Uk britain and the Trans-isthmian Dream
Figure 2. Hopkins 1847-48 Survey
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- Figure 3. Isthme de Nicaragua Michel Chevalier’s map indicates alternative routes across Nicaragua (from Glynn, 1847)
- ATRATO SCHEME (DARIEN): ATLANTIC-PACIFIC CANAL
- CULEBRA CUT AND THE ANGLO-DUTCH CONSORTIUM
- Figure 4. Decauville railway equipment at Culebra
- CUTBILL, SON AND DE LUNGO (McWILLIAM, 2014)
- Figure 5. Cutbill’s contract at Culebra Cut in 1885 MEXICO: A FOOTNOTE
- REFERENCES American Railroad Journal (1862) 36
Figure 2. Hopkins 1847-48 Survey Evan Hopkins map indicates the difficult terrain he encountered, and was arguably the first by a British civil engineer. PACIFIC STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY In the late 1830s British commercial interests promoted a steamship company with connectivity across the Pacific, and in their pamphlets spoke of railroads across the Isthmus. In 1838, the American William Wheelright (Wheelwright, 1838) issued a pamphlet on this proposal. NICARAGUA CANAL The appeal of Nicaragua compared to shorter crossings at Panama and elsewhere was the existence of lakes to reduce the need for construction. In 1781 the Spanish engineer, Manuel Galisteo surveyed the levels from the Gulf of Papagayos to Lake Nicaragua. In 1826, John Baily was invited to survey a crossing through Nicaragua on behalf of an English company. Although nothing was done then in 1837-1838 he surveyed a route for the Government of Central America, following the Rio San Juan from the Atlantic to Lake Nicaragua and thence by a 15 2/3 mile canal to the Pacific at San Juan del Sur. This involved major navigation works on the San Juan, and an enormous volume of muck shifting (Baily, 1844). Harbour facilities were meagre. A further survey of the San Juan River by George Laurance was made in 1840. An alternative route, first suggested by Gallisteo, was looked at by Dutch engineers in 1830, and the US in 1835. This avoided cutting through the ridge, and instead making use of Lake Managua, the Rio Tipitapa, and joining the Pacific at Realejea. Further alternative surveys by US-based engineers in the early 1850s all concluded the necessary works were expensive. By mid-century ICE were able to publish Michel Chevalier’s map (Figure 3) showing favoured routes (Glynn, 1847). Under Napoleon III, French interest in the Isthmus increased. In 1859, James Samuel (1824-1874) and Alexander Woodlands Makinson (1822-1886) first went to Panama to verify French surveys on behalf of British business interests. Samuel, by background a railway engineer, in 1863, surveyed the potential route of a ship canal from Greytown, up the River San Juan, across the lakes of Nicaragua and Managua, to Tamarindon on the Pacific. He rejected the proposal as far more expensive than the French had estimated. He went on to become Chief Engineer for the Railway for Veracruz to Mexico City and Puebla (The Times, Picayune, 28 August 1863). NICARAGUAN RAILROAD A British naval captain, Bedford Pim, promoted the International Atlantic and Pacific Junction Railway through Nicaragua in the early 1860s. An Associate (i.e., non-civil engineer) of the ICE, he visited Nicaragua in 1860 and 1863. A Concession was signed between the Nicaraguan and British Government in 1860, and the civil engineer, John Collinson, among others, surveyed the route (Collinson, 1866; Maury, 1866). Inevitably capital was unavailable. 
Figure 3. Isthme de Nicaragua Michel Chevalier’s map indicates alternative routes across Nicaragua (from Glynn, 1847) (BRITISH) HONDURAS INTER-OCEAN RAILWAY The American Ephraim George Squires(1821-1886) carried out surveys in 1853 and 1858, for a railway on behalf of an international consortium led by British capitalists. ATRATO SCHEME (DARIEN): ATLANTIC-PACIFIC CANAL A southerly route across the Isthmus attracted a great deal of interest in the City of London in the early 1850s. A series of pamphlets were issued by the Atlantic and Pacific Junction Company, promoting a route along the Atrato-Cupica Valleys. Charles Nixon MInstCE and his partner, Lecky, issued an engineer’s report, weak on detail. Lionel Gisbourne criticised the route (Nixon and Lecky, 1853). The route was commented on by the Manx-born American, William Kennish (1799-1862 in 1853. At the end of 1853, the US, France and UK agreed to support further surveys for this company. The route was surveyed by 6 British engineers: Armstrong, Bennett, Bond, Devenish and Forde, led by Lionel Gisbourne, but his critics felt Gisbourne took fright at the challenge of jungle surveys, and his negative views were heavily criticised by Dr Edward Cullen (Cullen, 1856; 1857). He persuaded the contractor William Brady to support the scheme in September 1856. There is considerable doubt over the value of any of these surveys (Michler, 1861). De LESSEPS SCHEME There is no intention here to dwell on the history of de Lesseps scheme. Suffice it to say that the successful completion of the Suez Canal gave him credibility both in France and internationally, and meant that his call for an International Conference to discuss an Atlantic-Pacific Ship Canal could attract serious British engineering attention. (Sir) John Hawkshaw among 6 British engineers, was invited to attend the International Congress in Paris in 1879. The proposal for a sea level canal at that time involved a tunnel through Culebra, which Hawkshaw had rejected as impractical. He had identified the control of the Chagres river as a key to success, and believed the proposal would not achieve that. His son, John Clarke Hawkshaw, had attended that meeting as a young engineer, and believed that the key to the success for the French scheme of the 1890s would be control of the waters of the Chagres. Soon after construction began, in 1884, John Lewis Felix Target (Cross-Rudkin and Chrimes, 2008) was asked by the Governor of Jamaica to report on the conditions of the Jamaican workforce. This brought him to the notice of the Anglo-Dutch contracting consortium who had been awarded the contract for the Culebra Cut. He acted as their consulting engineer for three years until ill-health obliged him to give up – allegedly the climate inflamed his gout. CULEBRA CUT AND THE ANGLO-DUTCH CONSORTIUM The Anglo-Dutch consortium who began work on one of the toughest sections of the Panama Canal comprised a London based grouping of Cutbill, Son and De Lungo, with T. C. Watson and a Dutch contractor, Van Hullen. Their contract was signed 1883, for 160 million French Francs. When the American, Lieutenant W. W. Kimball, visited in 1885 his report on the Culebra section suggested a lack of resources (Kimball, (1886)) with the contractors only employing 1,250 men, with a further 100 employed by the company. They were using 12 French steam excavators, 19 locomotives, 277 dump cars, 1 Decauville locomotive and 1,180 Decauville cars, 14.5km of standard contractors railway track, and 17.2km of Decauville track (Figure 4). This was all to excavate an estimated 20M m3 of material, in a 1,500m cutting up to 140m deep. By March 1886 590,000m3, was dug, and only about 5% of the cutting had been excavated by 1887 (Boyd,1887). 
Figure 4. Decauville railway equipment at Culebra There is some doubt over when the Anglo-Dutch consortium gave up their contract at Culebra. The work was taken over initially by Artigue Sonderreger, then by the Company Engineer, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, but the financial arrangements once the Anglo-Dutch consortium had gone, were the subject of criticism or, to paraphrase Bunau-Varilla, calumnies against him. Van Hullen, in 1889, argued they should not have lost the contract as one reason they had made slow progress was lack of access to the Panama Railroad. CUTBILL, SON AND DE LUNGO (McWILLIAM, 2014) The little-known Cutbill family of contractors and stockbrokers were closely involved with the major British contractors George Wythes (1811-1883) and Thomas Brassey (1805-1870). Thomas Samuel Cutbill (1805-1867) was born on 13 March 1805 in Spitalfields, a son of Thomas Cutbill (1774-1845) and Sarah Soilleux (1785-1862), members of the Huguenot community. Little is known of his early life beyond involvement in the silk trade, but on 12 April 1834 he married Catherine Elizabeth Newton in Shoreditch. They had at least 10 children, most of whom reached adulthood. The eldest son, Frederick Thomas (1835-1913) became a civil engineer, suggesting that from the 1850s Thomas Samuel could find a civil engineering pupillage for his son through his business connections with civil engineers in the City of London. In the 1861 UK Census he is described as a merchant, but he was a London agent for Thomas Brassey by that time and in the late 1850s he was working on George Wythes’ projects in India. He also pursued the claims of the Canadian Grand Trunk Railway Shareholders, including Brassey. He was involved in the Brassey concession for the Mont Cenis Railway over the French Alps part of the British mail system to India. His younger son Walter John Charles Cutbill (1843-1915) was working for his father from 1859, and succeeded him as Secretary to the Mont Cenis Railway. Frederick worked on many international contracts until he returned in the 1890s. The early connections with Thomas Brassey and George Wythes may have been for Indian railways, but increasingly there was a Latin American focus. At the time of Thomas Cutbill’s death in 1867 his business was reconstituted as Cutbill, Son and De Lungo. Ulysses de Lungo (c.1841-1897) was an Italian born civil engineer, who became a British subject, although dying in Florence where his estate of c.£140, was administered by the engineer Paolo Stacchini. His long-term involvement with the Cutbills was only part of his business activity – he registered a patent for soap manufacture (Patent no. 3633, 1873). On Brassey’s death in 1873, Cutbill, Son and De Lungo carried on some of his contractual obligations as partners in Thomas Brassey and Company, and also remained associated with George Wythes over the following decade until Wythes’ death. They were also agents for railway companies such as the Northern of Canada. Although the best-known later contract was as part of the Anglo-Dutch consortium as contractors for Culebra Cut (Figure 5), they were particularly involved in Uruguayan and Venezuelan Railway concessions. Much of the construction work was carried out with the Perry family. James Perry (b.1812) had been one of Brassey’s and Wythes’ agents in India, and brought his sons Frederick James (b. 1859) and Lionel (b. 1866) into his contracting business which operated under Frederick’s leadership from 1884. It was generally known as James Perry and Co. Another partner at Panama and elsewhere in Latin America was Thomas Colclough Watson (1822-1890) (Cross-Rudkin and Chrimes, 2008). Watson had been contractor on the North Sea Ship Canal in the Netherlands. Henry Gale (1836-1898) was another engineer closely involved with Cutbill and Perry from the 1870s, notably on its South American contracts. He was based at the London offices from 1888. Cutbill Son and DeLungo was closed in February 1894 due to the retirement of Cutbill and De Lungo. James Perry and Co. was wound up the following January although the Perry family remained active in a successor business established in 1892-The Railway and Works Company-of which Gale was a Director. This was later involved in the Trans Africa Rail Syndicate. Lionel Perry is known to have visited Panama in 1907. The Anglo Dutch Co failure at Panama would appear therefore to be one of challenge not lack of experience. 
Figure 5. Cutbill’s contract at Culebra Cut in 1885 MEXICO: A FOOTNOTE In 1893, Mexico finally succeeded in building its Atlantic-Pacific route, but it was under-capitalised and lacked the necessary port facilities to rival attendance routes. In 1898, the Great British contractors Weetman Pearson & Son obtained a 50-year concession to rebuild the railway and provide harbour facilities (McWilliam, 2014). The railway contract, completed in 1906, was worth of 2.5 million. The ports cost similar amounts. The concession was bought out by The Mexican government in 1918. CONCLUSIONS British interest in Atlantic and Pacific Communication was driven by commercial interests and associated foreign policy. British civil engineers followed these commercial interests, but were also fascinated by one of the world‘s great engineering challenges. The success of the Americans ultimately reflected a change in the balance of civil engineering leadership from the Telford era to that of Goethals a century later, but the activity of the British, and the Irish navvy should not be forgotten. REFERENCES American Railroad Journal (1862) 36, 618. “Atlantic and Pacific Junction Company” (1853) The Atlantic-Pacific Canal. London: Committee for Surveys. Baily, J. (1844) “On the Isthmus between the Lake of Grenada and the Pacific”. Jnl. Royal Geographical Society, 14, 127-129. Bigelow, J. (1886) Panama Canal. New York: Chamber of Commerce. Boyd, R. N. (1887) Notes on the Panama Canal, Civil & Mechanical Engineers Society. Collinson, J. (1866) Descriptive account of … Pim’s project for an International Atlantic and Pacific Junction Railway. London. Congrès International d’études du Canal Interocéanique. Paris, 1879. Cross-Rudkin, P.S.M and Chrimes, M. (2008) Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers of Great Britain and Ireland. London: ICE. Cullen, E. (1856) Over Darien by a ship canal: reports on the mismanagement of the Darien expedition of 1854. London: Effingham Wilson. Cullen, E. (1857) Letters on the Isthmus of Darien Ship Canal. London: Effingham Wilson. Davis, C. H. (1861) Report on Inter-oceanic Canal and railroads. Washington, D.C.: USGPO. Falconer, T. (1844) “Survey of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec … 1842-1843”. Jnl. Royal Geographical Society, 14, 306-315. Ford, J. T. (1900) “The present condition and prospects of the Panama Canal works”, MinProcsICE, 144, 150-170; Discussion, 171-. Institution of Civil Engineers (1834) Telford Bequest. MSS. Glynn, J. (1847) MinProcsICE, 6, 399. Kelley, F. M. (1856) On the junction of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the practicability of a ship canal, without locks by the Valley of the Atlantic. MinProcsICE, 15, 376. Kimball, W. W. (1886) Special intelligence report on the progress of the work on the Panama Canal during the year 1885. Washington: USGPO. Lloyd, J. A. (1830) “Account of levellings carried across the Isthmus of Panama. PhilTransRoySoc, London, p.59-68. Lloyd, J. A. (1831) “Notes respecting the Isthmus of Panama”. Jnl. Royal Geographical Soc., 1, 69-101. Lloyd, J. A. (1849) “On the facilities for a ship canal communication between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans”, MinProcsICE, 9, 58. McCullough, D. (1977) The path between the seas. New York: Simon & Schuster. McWilliam, R. C. (2014) Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers of Great Britain and Ireland, 3, 1890-1920. London: ICE. Maury, M. F. (1866) Letter on the physical geography of the Nicaraguan Railway Route. London. Micher, N. (1861) “Report of his survey for an inter-oceanic ship canal near the Isthmus of Darien”. US Congress, 36, 2. Ex Doc.9. Nichols, A. B. Notebook B5, Linda Hall Library. Nixon, C. and Lecky, (1853) Atlantic-Pacific Canal: engineers report. London: The Committee. Otis, F. N. (1867) His story of the Panama railroad. New York: Harper & Brothers. Skempton, A. W. (2002) Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers of Great Britain and Ireland. London: ICE. The Times-Picayune, 28 August 1863. Wheelright, W (1838) Statements and documents relative to the establishment of steam navigation in the Pacific. London. Directory: Panama History Panama History -> The 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and Panama Canal Model, Conference and Proceedings Panama History -> The French Attempt to Construct a Canal at Panama Download 0.62 Mb. Share with your friends:
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