THE PANAMA CANAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 24, 20 May 1914, Page 3

THE PANAMA CANAL.

OPENING DATE. [By Electric Telegraph—Copyright] Times and Sydney Sun Services. New York, Hay 19. The Panama Canal will open for all commercial traffic on July 1, or perhaps earlier.

A STARTLING PREDICTION. It is possible that the Panama Canal will become obsolete in a few years because of the inadequate dimensions? Mr Elmer L. Corthell, an American engineer, who is now engaged in widening the mouth of the Amazon River, says this very thing. He says that in 1898 he read a paper before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in which he predicted that in half a century the nations would he building ships 1000 ft long and 100 ft wide. His predictions were ridiculed, and he was called the “Poet of Navigation,” hut the ship on which he recently crossed the Atlantic, the Imperator, was 918 ft long and 98ft wide, and the Vaterland will ho '9Soft long and 100 ft wide. The Panama Canal is to he 110 ft wide, and if the Vaterland were to pass through she would have only sft of lee-way on each side. Mr Corthell goes on to say that neither is the canal deep enough. It is to be 40ft deep, and the Imperator draws 39A ft of water. A ship of that size must have 3ft to sft of water under her, and therefore this particular vessel would he unable to use the canal. And it is impossible to doubt that in a very few years even these marine measurements will he suspassed, since there seems now to he no such thing as reaching the limit in anything.