Book Review: 'The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914'

© 1977 Simon and Schuster

On September 7, 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian General Omar Torrijos signed two treaties, The Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal and The Panama Canal Treaty, in Washington, D.C. Known as the Carter-Torrijos Treaties, these documents guaranteed Panamanian sovereignty over what had been the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone as of 1979 and sole ownership of the Panama Canal as of December 31, 1999. In essence, these agreements - which were highly controversial in American conservative circles before, during, and even after they were negotiated, signed, and ratified by both countries, replaced the 1903 Hay– Bunau-Varilla Treaty, a document which, in essence, ceded the canal and the land adjacent to it (including islands within the canal itself) to the United States. 

Earlier in the year, Simon and Schuster of New York published The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914 by historian David McCullough. The first hardcover edition hit bookstores during the Senate debates over ratification of the recently-signed Carter-Torrijos Treaties. Former President Carter said that the agreements would not have passed through the Senate if the book had not been written; McCullough has also said, “All through the Senate debates on the issue, the book was quoted again and again, and I’m pleased to say that it was quoted by both sides. Real history always cuts both ways.”

McCullough's massive work – Simon and Schuster's 2004 hardcover edition has a total of 704 pages – was a true labor of love for the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Truman (1992) and John Adams (2001); he spent five years researching, conducting interviews, and writing The Path Between the Seas, which not only was a best-seller and earned praise from reviewers but also earned the National Book Award, the Francis Parkman Award, the Samuel Eliot Morrison Award, and the Cornelius Ryan Award in 1978. 

The Path Between the Seas; The Creation of The Panama Canal 1870-1914 is the epic and often tragic story of one of the greatest engineering projects in history: the excavation and construction of a link between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans across the Isthmus of Panama. Per the dates on the book's subtitle, The Path Between the Seas focuses on the 44-year-long period that elapsed between the first efforts of French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps to create a company that would create a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, which was then part of Colombia, and the official opening of the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal in August of 1914. 

But as McCullough eloquently explains in The Path Between the Seas, the saga of the Panama Canal stretches farther back in time; the idea of linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans originated during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor (and King of Spain) Charles V. In 1534, less than 40 years after Columbus' first voyages to the New World, Charles ordered a survey of the Isthmus to find a site for a canal, for even then Panama's location was deemed to be of strategic importance to the great powers of the world. 

Of course, the hot tropical climate, dense jungles, and rough terrain of the Isthmus proved to be insurmountable obstacles to the engineering tech available in the 16th Century, but Charles' dream was inherited by dreamers of later generations and many other nationalities, including the British, French, Colombians, and – eventually – the Americans.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Truman, here is the national bestselling epic chronicle of the creation of the Panama Canal. In The Path Between the Seas, acclaimed historian David McCullough delivers a first-rate drama of the sweeping human undertaking that led to the creation of this grand enterprise.

The Path Between the Seas tells the story of the men and women who fought against all odds to fulfill the 400-year-old dream of constructing an aquatic passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is a story of astonishing engineering feats, tremendous medical accomplishments, political power plays, heroic successes, and tragic failures. Applying his remarkable gift for writing lucid, lively exposition, McCullough weaves the many strands of the momentous event into a comprehensive and captivating tale.

Winner of the National Book Award for history, the Francis Parkman Prize, the Samuel Eliot Morison Award, and the Cornelius Ryan Award (for the best book of the year on international affairs), The Path Between the Seas is a must-read for anyone interested in American history, the history of technology, international intrigue, and human drama. - Publisher's back cover blurb, The Path Between the Seas. 

Here, in an excerpt from The Path Between the Seas, is a sample of the vivid and riveting style of McCullough's writing:

There is a charm of adventure about this new quest...  –The New York Times

I

The letter, several pages in length and signed by Secretary of the Navy George M. Robeson, was addressed to Commander Thomas O. Selfridge. It was an eminently clear, altogether formal document, as expected, and had a certain majesty of tone that Commander Selfridge thought quite fitting. That he and the Secretary were personally acquainted, that they had in fact become pleasantly drunk together on one past occasion and vowed eternal friendship as their carriage rolled through the dark capital, were in no way implied. Nor is it important, except that Selfridge, a serious and sober man on the whole, was to wonder for the rest of his days what influence the evening may have had on the way things turned out for him.

His own planning and preparations had already occupied several extremely busy months. The letter was but the final official directive:

Navy Department

Washington, January 10, 1870

Sir: You are appointed to the command of an expedition to make a survey of the Isthmus of Darien, to ascertain the point at which to cut a canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The steam-sloop Nipsic and the store-ship Guard will be under your Command...

The Department has entrusted to you a duty connected with the greatest enterprise of the present age; and upon your enterprise and your zeal will depend whether your name is honorably identified with one of the facts of the future...

No matter how many surveys have been made, or how accurate they may have been, the people of this country will never be satisfied until every point of the Isthmus is surveyed by some responsible authority, and by properly equipped parties, such as will be under your command, working on properly matured plans...

So on January 22, 1870, a clear, bright abnormally mild Saturday, the Nipsic cast off at Brooklyn Navy Yard and commenced solemnly down the East River. The Guard, under Commander Edward P. Lull, followed four days later.

In all, the expedition comprised nearly a hundred regular officers and men, two Navy doctors, five civilians from the Coast Survey (surveyors and draftsmen), two civilian geologists, three telegraphers from the Signal Corps, and a photographer, Timothy H. O'Sullivan, who had been Mathew Brady's assistant during the war.

Stowed below on the Guard was the finest array of modern instruments yet assembled for such an undertaking -- engineers' transits, spirit levels, gradienters, surveyors' compasses and chains, delicate pocket aneroid barometers, mercurial mountain barometers, current meters -- all "for prosecuting the work vigorously and scientifically." (The Stackpole transits, made by the New York firm of Stackpole & Sons, had their telescope axis mounted in double cone bearings, for example, which gave the instrument greater rigidity than older models, and the introduction of a simplified horizontal graduation reading allowed for faster readings and less chance of error.) There were rubber blankets and breech-loading rifles for every man, whiskey, quinine, an extra 600 pairs of shoes, and 100 miles of telegraph wire. Stores "in such shape as to be little liable to injury by exposure to rains" were sufficient for four months: 7,000 pounds of bacon, 10,000 pounds of bread, 6,000 pounds of tomato soup, 30 gallons of beans, 2,500 pounds of coffee, 100 bottles of pepper, 600 pounds of canned butter.

The destination was the Darien wilderness on the Isthmus of Panama, more than two thousand miles from Brooklyn, within ten degrees of the equator, and, contrary to the mental picture most people had, east of the 80th meridian -- that is, east of Florida. They would land at Caledonia Bay, about 150 miles east of the Panama Railroad. It was the same point from which Balboa had begun his crossing in 1513, and where, at the end of the seventeenth century, William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England, had established the disastrous Scottish colony of New Edinburgh, because Caledonia Bay (as he named it) was to be the future "door of the seas." Harassed by the Spanish, decimated by disease, the little settlement had lasted scarcely more than a year. Every trace of it had long since vanished.

Darien was known to be the narrowest point anywhere on the Central American isthmus, by which was meant the entire land bridge from lower Mexico to the continent of South America and which included the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Guatemala, Honduras, British Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, the last of which was still a province -- indeed a most prized province -- of Colombia. From Tehuantepec to the Atrato River in Colombia, the natural, easternmost boundary of Central America, was a distance of 1,350 miles as the crow flies, as far as from New York to Dallas, and there were not simply a few, but many points along that zigzagging land mass where, on the map at least, it appeared a canal could be cut. A few years before, Admiral Charles H. Davis had informed Congress that there were no fewer than nineteen possible locations for a Central American ship canal. But at Darien the distance from tidewater to tidewater on a straight line was known to be less than forty miles.

Because of the particular configuration of the Isthmus of Panama -- with the land barrier running nearly horizontal between the oceans -- the expedition would be crossing down the map. The men would make their way from the Caribbean on the north to the Pacific on the south, just as Balboa had. (Hence Balboa's designation of the Pacific as the Sea of the South had been perfectly logical.) The Panama Railroad, the nearest sign of civilization on the map, also ran from north to south. Its faint, spidery red line looked like something added by a left-handed cartographer, with the starting point at Colón, on Limon Bay, actually somewhat farther west than the finish point at Panama City, on the Bay of Panama.

They were to measure the heights of mountains and the depths of rivers and harbors. They were to gather botanical and geological specimens. They were to take astronomical observations, report on the climate, and observe the character of the Indians encountered. And they were to lose as little time as possible, since the rainy season -- the sickly season, Secretary Robeson called it -- would soon be upon them.

Six other expeditions were to follow. A Presidential commission, the first Interoceanic Canal Commission, would be established to appraise all resulting surveys and reports and to declare which was the chosen path. The commission would include the chief of the Army Engineers, the head of the Coast Survey, and the chief of the Bureau of Navigation. Nothing even remotely so systematic, so elaborate or sensible, had ever been attempted before.

My Take

I first read The Path Between the Seas some 20 years ago; I was taking care of my former neighbor Ivan Kivitt's townhouse and cat while he and his domestic partner worked on a cruise ship on a three-month tour of duty. Besides the money I earned ($1 per day) and the satisfaction that came with helping out a neighbor, I also was allowed to watch Ivan and Danny's collection of DVDs and read any of the books in their library. Many of the books they owned were about the film industry and movie stars (Ivan, I later found out, had been a child actor in the 1950s) but there were quite a few books about U.S. and world history. The Path Between the Seas was one of those, and Ivan happened to own the original 1977 hardcover edition. 

I normally read military history books, but I was familiar with David McCullough from his television work as a narrator and historical consultant for documentaries such as The Civil War and Battle of the Bulge, both of which had aired on the Public Broadcasting Service. I believe, also, that this was around the same time that I'd borrowed the DVD set of HBO's miniseries John Adams. which was based on McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography. Even though histories that are mostly about political intrigue and engineering projects are not my usual reading fare, I liked McCullough's television work and was willing to give The Path Between the Seas a chance.

I am glad that I read The Path Between the Seas with an open mind and curiosity about the topic. McCullough's five-year-long odyssey to write this impressive and detailed account of the creation of one of modern history's engineering marvels resulted in a highly readable, informative, and enjoyable reading experience.

McCullough, who was in his early 40s when he wrote this, his third published book, interviewed some of the elderly surviving participants of the Panama Canal saga, talked to descendants or acquaintances of those who had died decades before, and immersed himself in books, archives, and periodicals of four different countries – Colombia, France, Panama, and the United States – whose leaders, peoples, and destinies were forever changed by the creation of the long-dreamed-of "path between the seas." 

1903 political cartoon criticizing the U.S. political shenanigans that led to the Hay–Bunau Varilla Treaty and the separation of Panama from Colombia that year.  (Source: Wikipedia)

To his credit as a historian, McCullough does not try to "spin" the narrative in order to appeal to nationalistic feelings in his mostly American audience. On the contrary, The Path Between the Seas explores every aspect of the political and financial dealings – including the seamy and unpleasant maneuvers by the American government during Theodore Roosevelt's two terms as President – to first coerce Colombia into signing a treaty that benefitted the U.S. far more than it did the Colombian republic, then later to encourage the neglected and remote Department of Panama to declare independence from Bogota when the Colombian Senate refused to ratify that treaty. 

The Path Between the Seas also chronicles the even longer drama of the French involvement in the excavation and building of the Canal, starting with the rise and fall of the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique de Panama, the entity which was set up by Lesseps and the French government to finance the massive project that began in earnest in 1881 and ended in 1894 after a scandal known as the "Panama Affair." A second French enterprise, the Compagnie Nouvelle du Canal de Panama took over the project later that year, and a chastened Lesseps (who had naively believed that he could make the canal a sea level one just like his earlier and profitable Suez Canal) was forced to admit that the only way to make the project viable was to adopt the more complex lock-and-lake approach. 

I loved the book when I first read it almost 20 years ago; eventually, I acquired my own copy of The Path Between the Seas, albeit it's the paperback edition rather than the pricier 2004 Simon and Schuster Classics hardcover edition. It's still as readable and enjoyable today as it was when I spied the first edition at my former neighbor's house. McCullough is not only a dogged researcher and a skilled writer, but he's also a gifted storyteller.

Source: American Heritage, Samuel Eliot Morrison Award 1978