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...the present-day Supply Corps. Assembling, transporting and supporting the enormous number of workers and the huge amount of machinery and material required for construction of the Panama Canal was an accomplishment of gargantuan proportions and one of the greatest logistics success stories in United States history.
To understand more fully and to appreciate the contributions of the early 20th century paymasters and their fellow servicemen to the project, it is important to review the background of world events and conditions in the latter half of the 19th century. At that time, major European nations were still involved in a centuries-old bitter race for world domination from both military and commercial perspectives. Military strategists, as well as commercial interests, were hampered by limiting geographic constraints and insufficient financial resources that restricted their options. Western European nations and their merchants had been searching for alternative routes to the Far East since the Turks had taken over Constantinople in 1453 and closed well-traveled land routes for India and the Orient to "infidels."
Rather than to continue attempts to improve its world position through further land and sea battles, France chose in 1859 to begin a 10-year project to construct a 103-mile canal that would provide a direct water-level connection between the Mediterranean and Red seas, significantly reducing transit time between Europe and Asia. Construction of the Suez Canal through flat desert territory was directed by Vicomte Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps. He was a colorful character on the Parisian social scene, known popularly in France as The Great Engineer, but he had no technical background, no experience in finance, and only modest skills as an administrator.
Completion of the Suez Canal and the American transcontinental railroad, both in 1869, were widely hailed as opening a new era in world trade, but a water passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans still required a long and arduous voyage around South America. A narrow, mountainous strip of land connected the northern and southern continents of the Western Hemisphere. Christopher Columbus had been told as early as 1502 of a "narrow place" leading to another sea by natives on the east coast of Central America during his fourth voyage to the "new world" in 1502. Portuguese explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa, aware of the rumors, eventually discovered the Pacific Ocean in 1513.
Land Bridge Established Balboa's discovery led to opening of an overland route, called El Camino Real (the "King's Highway"), a land bridge across the narrow Isthmus of Panama between the two oceans. As early as 1826, a New York City merchant, Aaron Palmer, financed a study of two possible interoceanic routes--one through Nicaragua and the other across Colombia's Panamanian Region--but nothing came of his efforts. El Camino Real and a companion Las Cruces Trail became widely traversed during the California Gold Rush of 1849 and supplemented heavy oceanic travel around South America.
The next effort to open a faster route between the two oceans came about in 1850, when American interests undertook to supplant El Camino Real by constructing the Panama Railroad across the Isthmus. The rail line was completed and opened for business in 1855 with terminals at cities on both coasts. This more rapid mode of transportation stimulated significantly shorter travel across the isthmus. Shipping lines operating in both the Atlantic and the Pacific made the two railroad terminals regular ports of call.
When Great Britain gained control of the Suez Canal through shrewd financial maneuvering in 1875, the proud French nation turned attention to the Western Hemisphere and once again enlisted de Lesseps to lead a venture to replicate his successful Suez experience. He was called upon to advance the prospect of an interocean canal from a vague idea to a realistic proposal. Initially, de Lesseps concentrated on a water-level canal route through Nicaragua, but other Frenchmen favored a route across the isthmus in northern Colombia, where the land bridge had been located.
The government of Colombia granted a concession to Hungarian General Stephen Turr to construct a sea-level canal similar to Suez at an estimated cost of $186.6 million with construction to begin not later than 1883 and to be completed within 12 years. Turr organized a provisional French company, La Societe International du Canal Interoceanique, with the incredibly...
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