The Panama Canal: An Informal History of Its Concept, Building, and Present Status

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Donald Barr Chidsey. The Panama Canal: An Informal History of Its Concept, Building, and Present Status

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The Famous Culbra Cut

The S.S. Ancon could not be described as a tramp; she was a self-respecting ocean-going vessel owned by the Panama Railroad Company (which in turn was owned by the United States government). She had spent the greater part of her fairly short life hauling supplies, mostly concrete, from eastern American seaports to the Isthmus of Panama; but she had some passenger accommodations, and, if she was no luxury liner, neither was she anything to be ashamed of.

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The buccaneers and the pirates did not cease to harass the Camino Real because they suffered a change of heart but only because the pickings came to be so small. Spain indubitably was fading. She would be lucky even to hold on to what she had, as everybody knew. In her trembling, weakening grasp, Panama relapsed into innocuous desuetude, as did Nicaragua and Tehuantepec and all the other possible canal sites.

The next organized effort to do something constructive about the Isthmus of Panama came, unexpectedly, from Scotland.

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