Panama Medio Balboa 2014 Centenary of the Panama Canal
Commemorative issue: 100th Anniversary of the Panama Canal
Obverse: Portrait to the right of Charles V of the Holy Empire, known also as Carlos I of Spain (1500-1558), legend above, date below.
Lettering: CENTENARIO DEL CANAL DE PANAMA CARLOS V 2014.
Translation: Centenary of the Panamá Canal.
Reverse: Coat of arms with 9 stars above. Name of the country above, value in letters below.
Lettering: REPUBLICA DE PANAMA ********* MEDIO BALBOA.
Edge: Reeded.
Comments
Inauguration of the Canal was in 1914. By decree issued in 1534, Charles V had ordered the Panama regional governor to survey a route to the Pacific following the Chagres River. This was the first survey for a proposed ship canal through Panama, and it more or less followed the course of the current Panama Canal.
Year: 2014.
Value: 1/2 Balboa.
Metal: Copper-nickel clad Copper.
Weight: 11.3 g.
Diameter: 30.6 mm.
Thickness: 2.2 mm.
Shape: Round.
Centenary of the Panama Canal 2014
On Aug. 15, 2014, the citizens of Panama celebrated the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Panama Canal. The gala event was attended by descendants of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French engineer who oversaw the first attempt to construct the canal, and of Theodore Roosevelt, the U.S. president under whose watch work began on the ultimately successful American canal project. Observances in Panama had spanned several months.
The world had experienced significant changes in transportation technology during the previous century, yet on the day marking its opening 100 years earlier, the operation of the Panama Canal was fundamentally the same as it had been when the first ship had passed through it. The canal remained, however, one of the most important and vital strategic links for world nautical transportation.
When the 80-km (50-mi)-long canal across the Isthmus of Panama opened in 1914, it proved to be a virtual time machine, allowing ships traveling between New York City and San Francisco to shorten their journey by a month by taking an approximately 15,000-km (8,000-nautical mile) shortcut on the trip that previously required rounding Cape Horn in South America. Present-day travelers using the canal experience a model of professionalism and efficiency, as the Panama Canal Authority (Autoridad del Canal de Panamá; ACP) safely oversees the passage of thousands of ships and hundreds of millions of tons of cargo through the canal each year. The story of the building of the canal, however, is filled with failure and sacrifice, and its enduring massive concrete monolithic structures have continued to stand as a memorial to all those who dared to challenge the daunting narrow land bridge between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
In 1497 Christopher Columbus and his crew became the first Europeans to enter Limón Bay on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Panama. In 1513 Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa led an expedition across the isthmus; they were the first Europeans to reach the Pacific side. Although they had blazed a trail across the isthmus, more than three centuries would pass before an attempt was made to construct a reliable mode of transportation that would connect the two oceans there. The Panama Railroad, built by a private American company, opened in 1855 and allowed passengers to travel from coast to coast in relative safety and luxury. Thousands of workers lost their lives during the construction of the line, however, and upon its completion it was said to have been the most-expensive railroad ever built on a cost-per-mile basis.