Panama Canal 7 June

Everyone knows that if you travel west from Bristol and keep going you will eventually bump into America. Having bumped into America and keep going west you will eventually dip your toes in the Pacific Ocean. Except if you go by boat. If you go by boat, you will, unless you are barking and want to heave your boats across country, go through the Panama Canal. The first ships passed through the Panama locks on this day 7 June 1914 and they went uphill to the Pacific, which is 24cm higher than the Atlantic. Confusingly, the Atlantic is at the West end of the canal and the Pacific is at the East. It’s all in the Panamanian topography. Of course, none of this would have been possible had much of the pioneering engineering discoveries necessary to build a successful canal not been done a century and a half earlier by, as seems to be the norm (steam engines, telephones, haggis etc), a Scotsman. John Rennie, who was born on this day, 7 June, 1761 solved almost all of the knotty engineering problems associated with the construction of canals and locks. While he was at it, he built the Lancaster Canal (started 1792), the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation (1793), the Crinan Canal (1794) and the Kennet and Avon Canal (1794). Rennie was also the bridge builder who pioneered the wide span elliptical arch bridge and built Waterloo Bridge, with its nine equal elliptical arches and perfectly flat roadway, and Southwark Bridge and London Bridge (of Arizona Desert fame). So, without John Rennie, going backwards to China the short way may have proved a bit tricky.