August 15: A 50-mile cut between two oceans

On August 15, 1914, the SS Ancon made the first official transit of the Panama Canal. Tonight's film: Stargate (1994).

Some days the almanac lines up so neatly it almost makes me laugh. Today is one of those. I came to the desk tired, the way I seem to most evenings lately, and the date pulled me straight in. On August 15, 1914, a 12,000-ton cargo and passenger ship called the SS Ancon, originally built as the Shawmut and later bought by the U.S. government, slipped out of Cristobal on the Atlantic side of Panama at 7:00 in the morning. By roughly 4:00 PM she had reached Balboa on the Pacific side. Nine hours, and two oceans had become one.

The canal she transited was 50 miles long, built at a cost of about $375 million, close to $10 billion in today’s money. She was lifted 85 feet above sea level through the Gatun locks, sailed across Gatun Lake, and was lowered back through Pedro Miguel and Miraflores. A ship that would have spent weeks rounding Cape Horn could now cut 8,000 miles off the journey. New York to San Francisco fell from roughly 13,000 miles to about 5,200.

And it nearly did not happen. A French team under Ferdinand de Lesseps started digging in 1881 and collapsed by 1889, losing around 20,000 to 22,000 workers to yellow fever and malaria. The Americans took over in 1904 after backing Panamanian independence and signing the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, and the difference was a doctor. William C. Gorgas ran a mosquito-eradication campaign that broke the disease cycle that had buried the French. Another 5,600 workers died during the American build, but the canal got finished.