Panama Canal

Building a Better Shortcut​

In the morning light, seven-year-old Ben and his family rushed to the top deck of their cruise ship. The huge cruise ship they were on was easing between the high concrete walls of a giant chamber called a "lock." Ben knew that this lock would be the first step in an amazing trip. He and his family were going from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean through the famous Panama Canal.

Behind the ship, gates closed and sealed the vessel inside the chamber. Water began to flow into the lock, and Ben watched the ship float upward. He felt no movement and heard nothing. "It's like riding on a cloud," he said. 

"A Water Elevator"

​Working like an elevator, the lock raised the ship about 28 feet. At that height, gates opened in front of the ship, and the vessel went directly into a second lock. After the gates closed behind the ship in this lock, more water flowed in, raising the ship another giant step. At the top of that lock, the ship entered a third lock for one more step up. Altogether, the locks raised the ship about 85 feet.

When the ship that Ben was on left the third and highest lock, it entered Gatun Lake. This body of water lies on the Isthmus of Panama, a skinny neck of land that connects North America to South America. The ship set off for the opposite side of the lake.

The Panama Canal is the world's most famous shortcut. Before the canal, the shortest way to sail from one coast of North America to another (from New York to California, for example) was to go all the way around the tip of South America. The canal shortens the trip by many thousands of miles.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, engineers and thousands of laborers made the Panama Canal a reality. On the Atlantic side, they dug a canal (a ditch as wide and deep as a river) to bring ships close to Gatun Lake. Locks were built to raise ships from sea level up to the lake, and a dam was built to make Gatun Lake a bigger, deeper passageway for oceangoing ships.

​Then the engineers and workers dug another canal to connect Gatun Lake to Miraflores Lake, with locks to lower ships from the first lake to the second. And two more locks were built, as well as another canal, to connect Miraflores Lake to the Pacific Ocean below.

Ships have sailed back and forth through this 51-mile shortcut for almost a hundred years, since the canal was completed in 1914.

Bigger Ships

"The canal is too crowded," Johnnie Wong said. He is project manager for the locks on the Pacific Ocean side. "Often, ships must wait their turn to transit [go through] the locks. This creates a traffic tie-up. Soon, the canal won't be able to manage more ships.

"There's also a new gigantic type of ship," Wong said. "These ships can't fit in the locks. They must find another way around the world. Often these routes aren't as good."

The size of the ship Ben was on is called "Panamax." Panamax ships are three football fields long and about 100 feet wide. They are the largest ships that can fit into the locks. The fit was tight. An adult on board a Panamax ship could reach out and touch the wall of the lock. ​

Making More Room

"We're building a huge new set of locks," Wong said. "They'll be four football fields long, deeper and wider, too--so the largest ships fit. They'll work the same as the old locks, but we'll add new features, like gates 10 stories tall to seal the big ships in."

Ships that will fit snugly into these locks are called "post-Panamax." Now, about 38 ships pass through the Panama Canal daily. When the new locks open later this decade, they will double the work the canal can do.

It looks as if the Panama Canal will be one of the world's most popular shortcuts for many years to come. ​