The Panama Canal and Its Makers

by Vaughan Cornish

^[12] Daily Telegraph, June 18, 1908.

2. A minimum bottom width of 200 feet in the Culebra Cut.

The minimum bottom width, or width at a depth of 31 feet, in the Suez Canal is 108 feet.

The bottom width of the Kiel Canal is 72 feet.^[13]

^[13] Report, Board of Consulting Engineers, p. 173.

3. Each lock will have a usable length of 1,000 feet and a width of 110 feet.

The locks of the Kiel Canal have an available length of 492 feet and width of 82 feet.

The Mauretania has a length of 790 feet and beam of 88 feet.

4. The minimum radius of the curves is 5,577 feet (1,700 metres).^[14] This curve, however, does not come in the Culebra Cut, where the bottom width is to be 200 feet, but north of Bas Obispo, where the bottom width is 500 feet. Most of the curves have a radius of 9,842 feet (3,000 metres).

^[14] Vide p. 205 of General Abbot's "Problems of the Panama Canal" (1907). Slight changes in the projected course are made from time to time, so that this figure is subject to slight modification.