LT Strain’s Expedition (cont.)
19 JANUARY-12 MARCH 1854
LT STRAIN’S EXPEDITION (cont.)
After six weeks of indescribable tribulation, with his men now unable to continue, LT Strain bedded his party and selected three of the strongest to accompany him further. On they pressed until finally on March 12th, a naked, starved, torn, and bleeding Strain stumbled alone into a native village near the Pacific coast. In spite of his condition, he turned immediately and led local natives back along his path.
Only 16 survivors were found strung along the trail. When examined by a British physician after their 49-day ordeal this “wretched set of human beings” was described as, “living skeletons, covered with foul ulcers… In nearly all, the intellect was in a slight degree affected, as evinced by childish and silly remarks, although their memory, and the recollection of their sufferings, were unimpaired.” Strain himself weighed only 75 pounds. Indeed, he never fully recovered. His health prevented his travel out of Darien, and he died in Colon a few years later at age 36.
Our nation shared our Navy’s shock at LT Strain’s experience. Enthusiasm for a trans-isthmus canal immediately cooled. Cullen’s claims fell under question when it was learned that Strain’s party had had to climb as high as 1000 feet to clear the central mountains. For his part, Cullen stuck to his story. From his new posting in a British military hospital in the Crimea, he claimed Strain had been horribly mislead in his search.
Not all in the Navy were willing to give up the search for a workable route across Darien. LT (later RADM) Daniel Ammen, himself an explorer on the Water Witch expedition in Paraguay, perused the journal kept by LT Strain on his trek and discovered what he believed was evidence supporting the existence of Cullen’s trail. Days after Strain had departed the coast his log records that his party heard the evening gun of CYANE being fired. Ammen reasoned that by then, Strain should have been well beyond earshot of the coast, and the ability to hear the gun indicated the presence of a yet undiscovered low valley which conducted the sound inland. Ammen was steadfast in this delusion, but in truth Strain’s party probably wandered for weeks near the coast.
The Civil War intervened in the next decade to distract American attention from the Panama canal project. It was the persistence of Ammen, CDR Thomas O. Selfridge, Jr. and RADM Charles H. Davis that led to the embarkation of a canal surveying expedition sixteen years later. This expedition surveyed three separate sites but was unable to locate Ammen’s illusive valley. When the canal was eventually built 40 years later, the chosen route was 150 miles up the coast from Caledonia Bay.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 26 JAN 22
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
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.