Everyone who lived around the Bay of San Francisco in those days
remembers what relief the news in the papers brought on a bright May
morning that Admiral Dewey, in response to an order from Secretary
J. D. Long had proceeded to Manila and destroyed the Spanish fleet.
This meant there was no longer any danger of the bombardment of San
Francisco.
There was no longer any necessity for holding the “Oregon” in Pacific
waters, and so quickly followed the order from the Secretary of the
Navy that she should at once take her departure to the coasts of Cuba
and join the American squadron operating there. The citizens of San
Francisco swarmed the hilltops to see the departure of their favorite
battleship. She sailed majestically out through the Golden Gate and
turned her prow southward. The patriotic hearts of the men and women
of California followed her course as they read each morning in the
newspapers the description of her successful voyage down the western
coasts of Mexico and Central America, on past Panama and along the
coasts of South America, through the Straits of Magellan, then to the
northward to her station on the coast of Cuba. But they noted that this
voyage consumed sixty-five days of time.
[Illustration: THE CULEBRA CUT, LOOKING NORTH.]
Then the President, the American Congress, and the American people
awoke to the fact that if the safety of the cities of the seaboards
of the Atlantic and the Pacific depended upon naval protection, and
that if such a long voyage would have to be taken by ships stationed
upon the opposite coast, it might mean the destruction of incalculable
wealth.
The entire Nation began to realize that if the “Oregon” could have
sailed from San Francisco to Panama and passed through the isthmus by
means of a canal such as we are now constructing, she could have made
the voyage from San Francisco to the coasts of Cuba, consuming three
days at Colon or Panama to take on stores and ammunition, and still
could have been at her station on the coasts of Cuba in sixteen days’
time. The people of the country began to realize that the difference
between sixteen and sixty-five days might mean the safety of the
Nation, and especially so if we were at war with a maritime power such
as Great Britain, Germany and Japan.
This startling demonstration of the absolute necessity for a Panama
Canal from the standpoint of American national safety, at once swept
aside all opposition at Washington to canal construction. Immediately
a universal wave of sentiment in favor of a national American Isthmian
Canal swept over the land and found its expression in instructions
by every constituency in the Union to Congressmen and to Senators to
do all in their power to assist in bringing canal legislation to a
successful termination.