Neptune's Needle

Engineer and military officer.

In 1891 Goethals was placed in charge of the completion of the Muscle Shoals Canal along the Tennessee River near Chattanooga. This was his first independent command, and his included the design and construction of the Riverton Lock at Colbert Shoals. Goethals's recommendation of a single lock with an unprecedented lift of twenty-six feet was initially opposed by his superiors in Washington. The success of the Riverton Lock inspired the eventual adoption of high-lift locks elsewhere, including those for the Panama Canal.

Congress decided in 1902 that the United States should undertake to build and operate the interoceanic [Panama] canal. Under the direction of a seven-member Isthmian Canal Commission, construction by the American work force commenced in 1904. In March 1907 President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) appointed Goethals to the commission.

Goethals was thus given complete control over all aspects of construction and made answerable solely to the president through the secretary of war. Administration of the Panama Canal Zone had effectively shifted from the commission form of government to a system of one-man control, which Goethals himself described as being "a sort of benevolent despotism."

Beyond the engineering challenges of the canal--which included excavating 262 million cubic yards of earth, building locks of unprecedented size, and damming the Chagres River to create the world's largest artificial lake--Goethals faced the equally difficult task of meeting the needs of a work force numbering more than 30,000. Goethals's administration of the project was superb. The canal, which opened to traffic on 15 August 1914, was completed below budget and ahead of schedule. In the United States, Goethals's popularity soared.

When the United States entered World War I, German submarine warfare was posing a deadly menace to Allied shipping. In an attempt to build up the nation's merchant fleet as rapidly as possible, President Wilson approved the U.S. Shipping Board's plan to construct an emergency fleet of wooden ships; he asked Goethals to help. Goethals agreed, and in April 1917 Wilson appointed him general manager of the board's Emergency Fleet Corporation.

From the beginning, however, Goethals doubted the wisdom of proceeding with the wooden ship plan, and the more he investigated the scheme the more profoundly opposed to it he became. Committed to technically superior steel ships, he devised a plan for their rapid construction and attempted to change the minds of the board members and the president but soon learned that technical matters made little difference to the turf-conscious Shipping Board members, who were firmly committed to the wooden ship program.

In March 1919 Goethals established a successful consulting engineering practice in New York City, where he remained active until his death.

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Peter Richards