WI: Nicaraguan Canal built instead of Panama Canal

Let's say the US built the canal across Nicaragua starting at the end of the 19th Century, because it would have required less digging. What would have been the cost of eventually widening the canal to the current New Panamax standard for maximum ship size?
 

Flubber

Banned
You'd need another man-made river anyway in Nicaragua.


Yes, that's why I mentioned that short canals would still have to be dug between the river system and the lake.

Also, how do you actually add locks to an existing lake when the lake itself is at the top of the locks? That's going to require some mighty fine dredging.

Cofferdams, temporary earthen dams, etc. It's done all the time when building hydroelectric projects, slipways. canals, etc.

May I suggest that you and the others who are having so much trouble visualizing this read "The Path Between The Seas" by McCullough? The pictures should prove helpful.
 

Flubber

Banned
Let's say the US built the canal across Nicaragua starting at the end of the 19th Century, because it would have required less digging. What would have been the cost of eventually widening the canal to the current New Panamax standard for maximum ship size?

With a little thought you'll realize that widening the canal is not the problem. The canal is designed for ship to pass each other after all. If a section needs to be wider you move some more earth.

The actual bottleneck is the width of the locks and widening those entails building completely new ones alongside the old ones.
 

Dirk_Pitt

Banned
Maybe have the French not fail at constructing the Canal and the US not as friendly with the French. That could lead to the drive to build a Nicaragua Canal.

This was done in a timeline where the ACW was shorter, Germany failed to unite till TTL WWI, and the 2nd French empire survived.
 
Maybe have the French not fail at constructing the Canal and the US not as friendly with the French. That could lead to the drive to build a Nicaragua Canal.
Well, that'd require a total reworking of the French plans for an impossible sea-level canal.
 
If a canal in Nicaragua was decided upon, how much would the US gov't pay for the rights to the land?
 

katchen

Banned
Oh by the way, if the canal gets built at Nicaragua (and it was only a minor volcanic eruption from a volcano on an island in Lake Nicaragua that frightened the Americans into building at Panama, not Nicaragua), Panama stays a part of Colombia. The Pan Am Highway gets finished all the way across the Darien Gap. Possibly a railroad gets built from Bogota to Panama and David and Costa Rica. So we also have inter-American land communication all the way from the US border to Buenos Aires. How does THAT affect timelines?
 

Flubber

Banned
If a canal in Nicaragua was decided upon, how much would the US gov't pay for the rights to the land?


The McCullough book I mentioned earlier might have the details as it covers the Congressional shenanigans involved in choosing Panama over Nicaragua. I don't have the book on hand sadly.

Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction Dept: One of the "facts" used against the Nicaragua proposal was a Nicaraguan postage stamp which featured a volcano.
 
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Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction Dept: One of the "facts" used against the Nicaragua proposal was a Nicaraguan postage stamp which featured a volcano.

Yes, it was said at the time that Nicaragua was more prone to earthquakes then Panama, and quite true that engineering considerations and scientific facts definitely took back stage during the canal debates, as the postage stamp you mentioned proves.
 
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