Friday, July 16, 1915

Click here, here, and here to see pictures of the U.S.S. Missouri in the Panama Canal on July 16, 1915. From the U.S. Naval Historical Center.

We were all turned out at 6:30 this morning to clean up the ship. After breakfast we dressed ship and decorated the quarterdeck with flags and palms, finishing the hot job about 9 o'clock. Not long after visitors - officers of the army and navy and their wives, daughters or lady friends - arrived. We shifted into white service. At 10 we heaved anchor and steamed in line thru Gatun Lake. There were plain and abundant evidences that the Lake is a flooded valley. The channel was marked by light buoys - outside of that trunks of what had been trees jutted out of the water - a veritable forest of bare stumps, crowned, many of them, by a clumsy pelican. The Lake was full of small tree covered islands - everything was green, some dark, some lighter, some hidden by the low lying clouds. We picked our way slowly thru this enticing wilderness, fairly intoxicated with the beauty of it all. After making so many turns that we lost nearly all sense of direction we passed three enormous metal towers - a wireless station with three aerials. From there we approached the dredged part of the canal at whose center lies that dread of engineers, Calebra. The channel was wide enough to allow two big ships to pass each other easily. The banks were sometimes low - high sometimes, as the cut went thru hills of greater or less height. At three points we passed khaki clad soldiers (The 10th, 5th, and 27th regiments) grouped on the bank - always on our right - at their little black stations. They cheered as we passed - their bands played, usually "Columbia the Gem of the Ocean." I noticed that it was impossible to see the soldiers, even when there were a large number in our spot, until they were very close to us. The looked for all the world like like a rock or dead bush or a small new [?] slide. About 3:30 we approached Calebra cut. On the right was a very high hill. The slides could be plainly seen in the tiers of gray clay that lay bare before us. On the left was a great rocky wall, higher even than the hill on the right. Men were washing it away in places with hydraulic pressure. There were several big steam shovels and dredge on either side of the canal as we passed, besides tug boats, cranes and big flat bottomed scows. The recent slides narrowed the channel so much at the cut that a tug had to guide us slowly thru between the temporary buoys that marked the path of safety. The one expression that nearly everyone used, and which tells the most truth, the impression which this great piece of engineering work makes upon one as he passes between these two monstrous mounds, was simply, "This is wonderful." Just as we left Calebra cut, Contractors Hill on the right, Diamond Hill on the left, the Wisconsin was just entering the other end of the Cut, and the Ohio was half way between. It was an impressive sight, and one which will not be seen for some time. I did not realize the greatness of the two hills we had just passed until I saw the Ohio just as she emerged from the cut behind us - she, with her hundred foot masts, went only half way up their sheer sides, and looked as small in comparison as a whale boat beside a man-of-war. A short distance beyond Calebra cut was an enormous crane, built by the "Deutsche Machinenfabric" - it was the U.S. Hercules - and the name was appropriate. I thot [thought] I was fortunate in seeing this, the largest floating crane in the world. Going forward slowly we soon came to the Pedro Miguel locks which dropped us in one lock to the Miraflores lake, a beautiful quiet lake, surrounded by some more beautiful green hills with the cloud crowned mountains behind them. It did not take us long to cross the lake to the Miraflores Locks. Two locks lowered us there to sea level, as quietly and evenly as the others had lifted us to the lakes. We were ready to head out to the Pacific. It was dark when we left the Canal, thoroughly awed by the immensity of it all, wondering, marveling at the brain that could conceive such a work and could work it out until this great inanimate[?] thing remained, to do the work that its creators could not do. There had not been a 'hitch' in our passage, nothing had happened that would not have made Americans feel proud this canal was ours. It is too wonderful to describe - too great to say a little about in an attempt to remove it from its home in the Canal Zone.

We stood out to sea at 6 knots. I had an 8-12 watch below, which was a very easy one.