A Gunboat and a New Nation

The Dream of a Shortcut

For centuries, sailors dreamed of cutting through Central America. Without a canal, a ship going from New York to San Francisco had to sail all the way around South America.

The narrowest spot was the Isthmus of Panama, a thin neck of land between two oceans. Back then, Panama wasn't a country. It was a province of Colombia.

The French tried first. In the 1880s, Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man who built the Suez Canal, started digging. But yellow fever and malaria tore through the workers. Thousands died. By 1889, the company was broke, and its machinery sat rusting in the jungle.

Then came the war with Spain in 1898. The battleship Oregon was on the Pacific coast when it started. To reach the fight in the Caribbean, she had to steam around the tip of South America. About fourteen thousand miles. More than two months.

As a Navy veteran, that voyage tells me everything. A navy with two oceans and no shortcut is really two navies.

Theodore Roosevelt became President in 1901, and he wanted that canal badly. His Secretary of State, John Hay, signed a treaty with Colombia for a strip of land across the isthmus.

The U.S. Senate approved it. But Colombia's congress turned it down. The price was too low, and they didn't want to give up control of their own territory.

Roosevelt was furious. So were a lot of people in Panama, for a different reason. They believed a canal would make them rich, and Bogotá had just thrown it away. Therefore, a group of Panamanian leaders began planning a revolt. They had help from a Frenchman named Philippe Bunau-Varilla, who'd worked on the old French canal. He came away from meetings in Washington convinced the United States would not stand in the way.

By the first days of November, American warships were heading for the isthmus.

Orders by Telegraph

An old treaty from 1846 gave Washington its reason. The United States had promised to keep the crossing of Panama open.

The first ship to arrive was the Nashville. She was a small gunboat, commissioned in 1897, a veteran of the war with Spain. On November 2nd, 1903, she dropped anchor off Colón.

That same day, the Navy Department wired her orders. Keep the crossing open. And, in the telegram's own words, "Prevent landing of any armed force with hostile intent, either Government or insurgent."

But that telegram didn't reach Hubbard until the next morning. By then, a Colombian ship had already put the soldiers ashore.

To get from Colón to Panama City, on the Pacific side, you rode the Panama Railroad. And the Panama Railroad was an American company.

The railroad told the Colombians it would carry their troops only if the governor of Panama asked. The governor didn't ask. So the Colombian generals rode ahead to Panama City by train, without their men. The soldiers stayed in Colón.

Hubbard wired Washington that day. A revolution might be declared that very night, he warned. "Situation is most critical if revolutionary leaders act."

Meanwhile, in Panama City, the Colombian generals had just stepped off the train, with no army behind them.

A Nation in a Day

That afternoon, the plotters made their move. The Colombian generals were arrested, along with the governor. Local troops sided with the rebels. And that evening, November 3rd, 1903, Panama declared its independence.

A doctor named Manuel Amador Guerrero, a former Panama Railroad man, would become the new nation's first president.

It was almost bloodless. A Colombian gunboat fired a few shells at Panama City, and that was about it.

The next day, Hubbard told Washington he had prohibited the transit of troops across the isthmus. The Colombian soldiers weren't going anywhere.

But the colonel left in charge of them, Eliseo Torres, wasn't finished. He threatened to open fire on Americans in the town unless his generals were released.

One small gunboat. A few hundred angry soldiers. And American civilians in between.

So Hubbard landed a small force of sailors and Marines from the Nashville. Then he wired Washington. "I have landed force to protect the lives and property of American citizens here against threats Colombian soldiery. I am protecting water front with ship."

I served in the Navy, and here's what I hear in that last sentence. A warship sitting close to shore is a message all by itself. Hubbard was sending one.

For a day, the two sides faced off. The next morning, Hubbard pulled his men back aboard. "No bloodshed," he reported. Within hours, things turned tense again, and he sent them back ashore. By the evening of November 5th, another American warship had arrived, and the Colombian soldiers had sailed for Cartagena.

On November 6th, three days after the revolt, the United States recognized the Republic of Panama.

But the new country was about to give away a piece of itself before its own people had a say.

The Frenchman's Signature

Panama's new government named Bunau-Varilla, the Frenchman, as its representative in Washington. A delegation of Panamanian leaders was on its way north to join the talks. But on November 18th, 1903, before they arrived, Bunau-Varilla and John Hay signed a treaty.

It gave the United States a zone about ten miles wide across the isthmus, to build and run a canal, as if it were sovereign, for an unlimited time. Panama got ten million dollars up front and two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year.

The new government, afraid of being left at Colombia's mercy, accepted it.

No Panamanian signed that treaty. Many in Panama resented it for decades.

Panama had its independence. America had its strip of jungle. Now somebody had to dig.

The Big Ditch

American work began in 1904, and the first enemy wasn't rock. It was the mosquito. An Army doctor named William Gorgas went after the mosquitoes that carried yellow fever and malaria. Yellow fever was wiped out in the Canal Zone.

In November of 1906, Roosevelt went to see it for himself, the first time a sitting President had left the country. He climbed into the cab of a giant steam shovel, and the picture went everywhere.

An Army engineer, George Washington Goethals, took charge in 1907. Instead of the sea level ditch the French had tried, the Americans built locks, lifting ships up to a man-made lake and back down again.

Tens of thousands of workers, many of them from the Caribbean islands, dug through mountains of rock and mud. Thousands died during the American years, too.

On August 15th, 1914, the steamship Ancon made the first official trip through, ocean to ocean. New York to San Francisco was suddenly about eight thousand miles shorter.

But the world barely noticed. The First World War had broken out in Europe only weeks earlier.

Two Words

For many Panamanians, though, the Canal Zone was a fenced-in American enclave running through the middle of their own country. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter and Panama's leader, General Omar Torrijos, signed new treaties to hand the canal over.

On December 14th, 1999, Carter came back for the ceremony. Earlier that day, he laid a wreath at an American military cemetery on the banks of the canal, for the five thousand Americans who gave their lives building and defending it.

Then, under a light rain at the Miraflores Locks, he and Panama's president, Mireya Moscoso, signed a symbolic accord. Ninety-six years after a treaty no Panamanian signed, Carter placed the canal in Panama's hands with two words.

"It's yours."

At noon on December 31st, 1999, Panama took full control. For the first time since its birth in 1903, the country held all of its own territory.

As a Navy veteran, I noticed one more thing. The man who said those two words was a Naval Academy graduate who had served in submarines. A sailor handed it over.

Commander Hubbard never became famous. But for two days in Colón, with orders that came too late, he kept a few hundred soldiers on the wrong side of the isthmus. That helped decide who got to be a country.

And the Navy had gotten its shortcut. The locks are one hundred ten feet wide, so for decades American warships were built to squeeze through. The Iowa class battleships of the Second World War cleared the walls by about a foot on each side. Ships could now cross between the oceans in days instead of months.

Today, November 3rd is a national holiday in Panama. In Colombia, it's remembered very differently.

And off Colón, where one small gunboat once rode at anchor with orders that came too late, the ships still wait their turn for the canal.

Tomorrow: a crowd climbs over the walls of the American embassy in Tehran. How long will the Americans inside be held? The Daily Muster is supported by Parcaut Supply Co. Subscribe, and we'll have the next one ready in the morning. Muster's done. Fair winds. I'm Ed Parcaut, and I'll see you tomorrow.