Panama fever (21 page)

There were increasing numbers of Americans on the Isthmus. The process of parceling out the work to contractors had continued through the year, with another American company taking on the dredging at the Pacific end. Machinery was purchased by the Company and then rented out to the contractors, who were to be paid per cubic meter excavated. But the arrangement was not to the liking of the
Agent Supérieur
, Armand Reclus, who complained about the over-favorable terms given by the Company and the bureaucratic chaos the approach was engendering. In fact, Reclus was losing heart. Since the return of the rains in May, frequent flooding of the works at Culebra had brought digging there to a standstill, and the hospitals were again filling up with fever patients and accident victims. Complaining of overwork, exhaustion, and confused leadership from Paris, Reclus resigned in June 1882. He was given a job in the Paris office, but his time of influence over the canal, going back to the first Wyse expedition five years before, was now at an end.

In September, there was a further setback, when the Isthmus suffered an earthquake. Although there was only one fatality, the railway bridge over the Chagres was thrown out of line and the tracks damaged in many places. A Canadian doctor, Wolfred Nelson, who had been living on the Isthmus for six months and who would become a fierce critic of the French effort in Panama, cabled a report to the
New York Herald.
The piece when printed “all but produced an earthquake among M. De Lesseps’ shareholders,” Nelson writes. “He at once informed the world that there would be no more earthquakes on the Isthmus. Strange to say, despite the utterances of this celebrated man, the earthquakes kept on, to the unstringing of our nerves …” Cermoise described the quake in less doom-ridden terms, despite tearing muscles in his legs jumping off a first-floor balcony to make his escape from a collapsing building. Cermoise would leave Panama a few months later, he says “for family reasons,” but in contrast to naysayers like Nelson he shrugged off the difficulties and frustrations of his time there. In fact, he was sad to be leaving the Isthmus, “where,” he said, “I have spent two of the best years of my youth.” Looking back while writing his account the following year, he missed the strangeness, novelty, and the unexpectedness, “and the friendship of good and loyal companions, with whom we have, together, played our part, however modest, in the most gigantic of all modern enterprises.”

The earthquake also failed to dampen the enthusiasm and optimism of de Lesseps and his
Bulletin.
In November,
Le Grand Français
announced that “After two years’ work … we are much farther advanced than we were at Suez after six years.” Of the 75 million cubic meters to be excavated, crowed the
Bulletin
, a quarter had been allocated to contractors. It was almost as if the work was already done.

In the U.S. press, the French Company was dismissed as “incompetent,” and in Panama the
Star and Herald
warned that “exaggerated statements” were causing “doubt and distrust.” In France, however, confidence remained rock solid. The bond issue in September was a great success and massively oversubscribed. Although there were warning signs—the interest on the money had crept up from the share issue and yet more sweeteners were handed over to the financial institutions—it was a distinct setback for those predicting the imminent demise of de Lesseps's project. With “applications for shares showering him from all quarters of France,” wrote the anti-canal
New York Tribune
soon after, “he can now reckon with confidence upon the resources required for so vast a scheme. He can get the money… Englishmen and Americans may as well reconcile themselves to the situation.”

Then, at the end of the year, there occurred another setback on the Isthmus: the contractor Couvreux unexpectedly used a loophole in their contract to pull out of the project. It turned out that the veterans of Suez had found all their expertise worthless. As de Lépinay had predicted, Panama had nothing in common with Egypt. If anything the experience of Suez had actually hampered the efforts of Couvreux. The loss of Blanchet had hurt, too, with no one of similar stature from the company willing to go out to Panama. The break was amicable, Couvreux arguing that since smaller contractors were now in place, having a middleman between them and the Compagnie Universelle was a waste of money. The real reason for their defection emerged later, when the ashes of the Panama project were raked over in Paris ten years later: “The truth is that during the trial period,” a government report reads, “Couvreux and Hersent had been able to form a shrewd idea of the difficulties of the enterprise but were unwilling to undermine the [canal] company's credit by frank admission of the motive behind their retirement.”

With the works now stuttering after just two years, perhaps Ferdinand de Lesseps should have taken personal charge on site, as he had at Suez. But that, he calculated, would have sent a disastrously alarmist signal to the markets. Appearance and confidence were all to a project living or dying on credit with the public investor. De Lesseps was needed in Paris. He was also distracted by the events at Suez, where the British had seized control, and by his ongoing eccentric scheme to flood the Sahara. Another explanation, put forward by de Lesseps's American detractors, was that age had finally caught up with the “Great Engineer.” The Paris correspondent of the
New York Tribune
reported that de Lesseps on his return from his latest trip to Africa had “aged a good deal… His handwriting, which was so clear and vigorous when he returned from Panama, is now a shaky scrawl.”

So instead of Ferdinand, his son, Charles de Lesseps, was sent to the Isthmus for a monthlong visit. Charles, who possessed none of his father's verve or showmanship, would increasingly shoulder the burden of leadership of the project. With him was the first
Directeur Général of
the works, Jules Dingler (pronounced
Danglay)
, one of the most senior civil engineers in France. He had been appointed with a salary of the equivalent of $20,000, far more than anyone else in the French organization was being paid. He looked unprepossessing— short, bald, and round-shouldered—but his arrival at Panama, at the beginning of March 1883, would usher in the great heroic period of the French effort.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

JULES DINGLER

By the end of the following year, Dingler's leadership had transformed the canal project. Even Wolfred Nelson described 1884 as a time when Panama was “busy … and bright with hope.” “The work moves steadily on,” reported the
Star and Herald
in November of that year. “The progress which is being made is apparent to everyone who crosses the Isthmus.”

Dingler was passionately in love with the Great Idea of the canal, but he was experienced enough on large-scale engineering projects to see on his arrival that the effort on the Isthmus was drifting. His first move was to reorganize the company's chaotic office in Panama City. From the Company's paperwork, a clean break is apparent dating from the arrival of the new
Directeur Général.
Armed with total authority on the Isthmus, unlike Reclus or Blanchet, Dingler set about trying to tighten up payment procedures, demanding exact descriptions of articles requisitioned “especially so where machine parts are required,” and generally attacking the bugbears of waste and fraud. There was also a purge of the workforce, with many of the unsuitable adventurers and strays—whom Dingler referred to as “idlers and traitors”—being sacked or moved from their comfortable offices out into the jungle. In the process the new leader made plenty of enemies, but also earned the respect of the majority of the workforce.

Next, he toured the line and put together the first truly detailed plan for the canal. This included a policy of creating much more gradual slopes for the trench, which, together with the idea of riveting the sides of the canal with vegetation, was designed to deal with the growing problem of landslides. The result was a large jump in the estimate of spoil to be excavated—120 million cubic meters, 45 million more than judged necessary by the 1880 Technical Commission. In early autumn 1883, he returned to Paris to present his plan to de Lesseps and his board of advisers. Dingler got the go-ahead, although de Lesseps did not feel it necessary to revise either his costs or his scheduled completion date for the canal, which remained 1888.

When Dingler returned to the Isthmus, he brought with him his wife, son, daughter, and her fiancé, as well as his collection of thoroughbred horses. The message of long-term commitment to the project was unmistakable, as was his belief that there was nothing to fear from Panama's climate. Dingler went further, announcing, “I intend to show the world that only the drunk and the dissipated will die of Yellow Fever.” The family were an instant hit in Panama society. The
Star and Herald
reports a reception given by the
Directeur Général
in December 1883: “Their rooms were crowded with many ladies, and a number of our most distinguished native and foreign residents. The handsome rooms were still further beautified with floral decorations and other adornments; the music was good, and gave a zest to dancing, whilst the cultivated hosts spread a charm through the scene of enjoyment.” The young Dinglers set about exploring the Isthmus, enjoying picnic and riding excursions.

Back in France, investors were also impressed with the new leadership. In October 1883 there was a second bond issue, which was again massively oversubscribed. “This result has surprised all,” reported the Panama press, “except those who know the popularity which Count de Lesseps enjoys, and the confidence investors feel in his projects.” Eleven months later there was a further bond issue. This time it didn't quite sell out, in spite of even more favorable terms. Nonetheless, French support remained solid.

By now, nearly 700 million francs had been raised. Dingler was spending it fast, giving out huge orders aiming to double or even triple the number of steam shovels, locomotives, and other machinery in operation on the Isthmus. Along with the new machinery came a host of new contractors. In May 1883 alone, Dingler signed seventeen contracts for excavation. Once back from France with his family, the
Directeur Général
divided the line of the canal into three divisions, each under the control of a single French engineer. The first covered Limón Bay and lower reaches of the Chagres; the second, the Upper Chagres and the hills between Matachín and Culebra; the third from Culebra to the approaches to the Bay of Panama.

The key contractor in the First Division was the American outfit Huerne, Slaven & Company, which had been taken on back in February 1882. The driving force of the company was H. B. Slaven, a Canadian-born drugstore owner from San Francisco. He had known nothing about excavation but, “determined to have a finger in the canal pie,” had, as Tracy Robinson put it, “with an audacity akin to inspiration” put in, and had accepted, a bid to take on some of the work. Raising capital from a New York banker, he ordered the building of a series of huge, custom-made dredges 36 meters long and 9 meters wide. Although work on his section was supposed to have started in August 1882, it was not until April the following year that the first of these monsters had been completed in Philadelphia and, with great difficulty, towed to the Isthmus. The first to arrive was destroyed by fire in Colón Harbor, but the next—the
Comte de Lesseps
— arrived during the summer and was laboriously fitted out. A 20-meter wooden tower was assembled in the center with a huge wheel on the top. Attached to this was a chain with a series of large steel buckets on a boom that was lowered over the side. Each of the buckets scooped up a cubic meter of soil from the bottom of the channel and hoisted it to the top of the tower, where it was emptied by jets of water into large pipes that extended 55 meters on either side, dumping the spoil clear of the work site. The whole contraption moved on huge legs, or “spuds,” “by means of which,” says Robinson, “she walked step by step into the material to be excavated.” The
Comte de Lesseps
started inland from the mudflats of Limón Bay in October 1883. Able to extract 5,000 cubic meters a day, it made a huge impression. It seemed just the sort of fantastic machine that de Lesseps had promised would miraculously turn up.

In January 1884, an American naval officer, sent to estimate progress on the canal, reported back to Washington that “this powerful and excellent machine” had already “dug a passage 1075 meters long, 34 meters wide, and 4 meters deep; so that vessels of 13 feet draught may now, at this point, pass up the line of the canal for a distance of half a mile.” Another monster dredge arrived during the year, and in October, the
Star and Herald
reported that Colón and Gatún were soon to be in connection by water. “So the visitor to Gatún… can easily satisfy himself that there is something serious and practical in this canal enterprise.”

Further up the line, work was undertaken on diversionary channels for the Chagres and digging up the alluvial silt of the river valley. This was managed by a Franco-Dutch firm, Artigue et Sonderegger, which had twenty smaller Belgian-made ladder dredges at work.