Panama Canal Centennial

Polite Cruisers approach Centennial Bridge

If you're looking for a non-stop party at sea surrounded by like-minded people, look no further....at a Panama Canal cruise.  People attracted to a two week voyage with twice as many sea days as ports will naturally tend to be more sedate.



Demographically, think comfortably retired people whose cordiality and refinement represent a throwback from the current increasingly crude society of excess represented by profanity-laced movies starring Melissa McCarthy.





Opening the Lock for Island Princess

Not that long ago, McCarthy played Lorelai's wholesome friend Sookie on "Gilmore Girls," which itself contrasts sharply with her recent foul-mouthed characters in movies like "The Bridesmaids."  Her career shift parallels the rapidly changing standards of society.  In any case, for those of us born before 1960, it's nice to be around people who don't rely on variations of the f-bomb as nouns, verbs and adjectives.  I know: we're the ones out of touch.

To be clear, I don't actually spend time around anyone who speaks like that, but I've encountered this type of low-life increasingly frequently.



Gatun Lake

Just as Melissa McCarthy's on-screen transformation illustrates the coarsening of society over the past decade, the Panama Canal on its 100th Anniversay might just as easily be seen as a metaphor of the difference between America emerging in the 20th Century versus now.



The Panama Canal began with the grand vision of a French company, Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique.  Led by Ferdinand de Lesseps who had similarly built the Suez Canal which made investors rich by providing a valuable waterway to meet immediate demand, they began digging on February 1, 1881, but twenty years and 20,000 worker deaths later, the jungle's environment had proven to be too much to overcome.

Teddy Roosevelt in 1903 by J.S. Sargent

In 1902, new President Teddy Roosevelt took his can-do attitude with which he had led the charge to victory up San Juan Hill and applied it to the Panama Canal project, using his bully pulpit to overcome objections to what many thought would be a boondoggle.  The US purchased the French company's rights, property and equipment for $40 million.  Over the next dozen years, the project would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and 5,600 workers lost their lives.

Entire villages in the Chagres River Valley were relocated so that in 1913, that valley could be dammed and flooded to form an artificial lake.  With its lovely hilltop "islands," Gatun Lake to me is every bit as impressive as the Panama Canal locks.

On August 15, 1914, twelve long years after Teddy Roosevelt challenged Americans to take on the monumental task, the Panama Canal opened, evidence of how vision, hard-work and perseverance could accomplish the seemingly impossible.



Long Approach

When I was a child sixty years later, another young President, John Kennedy, would similarly challenge Americans to put a man on the moon, and America succeeded there, too.  It was another high point of what many historians call the American Century, which included key rolls in two World War victories over tyranny, plus leadership in the expansion of capitalism and other forms of freedom throughout much of the world.

By the time President Jimmy Carter took office in 1977, however, America had taken on a different failed French project, the Vietnam War, which depending on your viewpoint was a terrible mistake to begin or the subsequent abandonment of our "can-do" spirit that from the outset of the century allowed us to accomplish anything.

President Carter signed the treaty that would turn over control of the Canal to Panama by the year 2000 during his first year in office.



Marina With Modern Panama City Skyline

With the lowering of the US flag on December 31, 1999, operation of the Panama Canal transferred to China under a fifty year lease with Panama. 

As mentioned previously, Island Princess was built to Panamax standards, meaning it can barely squeeze through the Panama Canal, with only 2 feet of clearance on either side.  Steering such a large ship under its own power through the narrow locks would be extremely difficult, so electric mules along the banks pull large ships into the precise position.  However, soon larger cruise ships will be able to transit the Panama Canal.



Approaching the Bridge of the Americas

Not content to limit the potential of this passageway as larger freight as well as cruise ships have brought cost advantages to other areas of shipping, China will soon complete a second Panama Canal, one that allows ships more than 50% wider and capable of carrying double the weight to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific without going around the southern tip of South America.  And not content to stop there, China also has a new 100 year lease with Nicaragua and plans to build an even larger canal through Central America to compete with the Panama Canal.



Entering the Lock

Many children in the 1960s were admonished to clean their plates, because there were children starving in China.  Notwithstanding the non sequitur, I find it amazing that in a half century the tables have turned.  We now seem to be entering what may, only forty years after President Richard Nixon opened the floodgates of American capital to the formerly impoverished communist country, become known as the Chinese Century.  I personally wouldn't want to live in China, where hundreds of millions still slave in poverty in heavily polluted cities to create plastic doodads and iPhones for Melissa McCarthy movie fans who never consider they may be selling their futures for immediate gratification, but the miraculous transformation cannot be denied.



The Original French cut of the Canal

In the final analysis, influence of the Greek and Roman empires continue to this day, and while the British Empire may no longer rule the waves, English has become the preeminent langauge of science and commerce throughout the world, including in China, which has hundreds of local dialects (as well as confusing cuneiform writing) that made that country an unlikely source for a practical alternative.    Certainly many British citizens continue to live fulfilling lives, including a few lads who overcame humble beginnings in the WWII rubble of their kingdom to begin what could be considered empires of their own, including Richard Branson and The Beatles. 

Brit Winston Churchill prophetically said, "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."

The American Empire, if you can indeed call it that, has always been one of ideals, and I don't think when we awaken from our current daze, much in the way we awakened from the Great Depression to defeat Germany's National Socialism in WWII, that we will be ready to pass the torch of civilization on to another empire quite yet.



Wes at Centennial Bridge

Did Julie and I constantly worry about the direction of America during our Panama Canal cruise?  Not so much. We were too engaged in our more immediate reality. Then again, like most of our fellow passengers, we had spent decades of our time metaphorically digging the canals of our own lives, allowing time to appreciate a comfortable coast.