Nicaragua Canal

Panoramic View of proposed Canal, 1899.

The Nicaragua Canal is a proposed waterway that would connect the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. Such a canal would start on the Atlantic side at Bluefields, Punta Gorda or San Juan del Norte. It would then follow rivers to Lake Nicaragua, and cross the narrow isthmus of Rivas to reach the Pacific Ocean at San Juan del Sur.

The idea of building a canal through Central America is a very old one. Under the colonial administration of New Spain, preliminary surveys were conducted. The routes usually suggested ran across Nicaragua, Panama, or the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico.

The Nicaragua canal was seriously proposed by the newly established United Provinces of Central America in 1825. That year the Central American federal government hired surveyors to chart the route and contacted the government of the United States of America in the hopes that the U.S. might contribute the financing and engineering technology needed for building the canal, to the great advantage of both nations.

A survey from the 1830s stated that the canal would be 278 kilometers (172 miles) long and would generally follow the San Juan River from the Atlantic to Lake Nicaragua, then go through a series of locks and tunnels from the lake to the Pacific.

The Central American proposal made a favorable impression in Washington, D.C. and was formally presented to the Congress of the United States by Secretary of State Henry Clay in 1826. The poverty and political instability of the region, as well as the rival strategic and economic interests of the British government, which controlled both British Honduras (later Belize) and the Mosquito Coast, prevented the canal from being built.

On August 26, 1849, a contract was signed between Cornelius Vanderbilt, a U.S. businessman, and the Nicaraguan government. It granted the Accessory Transit Company, which Vanderbilt controlled, the exclusive right to build a canal within 12 years and gave the same company sole administration of a temporary trade route in which the overland crossing through the Rivas isthmus was done by train and stagecoach. The temporary route operated successfully, quickly becoming one of the main avenues of trade between New York City and San Francisco, but a civil war in Nicaragua and an invasion by freebooter William Walker intervened to prevent the canal from being completed.

Continued interest in the route was an important factor in the negotiation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850. The Nicaragua Canal idea was discussed seriously by businessmen and governments throughout the 19th century. In 1897, the United States' Nicaraguan Canal Commission proposed this idea, as did the subsequent Isthmian Canal Commission in 1899.

At the start of the 20th century Nicaraguan president José Santos Zelaya attempted to arrange for Germany and Japan to finance the canal. This was opposed by the U.S., which by then had settled on the Panama route.

At various times since the Panama Canal opened in 1914, the Nicaragua route has been reconsidered. Its construction would shorten the water distance between New York and San Francisco by nearly 800 kilometers (500 miles). Under the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty of 1916, the United States paid Nicaragua US$3 million for an option in perpetuity and free of taxation, including 99-year leases of the Corn Islands and a site for a naval base on the Gulf of Fonseca. Costa Rica protested that Costa Rican rights to the San Juan River had been infringed, and El Salvador maintained that the proposed naval base would affect both it and Honduras. Both protests were upheld by the Central American Court of Justice in rulings that are not recognized by either Nicaragua or the U.S.

As of 2004, plans for the canal involve cuts wide and deep enough for container ships of the Post-Panamax class. The current Panama Canal is too shallow for this type of vessel. The estimated cost is 25 billion dollars, and the estimated construction time is 10 years. President Enrique Bolaños has sought foreign investors to support the project. Environmentalists, however, protest the canal because of the damage to the rivers and the jungle.de:Nicaragua-Kanal it:Canale del Nicaragua