LT Strain’s Expedition
19 JANUARY-12 MARCH 1854
LT STRAIN’S EXPEDITION
In 1513, the Spanish explorer Balboa took 190 well-supplied troops and enlisted the aid of local natives as guides to make his famous march of discovery across Isthmus of Darien. Since, the concept of a trans-Central American canal connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific had repeatedly arisen. By the 19th century, Darien, the land that would eventually become Panama, was a province of New Granada, the Spanish colony that would eventually become Colombia. Its remote location, its wild, malaria-infested jungles, and the towering central mountains of the Continental Divide frustrated schemes for a canal. Then in 1850, an Irish physician and member of the Royal Geographic Society, Dr. Edward Cullen, returned to England with startling news. From Caledonia Bay on the Caribbean coast, Cullen claimed to have personally walked the 40 miles across the narrowest part of the isthmus several times. At no point along this easy walk, he claimed, was the elevation greater than 150 feet above sea level. Furthermore, he had plainly marked the trail for future reference. The news electrified the Western public, and in 1853 a joint expedition was undertaken by England, France, the United States, and New Granada to explore this miracle route.
The United States’ contingent, aboard the sloop CYANE, 20, arrived at Caledonia Bay ahead of the others in the third week of January 1854. Eager to capitalize on the discovery and unwilling to wait, LT Isaac Strain led a party of 12 officers and 13 bluejackets into the jungle this day. Fully expecting to uncover an easy, well-marked trail, his party entered this forbidding jungle only lightly equipped, with food enough for only a few days.
As you might imagine they ran into trouble from the start. Local natives, coerced by the guns of CYANE, allowed the party to pass but refused to act as guides. Cullen’s trail was nowhere to be found. The party quickly became lost in the heat, rain, insects, and constant twilight of the jungle canopy. Their weapons rusted after the first week. The food ran out. With events conspiring against them, Strain now discovered a river which he began to follow in the sure hope that it led to the Pacific. In truth he had discovered the Chucunaque River, which runs for miles up the center of the isthmus, parallel to the coast. When natives along the river tried to convince Strain he was mistaken, he reasoned they were trying to delude and subvert him and pressed onward.
For weeks the party struggled. Short rations forced them to eat anything they could find, including toads and strange nuts and fruits, some of which proved toxic. Disease, starvation, exhaustion, and depression began to tell; men began dying and one went insane. Strain’s discipline and strong personal fortitude had sustained them thus far, but as the month of February faded into March even that was flagging…
Continued tomorrow….
McCullough, David. The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal – 1879-1914. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1977, pp. 22-24.
Sweetman, Jack. American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 2nd ed. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1991, pp. 60-61.