sw in like a year,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: and Columbia is like, well, just I guess we'll just
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: start exporting cocaine and mass exactly. We'll get you back
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: one day. So um. In the end, they paid about
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: forty million bucks in nineteen o four for the assets
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: of this French company, just a lot of money back then,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: and about ten million dollars UM as this very cheeky article.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: By the way, did you notice UM they offered they
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: she referred to it as UM alimony of sorts to
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Panama ten million bucks to get gain the rights to
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: this canal zone. And basically, hey, we're gonna run the show.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: We're gonna finish your canal from the eleven mile mark
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: to the you know, to the ocean where it belongs.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: And like you said, I think there was a certain
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: amount of snub to it, right, probably so um, But
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: they said, you know what we gotta do first though,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: is we have to decide on if we can go
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: sea level? Um, Like, was it just the French were
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: incompetent or is it really impossible to do sea level? Yeah,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: like we need to do our own due diligence basically,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: And they did that, and Theodore Roosevelt chose chief engineer
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: John Frank Stevens, and he was like, it's all about
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: the locks, dudes. If you want to canal here, you're
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: gonna have to go over these mountains, not through them. Right.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: So here's the thing. And this is just brilliant because
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: there was another problem with this isthmus And there's this
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: thing called the Chagres River and it is very temperamental,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: was prone to flooding. All sorts of crazy stuff associated
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: with this river. So not only did you have the
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: continental divide in the jungle and the malaria to deal with.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Once you completed it, what were you going to do
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: with this river? Stevens came up with this great idea
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: that you go over the mountains, and you go over
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: the mountains. You killed two birds with one stone by
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: damming the river, and you create a lake that will
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: carry you over the mountains. Like, yeah, I'm sure that's
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: not pronounce correct. Think about that. That is one of
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: the most brilliant feats of engineering I've ever heard of,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: the Panama Canal. Yeah, but that specific aspect of it,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: the river to create a lake so you can go
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: over the mountains. That's just incredibly beautiful the whole thing too.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: And at the time, dude in the early nineteen hundreds
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: is just like, it's amazing that they could put us off. Yeah,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: because they're all wearing like knickers and stuf. Yeah, it's
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: very There's some awesome documentaries out there, by the way,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: you should watch. In fact, there's one. There's one cool.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Just go to the YouTube's and uh put in time
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: lapse Panama Canal and it takes you the full route
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: in like a minute and a half. Nice, he said,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: eight to ten hours, and it's kind of neat. You know.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: The boat goes in and sinks, and then not sinks
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: but lowers and then raises, and then it tools along
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: in the lake for a little while and then sinks
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: and lowers and raises and yeah, because it's like an
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: eight to ten hour transit right from from deep water
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: to deep water eight to ten hours. Yeah, depending on
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: your boat. I guess once you finally get clearance to
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: go through, that's right. So he's damned up the river
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: created cat tuned lake. UM ships going towards the Pacific
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: kind of enter it uh Lehman Bay in the Caribbean,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: go through a couple of locks upward and just it's
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: like walking up steps basically, except it's a big boat
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: and it's done with water. And then they navigate through
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: that lake for a little while and then and go
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: towards Panama City through another series of locks and down, down,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: down over the mountains and boom, you are connected to
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: the rest of the world. Right. So when they when
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: they um agreed on the lock method, they had one
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: other thing to handle. And that's why the Scott is
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: maybe they were getting confused with locks meaning lakes. Right,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: They're like, where all the locks. They're like, they're right there.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: They're like, no, but where the locks. So there was
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: one other big problem that had leveled the French effort,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: which was um yellow fever, which you can be immune
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: to if you're exposed to it in childhood, but if
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: you're from New York you're not. So you go down
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: to Panama and you are stung by a mosquito and
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: you die. Um. The thing is, nobody knew that it
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: was mosquitoes until a guy named Ronald bross Uh in
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: seven studied mosquitoes in India and found malaria present in
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: their stomachs and that it was transmittable through their saliva. Yeah,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: they didn't know what it was. They were all sorts
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: of different theories. Yeah, they thought it was maybe from
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: like unclean living whatever. When they found out that it
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: was the mosquitoes, they that changed everything. So they institute
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: this really rigid um anti mosquito uh program. They cleaned
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: up the country basically and basically eradicated came close to
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: eradicating yellow fever in the area, which paid the way
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: for this lock system to be built. Yeah, and you
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: can thank Colonel William Gorgas for heading up that sanitation squad,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: and um, yeah, I mean it worked, and that was
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: the key, because you can't have your workers dropping dead
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: of yellow fever every day. You have to they have
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: to drop dead of landslides. Yeah, even though a lot
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: of these workers were you know, poor black people. I
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: think eighty five percent of the people that died were black,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: and a lot of people still died, but it wasn't
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: like the dropping dead from yellow fever, you know, but
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: it's still a very dangerous project. Slides, all sorts of
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: drownings and things like that. Um. So we've got the
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the we've got the yellow fever licked. We've settled on
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: the lock system, and um John Frank Stevens is replaced
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: by a guy named Lieutenant Colonel George Washington Gothals and
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: he was a lock expert, and he looked at the
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: plan and he said, you know what, We're gonna divide
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: this up into three sections. That makes perfect sense. It does.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: You've got the Pacific section that's going to be working
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: from Limon Bay, which by the way, means lime in Spanish.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Did you know that I did not. Uh, So they're
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: working from Limon Bay to the newly created Lake Gatun.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: That was the Atlantic Division. Yeah, okay, you're right. So
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: the Atlantic Division is synonymous with the Caribbean UM. And
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: then so you've got the Atlantic Division working from Ghatun
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: to um or Lemon to get tune. You have the
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Central Division. This is the hardest part. They're working in
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Lake glad Tune to basically create a channel through this
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Continental divide. Yeah, you don't have to cut sea level,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: but you you don't need to make sure these ships
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: aren't gonna like run aground in the mountain. Um. And
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: then you have the Pacific Division, which is working from
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: uh the end of the Continental divide pass which is
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Pedro Miguel locks down to the Pacific, right, that's right.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: And like we said, the railway, the Panamanium Railroad is there,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: and um, we had like awesome gear at the time.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: It was no longer you know, men with chisels and
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: sledgehammers and stuff. It was steam shovels, rock drills, dynamite
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: and uh they moved ninety six million cubic yards of
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: earth and rock, right, which is seventy three million cubic meters,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: that's right. And uh, it was really hot though, and
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: it was a pretty bad scene and they called that
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Hell's Gorge and it was dangerous and that's where I
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: think most of the lives were lost on this second pass. Yeah,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: and that was definitely the hardest work. But they made
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: it through, um and by a crane that was used
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: in the construction of the Panama Canal. Was the first
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: thing to ever make it through all the way. And
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: they were like sweet, Yeah, And eight months later it
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: was open for business as far as I understand, Yeah,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: big business. Um, should we should we walk people through
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: or I guess swim people through? Yeah, I think we should. Okay, Uh,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: you approach from the Atlantic, you go through the Gattoon locks.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: It's gonna lift your vessel up eighty five ft, pretty awesome,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: and take you two Gatun Lake, very nice there. You're
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: gonna wind through that channel for about twenty three miles,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: then enter the Gallard Cut about eight miles through there,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna reach the Pedro Miguel locks and then
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: they're gonna lower your ship about thirty ft to the
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: mirror Flors Lake. You're gonna pass through this it's about
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: a mile long, and then the two steps mirror floors locks.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: We're gonna return you finally back to sea level to
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: seven mile passage from there to the Pacific, and all told,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: you've gone fifty miles in about eight to ten hours.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: And um, mind bogglingly, I saw that it takes fifty
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: two million gallons of fresh water to move a ship
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: from one end to the other two and they're getting
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: all that from Lake Gatun. Yeah, and it's just I
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: imagine it's just recycled back into the system. Right, what
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: is it? What happens to it? They lose it, most
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: of it. It's either pumped back in. It either goes
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: flows back into Lake Gatun or else it flows out
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: into the oceans, which is not necessarily good. They're worried
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: that La gat Tune may become brackish and like a
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: tune is now the freshwater supply of Panama and it
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: they're using a lot of it up. Yeah. Well, it's
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: always presented a bit of an environmental quagmire, especially with
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: their plans to expand, which we'll get to. But right
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: now they have two weight traffic UM. They're looking to
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: make that a three lane highway, which would actually adding
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: that third lane UM will double the amount of traffic, Yeah,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: which is crazy. You would think it would increase it
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: by a third. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's wider.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Oh maybe allows for two ships at a time. They
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: just jam like eight in there once. I don't know.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: I do know that if you are a large enough ship,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: they don't let you drive yourself because you know you've
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: got one drunk sea captain and all of a sudden
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: your locks are out of commissioned, so they use electric
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: towing locomotives to tow those big bad boys. Right, And
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: we should say, just briefly, with the locks, if you
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: want to move a ship upward, you flow into a lock.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: The lock closes behind you and it fills up with
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: water so that you can float over the lip of
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the next higher lock that the gate closes behind you
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: with that one, and it fills in with water, and
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: so on and so forth. Yeah, it's remarkably basic. Yeah.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: And then the opposite takes place when you're stepping down. Yeah,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: it's just basically going into a little square pool, raising
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: or lowering the water level so you can go up
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: or down. It's really neat. Yeah, And if you've got
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: a minute and a half to kill you can take
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: this voyage in high speed on the YouTube. So uh, like,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: we said, the US used gunboat diplomacy to and I
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: guess good old fashioned, old timey nineteen o two swindling
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: to gain control of the Panama Canal zone. And it
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: had complete control until nineteen nine when Jimmy Carter um
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: malaise forever, right, Jerise that Simpsons, they unveil a statue
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: of Jimmy Carter and it says Malaise Forever on the
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: base and one of the townspeople go, he's history's greatest monster. Anyway,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Carter negotiated with the leader of Panama at the time,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: UH General Omar Terrios Herrera, and said, hey, how would
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: you like this thing back? Give us you think they said, hey,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: we'd like this back. I like to think of um
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: American magnanimous. Not sure, So we said, you know what,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: we've had it for this long plus plus we're talking Carter,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: it's entirely possible. He just started contacting people and said,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: what's the US have that we can sell or give back.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: It's a good point. Um. So yeah, he he sold
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: like one of the like the presidential yacht was sold
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: by him. Why because he thought it was frivolous UM
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: and Panama Canal. He's like, how about this, let's get
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: rid of a significant portion over our economy. Anyway, he
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: gives it back after twenty years and on December thirty first,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: which is why I suspect they made it a twenty
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: year deal. Yeah, I mean they had to transition. You
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: can't just hand the keys over and be like, all right,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: send your crew in. Right, but not only that, Like
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: why not a fifteen year deal or an eighteen year
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: deal or ten year deal. They went with twenty because
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: it was gonna end on December thirty first millennium. Actually
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: that didn't start til don't one though, right, Yeah, but
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: you know, okay, it's symbolic, right, Okay, So the Panamanians
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: take over, and UM immediately start taking flak because the
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: things aging traffics jammed up. They've done a good job
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: with it, though, it's it's just by nature of how
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: things are. These they're victims of circumstances. UM and five
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: percent of the world's trade goes through the Panama Canal.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Weld of a canal right there. The millionth ship UM
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: went through in two thousand, ten hundred and forty four
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: thousand ships go through a year, and it's a very
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: narrow little strip. You know. That means waiting in line,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of waiting in line. Plus, also there's an
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: upper limit to the size ship that can go through.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: It's called Panama. Panamax is the is the ship size?
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: That's yeah, what a great name for the biggest ship
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: that Panamax. What could be bigger than that? Well, these
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: ships that are called post Panama exactly, a lot of
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: shippers are like, you know what, I'm tired of waiting.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: It's actually going to be more economical for me to
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: build a ship that can't go through the Panama Canal
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: but can hold a lot more and I'll just sail
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: around the lower part of South America. And um, that's
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: kind of increasingly happening. Plus, Nicaragua threatened to open their
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: own canal, So Panama says, okay, wait, wait, wait, let's
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: let's holl the referendum and see if we can expand
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: this thing and modernize it and save the canal. And
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Panamanians said, yes, let's so in two thousand and six
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: they approved this third lane that's expected to be open
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: by two fourteen. Is Nicaragua still planning a canal. I
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know if that shot it down
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: or not. Well. And there's also talk now of a
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Northwest passage thanks to um what some people might say,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: it's climate change and melting ice caps. There may be
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: a way to get there um by land. Henry Hudson
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: is clapping in his grave. Um, So we'll see if
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: that happens. I don't know. I didn't get a chance
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: to really look into that research. And like, how real
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: is that? Even? Still, the Panamanians will probably make their
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: five point to five billion investment back eventually, although it
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: took the US good forty years to make four million back. Yeah, yeah,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: I think the nine when they finally broke even. Huh
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: that's crazy. And um, you break even by charging a toll,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: I don't think we even mentioned that. You obviously, like
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: any way station or passage, you gotta pay according to
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: what how much stuff you got, right, It's like I
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: think the record is I looked it up. It's like
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: a d or something. Yeah, they do it by ton in.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: The thing is is, if you are um carrying a
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: lot of really expensive natural gas, right, you're gonna pay
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: a lesser toll than if you're carrying a bunch of
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: less expensive or even equally expensive coal, which isn't fair.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: And if you're if you're transporting a lot of raw steel,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: why should you pay more? So they're they're trying to
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: figure out a new toll system, especially for the newly
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: expanded version of the canal um it takes into account
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: the value of the of what's on board rather than
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: just the weight, right, So they should make a little
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: more money that way. Yeah. I don't know if this
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: is still accurate, but the record that I have is
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty three thousand dollars six hundred and
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: fifty three thousand, six hundred sixty two and the cheapest
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: was when a dude swam across it any weighed like
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty pounds, and so they charged them
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: what like thirty six cents. Yeah, that back in Richard
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Halliburton and he swam the Panama Canal, and I guess
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: it was some sort of publicity stunt. I'm sure people
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: love doing stuff like that back then. Yeah, but if
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: you look at this um this high speed route on YouTube,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: it's pretty neat and there's a lot of times you're like, oh,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: look out for that boat and then it turns you're like, Okay,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of activity out there. Yeah, you know
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: it's not a pleasure cruise. Well no, and it's not
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: one ship at a time. They have, like you said,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: two way traffic, right, that's right, and they try to
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: keep them going through as if recently as possible. And
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: I should say also, um, the the um the new
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: locks that they have can serve about six of the
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: water used, so they'll address a lot of environmental concerns hopefully.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: I got a couple of little facts here if you're interested. Uh,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: the entrance to the canal in the Atlantic side is
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: twenty two and a half miles west of the Pacific entrance,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: which is interesting because it has a unique s shape.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: And then, um, the locks themselves are seven feet thick each.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: So if you're wondering how to keep out that much water,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: like to to basically damn up the oceans, you need
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: to do it with seven foot thick concrete. Um. The
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: workforce is Panamanian right now, which is pretty great. And uh,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: it's about all I got. Sixty million pounds of dynamite
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: was used to construct this thing. It's some nice stets Chuck, Yeah,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: it's not bad. Cool you got anything else? Like? No,
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: all the rest of these are kind of boring. Panama
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Canal Forever. Uh. If you want to learn more about
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: the Panama Canal, you can read this very good article
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: on how Stuff works dot com. Type in Panama Canal
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: or turning around Canal. See what happens when you do
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: the ladder, Um, Chuck, hold on, let's let's take a
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: message break. Huh. It is time for a listener mail, Josh,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this one listener mail about listener mail.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, I'm currently on the seven train heading to
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Queens for Manhattan after a long day of working as
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: an auditor at a cp A firm. Um. As usual,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: I'm listening to your podcast. This time it was the
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: death Mask episode and you were concluding with a listener mail.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: And this is instance. It was from Martha regarding peak oil.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: And I think Martha was talking about the auditing of
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: oil reserves. And he says this to Martle. She was
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: correct for the most part, regarding the audit of oil
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: reserves held by entities whose stocks may be publicly traded
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: on the stock market. Just one thing I was so
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: a gas by that I felt I needed to type
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: this from my phone as I'm on the train. Still,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: the SEC does not perform any audits of its own
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: on these companies. Uh. It is firms like the one
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: I work for, that audit these companies, albeit under SEC guidelines.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Actually p c A I would be Public Company Audit
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Oversight Board guidelines if you want to get technically yeah, Uh,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: the SEC may perform a type of audit, but when
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: they do, they're usually auditing an audit firm or an
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: audit that has already been done by an audit firm
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: as part of some kind of investigation. What so they'll
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: audit an audit like the SEC doesn't audits. It's a
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: long and charget. I'm s an audit. Well fund actually
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: been through one of these audits and it is no
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: fun at all. For some reason, it seems everyone whom
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: works at the SEC is what you stereotypically picture as
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: an accountant with no humor. Plus, the word audit loses
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: all meaning when you hear it. That's right. I digress though, Guys.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: If you pull up at ten K annual filing for
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: any public company, you can see in the audit opinion
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: the audit firm which performed the audit for that particular year.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: I hope that clears things up. Henrik Olmez and Henry.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that cleared it up, but if
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: I was an accountant, I would probably say yes, very
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: much clear of things over, very nice. Thank you very much, Henry.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: That was very nice of you to correct somebody who
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: is correcting us. Yeah, and I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: gotta take that. Thank you. Seven train man, is that
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: a terrible train? Not do that one. It's like it's
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: the old red train that looks like it's about to
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: fall off. It's like the midnight meat train. Yeah, have
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: you seen that now? Man, what's midnight meat? That's a
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: midnight meat train. It's got Vinnie Jones and Bradley Cooper
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: in it. It's actually based on a Clive Barker short
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: story because that's an old joke between me and my
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: friend p J, who he's met I believe. Yeah, he
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: uh cookouts famously. P J is a great chef home chef,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: but he was so he would typically take so long.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: We referred to his meals as midnight meat and then
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: made a joke about cold cooking mistake one time night
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: It took like twenty four hours. Yeah, no, that's definitely
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: this is not a slam on t J. No. We
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: love him in nighted Uh. If you have anything you
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: want us to know, if you want to correct somebody
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: who's corrected us, or you just want to say hi, whatever,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at scovery dot com and chuck uh. They
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: can always find us on our website, Right stuff you
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Hey,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Netflix streams TV shows and movies directly to your TV, computer,
• 31:50
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• 31:53
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• 31:57
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