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Building the Impossible with Rob Bell S03E02
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00:00I'm on a journey to a world where the impossible becomes possible.
00:05Oh, this is really exciting.
00:06With exclusive access to the world's most impressive feats of engineering.
00:12Wow! It's scale, scale, scale, Richard.
00:16I'll meet desert daredevils.
00:18They'll swing out. They set off the dynamite, then swing back.
00:22And pioneers of land and sea.
00:25I mean, the proportions of these structures are just immense.
00:29Who risked it all.
00:31I'm very aware that there are things out here.
00:34When they picked him out five minutes later, he died.
00:37I'll uncover the secrets of the most extraordinary structures ever built.
00:45This time, I'm heading to the tropics.
00:49Actually, that's quite far above me now.
00:53To a superstructure made in one of the world's deadliest environments.
00:58This heavy rain that we have right now makes the whole process more complicated and challenging.
01:03In an epic struggle against natural disasters, disease and death.
01:08It could not stop malaria and yellow fever because they didn't know what was causing it.
01:12In the battle to build...
01:14The Panama Canal.
01:22At the turn of the 20th century, one of history's most difficult and challenging engineering projects took place here in
01:32Central America.
01:33It was a tale of triumph and tragedy.
01:37A battle royale between man and nature.
01:40And it resulted in one of the seven wonders of the modern world.
01:45The Panama Canal.
01:47Panama is an isthmus.
01:50A narrow strip of land.
01:52Yet it's home to one of the harshest terrains in the world.
01:55Wild jungles.
01:57Raging rivers.
01:59And deadly creatures.
02:02As early as the 16th century, global superpowers aspired to conquer this hostile land.
02:09To build a waterway that would join the world's two largest oceans.
02:13Pacific and Atlantic to create a new, lucrative trade route that would bring east and west closer together.
02:23It made perfect sense to construct a canal across Panama.
02:28At its narrowest point, it's only 30 miles between the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean.
02:34But this shortcut looked easier on the map than in reality.
02:39Mountains would literally need to be moved.
02:42Rivers tamed.
02:45And malarial swamps cleared.
02:48But the deadly risks would bring great wealth and prosperity to its conquerors.
02:54And it's no wonder.
02:56Today, the strategic location of the canal has made it the lifeblood of global trade.
03:03Around 14,000 ships transit through here every year.
03:08Carrying a quarter of a trillion dollars worth of cargo.
03:12And the whole operation starts here.
03:16The traffic control center.
03:22This place is brilliant.
03:25My gosh, there's a lot going on.
03:27Hey, is it Matthew?
03:28Hey, how you doing?
03:29Oh, Matthew.
03:30It's very good to meet you.
03:31Nice to meet you too.
03:32How you doing?
03:33I'm trying to take this all in.
03:35Everyone's screens are all up.
03:36People all look very busy.
03:38There's a lot of action going on.
03:40If the Panama Canal was a body, this would be the brain.
03:42So everything is coordinated here.
03:45We are in constant communication with the ships.
03:48There's a lot of pressure that we do things correctly.
03:52How many ships are there then?
03:54Today, we have like 37 ships.
03:55The average per day is between 36 to 40 ships per day.
04:01When that vessel decides to transit, we put them in the schedule.
04:05That's what we're looking at.
04:06We're looking at a schedule of all the ships that are going in one direction.
04:10And all these screens at the top here, have you got the whole canal covered with videos?
04:15Yes.
04:15We have about 60 different cameras so that we can keep track of the movements of ships
04:20throughout the canal from beginning to the end.
04:22I mean, if we picked one ship, for example, what kind of information have we got on it?
04:28Sure.
04:28That's the Triton.
04:29And we can see that ship on the camera.
04:32That's Triton here?
04:33That's the Triton right there.
04:34And that is the biggest ship that transits the canal today.
04:38How big is it?
04:39It says there it's 1,210 feet in length and 167 feet in beam.
04:46That's the width, right?
04:47That's the width.
04:48So that ship carries approximately 16,000 containers on board.
04:53And you must have these container ships that are transporting all sorts of different goods
05:00from all places in the world going to all other places in the world.
05:04If ships weren't able to come through here suddenly, global trade would be in ruins.
05:10Yes.
05:11It's amazing, Matthew.
05:12It is so good to see this.
05:14You get a sense of just how important this 50-mile stretch of water is to the global economy,
05:22to how the world works.
05:23It is.
05:24It is.
05:25It is.
05:30In the 19th century, the unattainable dream began to look possible with the rise of the Industrial Revolution,
05:38an era of huge engineering and technological leaps.
05:44One of its significant achievements was Egypt's Suez Canal, which was built by the French.
05:51Confident and in high spirits following this success, they turned their attention to Panama.
05:57They began digging the canal in 1881, and even though it would be much smaller than Suez,
06:04they soon realized that the isthmus was a completely different beast.
06:12You are digging through big mountains, and so the amount of spoil you would have to dig out
06:18to make a sea level canal from ocean to ocean was immense.
06:22And of course, you also had disease.
06:25Yellow fever and malaria became the biggest obstacles for the French,
06:30and decimated the workforce.
06:33Even though the French took lots of measures to have sanitation and hygiene,
06:39they could not stop malaria and yellow fever because they didn't know what was causing it.
06:43It was an incredibly expensive endeavor at that time,
06:46and it essentially nearly bankrupted France.
06:50After eight years of work, the French had only managed to excavate 11 miles of canal,
06:56and the human and financial costs were mounting.
07:00A staggering 22,000 construction workers had lost their lives, mainly from disease.
07:07And having spent almost $300 million, the company had no choice but to abandon the project.
07:14But where the French had failed, the Americans saw opportunity.
07:20In 1901, US President Theodore Roosevelt came into office,
07:25and undeterred by the French failure, immediately set out to take up the colossal project.
07:34Roosevelt's mission was to make the United States a leading industrial superpower.
07:39And he'd do this by conquering the canal.
07:42For the President, it was the most important quest on the American continent.
07:47Before the canal, merchant ships travelling between the east and the west coast of the United States,
07:53say, from New York to San Francisco, would have had to travel all the way around Cape Horn,
07:58at the southernmost point of South America, and one of the most treacherous stretches of ocean on the planet.
08:05Creating the canal saved 8,000 miles of travelling,
08:10and most crucially for the shipping companies, it saved money.
08:15Lots of money.
08:17For $10 million, the Panamanian government gave the US permanent control over a strip of land across the country,
08:26that would become known as the Panama Canal Zone.
08:32The plan was to build a canal at sea level,
08:35by excavating an enormous 50-mile-long channel from Cologne on the Atlantic,
08:42across to Panama City on the Pacific.
08:46And the man appointed to oversee all of this was the American engineer,
08:50John Bindley Wallace.
08:53Wallace arrived in Panama in 1904,
08:57favouring the original French idea of a sea-level passage
09:00to cut through the harsh terrain.
09:05The wilderness of Panama is an incredibly hostile environment,
09:10and the canal had to be built through a mountainous, dense jungle.
09:16I'm about to head a little way into that jungle
09:19to try and get just a small idea of what it must have been like,
09:23trying to work in these conditions.
09:27I'm travelling along the Chagres River,
09:30a part of the canal system that winds its way into the jungle.
09:34And it's fraught with danger.
09:37The word Chagres, as in the Chagres River, means crocodile.
09:42So I'm very wary whenever we come into the shallows all around here,
09:48and I definitely won't be taking a dip.
09:58Panama's climate is generally hot and sticky.
10:01You get used to it in a way, but you step into the jungle,
10:05suddenly that heat and stickiness ramps right up.
10:08The air feels thick.
10:09And I'm very aware that there are things out here moving in all this overgrowth.
10:16It's a little disconcerting.
10:19Workers had to cut their way right through the jungle to build the canal.
10:24And they did so in debilitating heat and humidity,
10:27whilst avoiding deep swamps with crocodiles and deadly snakes.
10:33The venom from a coral snake would attack your nervous system,
10:38whilst a bite from a ten-foot-long mupana
10:40would cause internal bleeding and organ failure.
10:44But an even bigger threat was lurking here.
10:48One that couldn't be seen or avoided.
10:50The deadliest killer on Earth.
11:03The Panama Canal was built through one of the most hostile and dangerous environments imaginable.
11:09And during its construction, Chief Engineer John Wallace faced the same problems
11:14that the French had experienced just a few years earlier.
11:18Workers were falling seriously ill.
11:21But the cause of this deadly illness remained a mystery.
11:26During the second year of the canal's construction,
11:29sanitation experts reported 80% of the workforce had been hospitalised with malaria.
11:36And in the rainy season, an even deadlier disease reared its ugly head.
11:42A killer infection of the liver called yellow fever.
11:47The number of deaths was so high,
11:50a train travelled to Cologne every night with carriages full of coffins.
11:56The completion of the canal would not be possible
12:00without knowing the source of these killer diseases.
12:05For years, it was thought that yellow fever and malaria
12:10were caused by bad air from filth and decomposing matter.
12:14But one person proposed what was thought of at the time as a very obscure theory.
12:20But in fact, they were transmitted by mosquitoes.
12:26That was Dr. William Gorgas, who in 1904 joined the Canal Project as Chief Sanitary Officer.
12:35As a survivor of yellow fever and with immunity,
12:40Gorgas made it his lifelong ambition to tackle this horrendous disease.
12:45He was one of the rare few that believed yellow fever and malaria were transmitted by mosquitoes,
12:52which at the time were very recent discoveries.
12:56It was Englishman Major Ronald Ross who first made the malaria connection in 1897
13:02whilst dissecting a mosquito.
13:06And two years later, yellow fever and mosquitoes were linked for the first time.
13:13Using this research, Dr. Gorgas came up with a bold and daring plan
13:19to destroy every single mosquito within 500 square miles.
13:27Gorgas hired 4,000 men to go throughout Panama and basically drain any blows of water.
13:36If they couldn't drain it, they covered it with oil to keep mosquitoes from breeding.
13:40Yellow fever patients were isolated.
13:42And by doing all of these things, within a year and four months,
13:46yellow fever was entirely eradicated from the isthmus of Panama.
13:50Malaria was nearly eliminated to the extent to which from that day to this,
13:55it's very rare to have any cases of malaria in Panama.
13:59And it's really only something you see in very remote parts of the jungle.
14:04Disease wasn't the only problem that plagued the canal in the early days of its construction.
14:11To create a 50-mile long waterway across the isthmus,
14:15around 180 million cubic metres of soil needed to be dug out.
14:21But the labourers only had old tools that had been left over by the French a decade earlier.
14:28Chief engineer John F. Wallace needed new machines
14:32that could handle the mammoth excavating work that lay ahead.
14:37Wallace brought in giant steam shovels,
14:40mechanical excavators that could shift eight tonnes of soil in one scoop.
14:46But there was a huge flaw in his plan.
14:49The new powerful machines were excavating more rock and soil
14:54than could be removed from site.
14:57And slowly the work began to drown in the spoil.
15:01With pressure mounting from Washington to get things moving quicker,
15:06Wallace was fighting a losing battle.
15:08At this rate, the canal would take decades to complete.
15:13In June 1905, exasperated and broken,
15:18Wallace gave up and resigned as chief engineer.
15:21All work came to a halt.
15:24It looked like the US effort was heading the same way as France.
15:33Until the arrival of a new chief engineer.
15:38John F. Stevens was a bit of a celebrity known as the best engineer in America.
15:44As a railway man, he'd made his name building impossible routes across the USA.
15:50He immediately came up with a new plan.
15:53The key to getting the canal back on track would be an efficient railway
15:57that could move thousands of tonnes of rubble.
16:00When he was appointed, he came down to Panama and he saw that having a very good rail system was
16:06going to be vital to removing the incredible amount of rock and mud that was needed to dig out the
16:12Panama Canal.
16:13And so there were a lot of interesting innovations.
16:15One was kind of a boom crane called a track shifter that could lift whole sections of track and move
16:21it to a new place so it didn't have to be done by hand.
16:24And another thing that they did was they would use cranes to load the spoil onto rail cars.
16:30But these were open sided with a plow and so when they were to be offloaded, they would run the
16:35plow with the engine from the train and within 10 minutes dump all the spoil from a rail car to
16:42wherever it needed to be.
16:44Massive engineering feat.
16:49With the railway up and running, the excavation work began to move along at pace, but now Stevens faced another
16:56menace referred to as the lion in the path, the Chagres River.
17:03Panama has a tropical rainforest climate with a dry season and a wet season.
17:09During the wet season, it can experience a staggering 105 inches of rainfall.
17:17As a comparison, the UK gets around 33 inches over a whole year.
17:24The rainy season in 1905 repeatedly caused the Chagres River to flood and the violent waters destroyed all building progress.
17:33Morale plummeted amongst the workforce as they were forced to work in soaking wet conditions.
17:40One worker recalled that sometimes you wouldn't see the sun for two weeks straight and in the morning you had
17:47to put your clothes on damp because there was no sun to dry them out.
17:54Stevens realised that attempting to build a sea level canal against the force of the flood prone Chagres would bring
18:02the work to a halt for around half the year and something had to be done about it.
18:08He had a radical new plan up his sleeve and its success would rest entirely on the creation of one
18:16structure, the Gatun Dam.
18:26Steven set out to build the largest dam ever created with 14 gates to help control the flood flows of
18:34the Chagres River.
18:37The dam would also create an artificial body of water, the Gatun Lake, where more than a third of the
18:44ship's journey would take place.
18:46And at 26 metres above sea level, it greatly reduced the amount of excavation work needed.
18:54Higher than the Atlantic and Pacific water levels, Stevens had to think of a way of getting ships to climb
19:01up.
19:02He scrapped the idea of a sea level canal and instead devised an ingenious lock system that could lift ships
19:09up to the lake and then bring them back down again.
19:14The original locks in the Panama Canal are an engineering marvel to this day.
19:19The lock gates themselves are called miter gates, which is kind of a fancy way of talking about the miter
19:26referring to the join.
19:27In woodwork it'd be the join and that's because when the gates come together they do interlock and form a
19:33watertight seal.
19:34But what's really especially cool about these is they are hollow inside, so they're built kind of like a ship's
19:41hull or like an airplane wing.
19:43And so that makes them very light and so they can be open and closed with a very low horsepower
19:48motor. They're balanced very well.
19:52The canal's locks are powered by the Gatun Dam and over 53 million gallons of water is needed for each
19:59ship that travels through them.
20:03Steven's plan required three sets of locks.
20:07One on the Atlantic side, the Gatun locks, and two on the Pacific side, the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores set
20:15of locks.
20:17This is the Miraflores set of locks on the Pacific side.
20:22There are two chambers, the upper and the lower.
20:25And in true Panama Canal style, when they were built, they were the largest lock chambers ever constructed.
20:35Each ship is led through the lock by a team of locomotives nicknamed mules.
20:41These are some of the workhorses of the canal.
20:50I've come up onto the front of one of the locomotives that helps guide these ridiculously enormous vessels through the
20:58locks.
20:59Engines like these have been in use ever since the canal opened.
21:04They run on this rack and pinion system and you can see that middle rail with all its grooves in
21:11it.
21:12That provides traction for these geared wheels underneath the locomotives with the teeth that sit in to each one of
21:20those grooves and pull the locomotives along.
21:23This ship needs six mules to guide it safely through the lock.
21:28Ding, ding, ding, ding from the locomotives. That means we are underway. Here we go.
21:34The ship's propellers have just fired up.
21:38Oh, this is really exciting.
21:41The mules' job is to keep the ship on course so it doesn't bash into the chamber walls.
21:46And with just a few inches to spare on either side of the tanker, this is an incredibly precise operation.
21:54That is amazing. I can't believe they've come through here so smoothly.
21:59So just behind me here I heard a splash. There's another one.
22:02That's the cables from our locomotive being released from the vessel and we bid farewell and bon voyage to the
22:10Atlantic bridge heading off into, well, into the Atlantic.
22:16But locomotives aren't the only means of guiding ships through the canal.
22:21Some of the bigger locks use tugboats and I'm about to get a ringside view of one of them.
22:27It's a dream come true.
22:31This is really exciting.
22:33I've known about the Panama Canal since I was about five years old and I've always just had a kind
22:38of fascination with what goes on here.
22:43It's a bit of a moment for me, this.
22:48How important are the tugboats to the process of getting these huge ships through the locks?
22:53When ships are going into slow speeds, the pressure of the propeller into the rudder is not enough to control
23:01the direction of the ships.
23:02The ship will depend on two tugboats, one on the bow and one on the stern, to keep himself in
23:08the middle of the chamber.
23:10The whole process is very delicate. Every single moment of the luggage is critical.
23:16You can see there are other weather conditions that can involve, like this heavy rain that we have right now,
23:23which reduces the visibility and makes the whole process more complicated and challenging at the same time.
23:28Absolutely, absolutely. That is not lost on me. This is a very tense period.
23:32Yeah. It takes a lot of training, simulation and years of experience as well.
23:41This huge gas tanker has come in from the Atlantic side.
23:45And after a 20-mile journey along the Gatun Lake, Edward and his tugboat team now face the daunting challenge
23:53of guiding it back down to the Pacific Ocean.
23:55And to do this, they need to attach tow lines.
24:00So now the tug is just approaching the vessel here at the bow of the ship.
24:05And when we get there, lines from our tugboat are going to be thrown up onto the bow of that
24:11ship.
24:11So we've got our chaps down here who are just waiting to release the lines and get them back up
24:16there.
24:17Actually, that's quite far above me now.
24:28We're in the middle of a storm.
24:30In case you didn't realise.
24:32I think that guy just...
24:34The guy down there just said, welcome to Panama.
24:38Once the tow lines are in place, the tugboat can now guide the ship into the lock
24:43and wait for the water to go down to be level with the water in the next chamber.
24:50Since we came into this chamber, we've dropped about 16 feet, although it actually feels like it might be more.
24:56And these tugboats are working all the time.
24:59They're phenomenal machines.
25:01There are around 50 of them employed by the whole canal.
25:04And they're so versatile and so powerful.
25:08And in all weathers too.
25:11Experiencing first-hand how the canal works makes me appreciate how clever John F. Stephen's ideas were back in 1906.
25:21But there's one place I'm yet to see.
25:24It's where the most dangerous construction work took place.
25:27And it became known as Hell's Gate.
25:41The Panama Canal is one of the world's greatest engineering marvels.
25:47But its construction was plagued by disease, death and poor engineering planning.
25:54When Chief Engineer John F. Stephens came aboard in 1905, his new ambitious plan to build a lock system required
26:02a massive, unprecedented workforce.
26:06With the promise of riches, tens of thousands of labourers from all over the world came to Panama.
26:15I've come to the Panama Canal's official library to discover more about the people who made up this vast migrant
26:22workforce.
26:23So Orlando, what have we got here?
26:25We have here a database of the Panama Canal's own employment records from 1905 to 1937.
26:32So we have all the records of the people who have been working here.
26:35How important is it that we've got all these records?
26:38This is very important because it's not only an engineering project.
26:42It's a project that was made by people.
26:44So this is a way where you can link personal history with this engineering project.
26:49And we can access this now? We can have a look at some people who were employed?
26:53Yes, yes, of course we can.
26:55For example, last week we had the visit of this guy from Barbados.
27:01He knew from his father that his grandfather came for the building of Panama Canal.
27:07Elkanah Hurdle.
27:08So this chap, Elkanah, he was employed as a clerk?
27:11Yes, he was a clerk.
27:12Able to read and write.
27:14Yes.
27:14And he was paid $60 a month. That was a very good money for those days.
27:20The workers who came to Panama were housed in purpose-built settlements.
27:24Accommodation, schools and recreation facilities were all specially constructed.
27:29But the quality of the amenities enjoyed by employees like Elkanah depended on where they came from.
27:37He arrived here in November 1908.
27:40Yes. And he was black.
27:42So there is an item on the form here, colour.
27:45So this was segregation.
27:47Totally. Racial segregation.
27:49Segregation.
27:50The United States had segregation laws that they exported to the Canal Zone.
27:56This was not something that we had in Panama before.
27:58So this, instead of going with white and coloured, which was what the U.S. called it, they did two
28:05different payrolls.
28:06Silver roll and gold roll.
28:08White Americans were paid in American gold.
28:11And everybody else was paid in Panamanian silver.
28:14And this also reflected in education, access to food, facilities, housing.
28:19You would go to the commissariat, which is where people got their groceries and their shopping done.
28:26And there was an entrance for silver and an entrance for gold.
28:29So we can see here Elkanah came from Barbados.
28:33Would that have been typical? Would many of workers have come from Barbados?
28:37Yes. Around 40,000 people came from the West Indies.
28:41And most of them came from Barbados and Jamaica.
28:4440,000?
28:4540,000.
28:46That's a huge work.
28:47Yes.
28:48That's really quite powerful, isn't it?
28:50Because we've got a photo of Elkanah here.
28:52It turns that huge number, 40,000, into something much more personal.
28:58You know, this, here's our guy.
29:00A number became a person.
29:02So the chap who came to ask you about his grandfather,
29:06what was his reaction when you were able to pull this up in front of him?
29:10Well, he cried when he saw the images of his grandfather.
29:14He had never seen his picture before.
29:16It must have been a huge pride that he was able to take back to Barbados about his grandfather.
29:22Yes, it is. It is. And it's a pride for us also to link histories and go beyond concrete or
29:29water.
29:30Records to link lives and memories.
29:36By 1907, excavation work on the Lock System Canal was running at full speed.
29:44Stevens, exhausted and feeling he could do no more, wrote a letter to Roosevelt, handing in his resignation.
29:52His successor, Colonel George Washington Gertels, a US Army officer and civil engineer, would take the canal to the finishing
30:01line.
30:02But the battle between man and nature was far from over.
30:07When he took over, Gertels prioritised what's now known as the Gaylard Cut.
30:13It's the narrowest and the deepest section of the excavation.
30:18And the job became a continuous 24-hour operation, with as many as 6,000 men working on site at
30:26any given time.
30:29This nine-mile-long stretch of land is where the most dangerous work took place.
30:35To remove 76 million cubic metres of soil, workers drilled holes in the mountains and then blasted dynamite inside.
30:44To create smaller rock pieces that could be carried away by steam shovels.
30:51Dynamiting, work mostly done by the West Indians, became the worst job of the whole construction project.
30:59Often in the heat, the dynamite would unexpectedly explode, maiming or killing anyone in the way.
31:09This enormous man-made channel is an incredibly impressive sight to behold.
31:15But the conditions those men faced would have been horrendous.
31:20Not only did they have to contend with the heat and the humidity of the climate here,
31:25they would have been surrounded by a cacophony of noise, with constant drilling,
31:31steam shovels in operation, as well as frequent dynamite explosions.
31:36There was one sound, however, that no labourer wanted to hear.
31:41The sound of a whistle.
31:44It was a signal that a landslide had occurred, often burying workers alive.
31:51It was a massive problem that had plagued the area since the French excavation effort two decades earlier.
31:58The geology around the Panama Canal area is really unique.
32:01It's because we have this quite deep layer of clays overlaid by these volcanic rocks.
32:08And that provides this unfortunate situation where once the supportive structure is taken away from the clay,
32:15so for example, digging a great big canal, those clays are really weakened.
32:20And where we have those heavy volcanic rocks on top, it creates quite a large overburden pressure,
32:26which places a weight on those clays, causing them to slide under gravity.
32:36Despite the extreme difficulties at the Gaylard Cut, by 1911, the canal was starting to take shape.
32:44And by 1913, these lock gates were tried and tested for the very first time.
32:51A 400-year-old dream finally became reality when, on the 10th of October 1913, water flowed through the canal
33:01for the first time.
33:03The world suddenly became smaller, with a ceremonial event that was an impressive technical feat in itself.
33:13There was a temporary dam that had been constructed that had to be destroyed in order to release the water.
33:20And in a kind of a very early, dramatic public ceremony that would do Hollywood proud, I think, today,
33:27the dam was actually exploded by the president at the time, President Woodrow Wilson, sitting in his office in Washington,
33:34D.C.
33:35It was done by telegraph. He pushed a key, sent an electric signal down to Panama, which detonated the charge
33:41and blew up the dam.
33:43I can't imagine what the flood of water must have been like.
33:47To have this uncontrolled rush of water out must have been an incredible sight.
33:51The canal took over a decade to finish.
33:55It came in at 444% over budget.
33:59But the greatest cost was that of human life.
34:04Between the French and the American efforts, it's estimated that around 25,000 people lost their lives building the Panama
34:12Canal.
34:13The Panama Canal opened on the 15th of August, 1914.
34:18And the first vessel to officially transit across Panama was an American cargo and passenger ship called the SS Ancon.
34:27From that day, the canal has never looked back.
34:31It's grown from strength to strength.
34:34But so have the ships.
34:36And after 90 years of operation, a drastic change was needed.
34:51In 1914, after decades of toil, the Panama Canal finally opened.
34:58And over a century later, John F. Stephen's great engineering marvel has stood the test of time.
35:07Even with today's technology, navigating the canal system is no easy feat, not even for the most experienced ship captains
35:16and crew.
35:18But help is at hand.
35:20Before beginning its journey, the captain hands over control of their ship to a canal pilot that guides them through
35:27the eight hour or so transit.
35:31It's a job that requires expert knowledge and years of training.
35:35And this is where it all happens.
35:40Good morning.
35:41Good morning, Rob. Welcome to our training center.
35:44Thank you very much, Captain. Lovely to meet you.
35:46What happens with these ships that are around us?
35:48These are actual 1 to 25 scale of real ships that are out there in the world.
35:55These models feel so real to the pilots that they feel they're on the real ship.
36:01All those hydrodynamic forces that you would find in the real world, they're right here.
36:06Is there any chance we can get into one of the model vessels you've got here?
36:09Of course. Why don't we take the tanker today?
36:11Let's go on board. I'm excited to see this.
36:13All hands on board. Let's go.
36:16Every key feature of the canal is to scale in this 35-acre training facility, including the Gatun Lake, the
36:24Gaylord Cut and even the locks.
36:27And I can't wait to get stuck in, in my tanker.
36:31We're going to simulate going in from the Caribbean to the Pacific Ocean.
36:35We don't have tugboats here right now.
36:37Yeah.
36:38So we're going to simulate using the thrusters as tugboats.
36:42Gotcha.
36:45The locker head looks scarily narrow.
36:48And my first challenge is to try to get my tanker into it and not hit the sides.
36:55Are you sure we're going to fit through that?
36:57I assure you it will fit, Rob.
36:58Yes.
36:59What we're going to do now, we're going to line ourselves up that direction and we're going to start going
37:03inside.
37:04Let's use the bow thruster simulating its tugboat on the bow.
37:07Okay.
37:08So move this lever here to number three.
37:10Number three?
37:11Yes.
37:11Okay. Let's give that a crank.
37:14We're moving the pointy end, the bow, to the left.
37:19Very gentle. Just nice and easy.
37:22And we're proceeding inside.
37:25Amazing.
37:26Good job.
37:26So with all the different manoeuvres that are required to passage through the canal, what are the trickiest bits out
37:32there?
37:32Some colleagues might say the timing.
37:35Let's say there's about 40 ships every day transiting through the canal.
37:39If for some reason every ship lost 10 minutes, eventually you'd have at the end of the day 400 minutes.
37:47The pilot has to be highly skilled to not only manage ship handling, but also timing.
37:55So it's not just the precision of positioning the ship.
37:58It's the precision of timing because any delays is costing a lot of money.
38:04You got it right on.
38:05We have to run the Panama Canal like a Swiss watch.
38:09There is a lot of responsibility you have as the pilot through Panama Canal.
38:14We're an elite group of 300 pilots, highly skilled, highly trained.
38:21In 1999, the canal reached a significant milestone when the United States handed the strategic waterway over to Panama.
38:32For the first time in its existence, the global gateway was in Panamanian hands, ending nearly a century of American
38:40control.
38:41I believe many people internationally didn't think we'd be able to manage it after it was transferred back to Panama.
38:47And for such a small country to contribute so much to world trade, it's a source of joy to be
38:52able to contribute to the world in that way.
38:54And I think we have a beautiful motto.
38:57It's not official, but we always say we're the bridge of the world and the heart of the universe.
39:04With the keys to the kingdom, Panama soon realized they'd inherited a big problem.
39:10There was a limit to the size of ship which could squeeze through the canal.
39:15I'm three stories up here at the control tower at the locks.
39:21But the ship's bridge is still above me.
39:24Hola!
39:25In the last 50 years, the carrying capacity of container ships has increased 1,500%.
39:33As the ships were getting bigger, the Panama Canal wasn't.
39:38And they needed to react or face losing millions in toll revenue.
39:49In 2009, an ambitious $5 billion expansion project began.
39:56It involved building two new sets of locks.
39:59Coccoli on the Pacific side and Agua Clara on the Atlantic.
40:04And excavating a bigger and deeper second lane of traffic to double the canal's capacity.
40:12It was a huge undertaking.
40:15And like a hundred years ago, also ran the risk of failures.
40:22It's a very commanding position we have up here, looking out across both sets of locks.
40:28What was it that triggered the construction of this new set of locks?
40:33The canal was going to be transferred from the US to Panama in 1999.
40:37And at the time, we were pretty maxed out in the original locks.
40:40And we were going to lose relevance if we didn't expand the canal.
40:44The biggest container vessel that can go through the original locks can carry 5,400 containers.
40:49OK.
40:49The biggest one here has brought 16,000 containers.
40:53So it was about...
40:54That's almost three times the price.
40:55...scales of magnitude.
40:56Those kinds of figures are mind-blowing.
40:58About 97% of the world fleet can now fit through these locks,
41:03which was not the case before we built the expanded canal.
41:06Were there physical challenges of building this extension so close to the origin?
41:10Even though it's so close, it's far enough that there was no impact to shipping.
41:14And to us, that was very, very key and critical.
41:17What's the main differences between Coccoli, the new extension of the Panama Canal,
41:22and the original locks?
41:23We have rolling gates.
41:25The reason we have rolling gates is because the miter gates,
41:29which is what you have in the original locks, they open like that, right?
41:33First, there was no miter gates of that size in the world,
41:36so we didn't want to try something that was not out there.
41:39Yeah.
41:40And also, those gates, you need to bring a floating crane,
41:43remove them and take them to a shipyard for maintenance.
41:45These ones, you put them in the recess,
41:47you put stop locks in front of it,
41:49and it becomes a dry chamber so you do the maintenance on site.
41:52Very clever.
41:52We cannot afford to close this lock because it's only one lane.
41:56I love that.
41:57So there's design in there.
41:58There's design for maintenance.
41:59It's engineering design for maintenance.
42:03Without sufficient water,
42:05the canal wouldn't be able to function effectively.
42:07But with climate change and Panama's rainfall average slowly decreasing,
42:13the need to save water is more critical now
42:16than it was in John F. Stevens' day.
42:20So, as part of the expansion,
42:22water-saving basins were built next to the locks,
42:26each basin with the surface area of 25 Olympic swimming pools.
42:32It's very important for us to protect the water
42:35because 55% of the population of Panama drinks water
42:38from Gatun and Alajuela Lake.
42:40So we really need to be cautious with water.
42:42So it was mainly for that.
42:44How do you manage that?
42:45So when this vessel comes in...
42:47Yeah.
42:48Part of the water that we need to release
42:50to bring him down to here...
42:52Yes.
42:53...will go into those three water-saving basins,
42:55which have different elevations.
42:58Three-fifths of the water is saved
42:59and two-fifths are released to the next chamber.
43:01So instead of just flushing that water through
43:03from chamber down to chamber down to chamber
43:06as it happens at Miraflores...
43:08Recycle.
43:08And that saves how much water?
43:1060% of the amount of water
43:12that a traditional lockage would use.
43:14That's huge.
43:15Yeah.
43:18For over a century, the Panama Canal has provided a shortcut
43:22between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans
43:25that we all rely on every single day.
43:30No matter how you live your life,
43:33there's a very good chance that one way or another
43:35you are dependent on goods that pass through the Panama Canal.
43:40Whether that's the food you eat, the car you drive,
43:42or the materials used to build and furnish your house.
43:46And it's cargo vessels like this that make that a reality.
43:53I can't help but be in awe of the engineers
43:56who came up with the solutions
43:58to tame this unforgiving tropical wilderness.
44:02Nor the thousands of workers who battled their way through it,
44:06many making the ultimate sacrifice.
44:09The construction of the Panama Canal
44:11yielded a series of world firsts, world's biggest,
44:15and in my opinion, the world's most audacious.
44:18The Panama Canal is undoubtedly
44:21an engineering masterpiece to behold.
44:27And Rob's back with brand-new Building the Impossible
44:30next Friday at 8.
44:31Brand-new tomorrow at 9.15,
44:33did you know that Queen Victoria was quite capable
44:36of causing a scandal that nearly brought down the Empire
44:38when she became very close to groomsman John Brown?
44:42Next tonight, it's like something out of an Indiana Jones adventure
44:45with Dara O'Brien in the title role as Relic Hunter
44:48in Mysteries of the Pyramids.
44:50.
44:51.