George Washington Goethals

Armed Forces Personnel

• Born: June 29, 1858
• Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
• Died: January 21, 1928
• Place of death: New York, New York

American engineer

Goethals was chief engineer of the Panama Canal, which revolutionized maritime transportation and commerce by providing a shorter and less dangerous passageway between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

Area of achievement Engineering

Early Life

George Washington Goethals (GOH-thelz) was born to parents who were Dutch immigrants of modest means. He attended public schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn prior to matriculation (at the age of fourteen) at City College. Three years later, in 1876, he won appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers in 1880, having been graduated second in his class. (He was later upgraded to honor man when the actual honor man was convicted by court-martial of embezzlement.) Goethals valued his West Point education highly. Many years later, when he was offered a civilian job at an enormous increase over the salary that he had earned in the Army, Goethals would decline, saying that all of his training and education had been at the public’s expense and that he intended to serve his country, hoping thereby to repay that investment, as long as he was needed by his country.

Following commissioning, he was assigned to the United States Advanced Engineering School and then, in 1882, to Cincinnati to improve the Ohio River channel for navigation. This detail provided him with practical experience in lock and dam construction. A variety of engineering assignments followed. For example, he was in charge of the construction of the Muscle Shoals Canal on the Tennessee River. In this construction he designed and successfully completed a lock within a hydraulic system with a lift of 26 feet an unprecedented height. He was chief engineer for a similar canal-hydraulic system near Chattanooga, Tennessee. In 1894, he was appointed assistant to the chief of engineers. During the Spanish-American War he was promoted to lieutenant colonel of volunteers (regular Army major) and assigned as chief engineer of the Puerto Rican Army of Occupation. After that war he served in New England assisting in the design and construction of harbor defenses. His most important contribution related to the specific design for the fortifications near Newport, Rhode Island. Goethals was later made a member of the General Staff and was graduated from the Army War College.

Goethals married Effie Rodman of New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1884, shortly before a stint as an instructor at West Point. The couple had two sons George R. and Thomas R. Goethals. George went on to a successful military career (rising to the rank of colonel) and Thomas became a physician.

Life’s Work

Goethals will always be remembered as the person who “built” the Panama Canal. While his distinguished assistants were as numerous as a regiment, it was Goethals who was ultimately responsible for recruiting and inspiring the huge army of workers; for conceiving the overall project; for laying out the many tasks; and for organizing, planning, and carrying through the work against the many obstacles posed by humans, government, and nature. It was Goethals, for example, who fought to make the Panama Canal a lock canal and not a sea-level one. The problem of sanitation was mastered with the invaluable help of William Crawford Gorgas where earlier efforts had failed. Under Goethals, the Canal Zone was transformed from the vast graveyard it had been under Ferdinand de Lesseps and the French into a place where people could work and thrive.

The first work on the Panama Canal was begun in 1881 by the Panama Canal Company, a French chartered and financed business, under the direction of de Lesseps. De Lesseps had earlier been chief engineer for the Suez Canal project. De Lesseps had planned to construct a sea-level canal with no locks at a cost of 128 million dollars. Because of obstacles he could not overcome, his efforts ended with the bankruptcy of the French company and a major scandal in government. Only a small amount of work was actually accomplished. There followed over the next several years attempts to complete de Lesseps’s plans for a sea-level canal, but all failed. Matters stood at this point until the United States government determined to undertake the project.

The history of the United States’ acquisition of the French company’s charter to construct a canal and of the political complications that arose is fairly well-known and need not be recounted. It is sufficient to state that the United States in 1903 acquired the right to dig a canal across a new nation Panama. U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt, well versed in the arguments among the supporters of a sea-level and the supporters of a lock canal, selected Goethals to head the project. Goethals favored a lock canal. That Roosevelt came to the conclusion that a lock canal was superior to a sea-level canal reflects Goethals’s persuasive arguments. Originally civilian engineers had been charged with the task. The planning and work of that group, especially of John Frank Stevens, proved to be extremely valuable to Goethals and to the Army Corps of Engineers. Goethals never failed to praise the work of his subordinates or, in this case, his predecessors even when he found the hydraulic systems, the locks, dams, and spillways (all Goethals specialties) to be either as yet unplanned or flawed in design. When Goethals and the Corps of Engineers took over in 1907, he found that an awesome amount of work needed to be accomplished. The enormity of the task of digging the canal was far more staggering than were the technological difficulties that had to be overcome.

The Panama Canal as it was finally constructed works by raising a ship from the Caribbean Sea or from the Gulf of Panama in a lock chamber (of which there are twelve) 85 feet. Each chamber is 110 feet wide, built to accommodate the largest ship the Navy had on the drawing boards, and 1,000 feet long but capable of division into two chambers one 600 and the other 400 feet. These chambers are built in pairs to accommodate two-way traffic. Once raised, a vessel travels over Gatun Lake a human-made, 170-square-mile body of water 85 feet above sea level to the opposite side of the isthmus. There it is lowered to sea level via the same process in reverse.

Completion of the canal took until 1914. The task called for the tearing away of the mountains in the canal channel, which involved moving hundreds of millions of cubic yards of earth. Creating Gatun Lake involved not only the damming of the Chagres River to control it but also the filling of the valleys with earth and water to a depth of 85 feet in many places. Building the enormous locks of concrete and steel was the most monumental task humans had ever attempted; it was Goethals who made it a reality.

Goethels coordinated all the factors involved sanitation, excavation, housing, commissary, labor, design, and construction. A person of great force and personality, he inspired complete confidence in the entire organization and brought it together in harmony. This effort served for years as a model of efficient labor and industrial harmony as well as sound engineering. On completion, Goethals received the formal thanks of the U.S. Congress for “distinguished service in constructing the Panama Canal.”

President Woodrow Wilson appointed Goethals the first civil governor of the Panama Canal Zone. Following a two-year term, he was named state engineer for New Jersey. He resigned that post to accept recall to active duty with the Army when World War I erupted. During the war he was acting quartermaster general and director of purchase, storage, and supplies. As such he was responsible for the supply and transportation of all United States troops at home and abroad.

In 1919, he retired from active service and opened George Goethals and Company, a consultant engineering firm with offices in New York City. Among the major clients was the City of New York. Goethals and his company made a major impact on the projects of the Port Authority of New York. He offered his expertise to help complete and operate the Hudson River Vehicular Tunnels (Holland and Lincoln Tunnels); the then-proposed George Washington Bridge, spanning the Hudson River; and the Goethals Bridge.

During his lifetime Goethals was the recipient of many honors from educational and scientific institutions, including the National Geographic Society, the Civil Forum of New York, and the National Institute of Social Science. Goethals died after a prolonged illness in New York City on January 21, 1928. In his honor, flags in the Canal Zone were flown at half mast and half staff.

Significance

Goethals will always be remembered as the engineer who saw the Panama Canal become a reality. The significance of the canal to world trade and maritime activity is difficult if not impossible to measure. The canal, for example, provided a passageway for ships to travel between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans without navigating the often treacherous waters off Cape Horn; the canal also shortens the trip between East and West by thousands of miles.

Goethels is the most famous engineer ever to wear the uniform of the U.S. Army and one of the best-known graduates of West Point since the Civil War. His ability as director of the massive construction operations in Panama and as director of purchase, storage, and supplies in the Army in World War I is indicative of his greatness as an administrator as well as an engineer. His place in American and world history is secure.

Bibliography

Baker, Ray S. “Goethals the Man and How He Works.” Technical World Magazine 21 (July, 1914): 656-661. Praises Goethals and describes his techniques in the administration of the entire range of the construction project that produced the Panama Canal.

Cameron, Ian. The Impossible Dream: The Building of the Panama Canal. New York: William Morrow, 1972. Contains facts and figures concerning the magnitude of the actual construction efforts down to the number of tons of concrete poured as well as where it was poured.

Curry, Andrew. “A Will and a Way.” U.S. News and World Report, June 30, 2003, 40. A brief profile of Goethals, relating the problems he encountered in constructing the Panama Canal.

Fast, Howard. Goethals and the Panama Canal. New York: Julian Messner, 1942. One of the best examinations of Goethals’s achievements in Panama. It should be consulted by the serious student.

McCullough, David. The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977. Extremely reliable account of the construction of the Panama Canal. McCullough’s tale of the pre-United States efforts are detailed and accurate. The role of the Army Corps of Engineers and of Goethals is placed in its proper perspective.

Mach, Gerstel. The Land Divided: A History of the Panama Canal and Other Isthmian Canal Projects. New York: Octagon Books, 1974. Perhaps the single most valuable work on the construction of the canal from inception to completion. Goethals’s role is well detailed. Gives much credit to Goethals’s predecessors, especially John Stevens.

Pepperman, W. L. Who Built the Panama Canal? New York: E. P. Dutton, 1915. An older source yet very useful on the personnel involved in the undertaking. Gives major credit to Goethals as the person who orchestrated a seemingly impossible task.