E.S. "Gordon" Lacey - Diary 1

I sat watching it after I had finished my washing. 10-30 land just showing on the starboard bow. Passed a big tramp steamer. Land on port is very mountainous. Some island very close, very pretty running down in wooded slopes to the water. Weather beautiful, though a bit hot & water calm. Pulled up off a pretty group of islands about noon & waited for pilot. About 2pm. we started for the mouth of the Panama Canal. Around the entrance there is a big bay and all along the right shore there are great cranes & dredges and a railway running west. Where the canal starts there are flat swamps covered with thick

scrub. They run back about 1/4 mile on the left & 1 mile on the right then the hills start. On the left the hills are close enough to be seen clearly. They are covered with thick vegetation, great palms & fern trees and other big trees. They look beautiful as they are a lovely green. The piers & wharves are on the right and they are all solid structures of concrete with some fine cranes & other pieces of machinery on them. There is a small torpedo boat lying alongside. The pilot came aboard 6a.m. 1st Sept. and we started about 6.15. First there is a

stretch of water like a river then we arrived at the first locks called Miraflores Locks. they are wounderful arrangements built of concrete first we sailed into a lock like a dock. Then the great doors were closed and water was pumped in and the ship gradually rose until she was on a level with the water in the next lock. Then the gates ahead of us opened and cables were run ashore, two from the bow two amidships & two from the stern. These were fixed to electric cars that run on rails laid on

each side of the lock. They are curious arrangements very low & they have driving gear at each end and the cable is fixed in the middle The cars are pull together and the ship moves through into the next lock and the gates were closed and more water was pumped in and things went on like this until we got through the first two sets of locks. Then we sailed out into a small lake and shortly after we entered the Culebra Cut. This in a fine piece of engineering. In places

the canal is cut through a regular mountain and we steamed in between high wall of rock. In one place there has been a great landslide, there must have been thousand of tons of earth slipped down judging by the gap that has been left in the hillside It is of no use to try and describe it for it so great that it would be impossible to imagine what it is like and impossible to describe it. After passing through the cut we came out into a great big lake. It has been made artificially and it is