Cruising through the Panama Canal is a bucket list adventure not to be missed. The experience of watching as the locks raise and lower a ship that weighs 150,000 – 200,000 tons as it traverses the narrow passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is awe inspiring. The importance of the canal to the global maritime shipping industry cannot be overstated. The completion of the canal allowed ships to avoid the treacherous trip around Cape Horn and through the Drake Passage, as well as reducing the distance for a sea trip from New York to San Francisco by approximately 7,800 miles with the accompanying savings in time and fuel. It completely transformed global shipping routes. Completed in 1913 at a total cost of $375,000,000, it was the most expensive project in US history up to that time. The building of the canal is a fascinating story filled with historic events, international intrigue, medical breakthroughs, economic windfalls, and engineering advances that changed the world.

When the Panama Railway steamship SS Ancon, piloted by Captain John A. Constantine (the canal’s first pilot) made the first official transit of the Panama Canal on August 15, 1914, it was the culmination of a dream that was 400 years in the making. Its history stretches from the Age of Exploration and the discovery of the new world of the Americas to the beginning of World War I. The Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa first crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and wrote in his journals about the possibility of a canal across the narrow isthmus. When the narrow nature of the Isthmus became generally known, European powers saw the possibility of digging a water passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Over the centuries, the idea of a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans captured the imagination of Spain’s Holy Roman Emperor, the Kingdom of Scotland, entrepreneurs from the United Kingdom and France, and four U.S. Presidents. Its construction was affected by the collapse of the Spanish empire in the early 1820s, the emergence of the United States as a world power, the gold rush in California, tropical diseases that claimed thousands of workers lives, the Spanish American War, the secession of Panama from Columbia, and the gunboat diplomacy of Teddy Roosevelt.