The big short cut

The Panama Canal is one of the great shipping shortcuts — a human-made 77km passage through the Central American isthmus between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

It saves sailing to the bottom of South America and rounding Cape Horn.

And that passage undoes what it took nature millions of years to achieve. For the narrow strip of land between North and South America took that long to slowly rise and separate the two great oceans, three million years ago.

Before the canal was opened in 1914, the sea voyage from the east coast of the US to its west coast was about 22,000km. The Panama Canal makes it 9000km.

But many thousands of people died building the canal, most from yellow fever and typhoid.

The French first started in the 1880s, though the work floundered to a halt in 1889.

The US later stepped in, leveraging Panama’s desire for independence. I have seen cartoons of US president Theodore Roosevelt standing astride Panama, ready to swing a pickaxe and break through the isthmus, ships waiting either side.

In 1903, the Republic of Panama was created at a meeting in the Waldorf Hotel in New York. Panama declared independence from Gran Colombia. The US sent its fleet to support that, and the US Army Corps of Engineers started work on the Panama Canal within 12 months and finished 11 years later.

The key is Gatun Lake — a 423sqkm reservoir created by damming the Chagres River in 1913. The lake’s surface is 26m above the Pacific and Atlantic oceans either side.

The series of three Gatun Locks, each rising and falling about 8m, takes ships up to (and down from) lake level on one side, with the three locks of Pedro Miguel and Miraflores the other side.

Lines join a ship to the $US2.5 million locomotives that hold it in the middle of the lock as it passes through.

The centre section of the “canal” is, in fact, the 24km crossing of Gatun Lake.

The Panama Canal was progressively given by America to the people of Panama, with the final handover in 2000.

In 2025, the canal company made about $US5.7 billion ($8.23b)— an increase of 14.4 per cent for the fiscal year, as transits increased.

The company reported 19.3 per cent increase in transits (year-on-year) to 13,404 during the 12-month period, which ended on September 30, 2025.

THE ‘NEW’ CANAL

+ The “new Panama Canal”, a $US5 billion ($7.22b) project, was officially opened in 2016.

+ It is actually new sets of much bigger locks parallel to the original ones.

+ The 103-year-old locks are 33m wide and 304m long — the new Panamax and Neopanamax locks are 55m wide and 427m long, and 18m deep.

+ They can handle big ships carrying 12,000 containers.

+ The new locks also cleverly reuse 60 per cent of the millions of litres of water they need for each fill. They use 7 per cent less water than the old, smaller locks.