Hell's Gorge

As heard on the Empire podcast, the epic story of one of the most extraordinary engineering feats in world history: the building of the Panama Canal.

A completely wonderful book, beautifully written, amazingly researched William Dalrymple

An excellent, excellent book’ Anita Anand

Hells Gorge traces a heroic dream that spanned four centuries: to build a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans The human cost was immense: in appalling working conditions and amid epidemics of fever, tens of thousands perished fighting the jungle, swamps and mountains of Panama, a scale of attrition comparable to many great battles.

Matthew Parker explores the fierce geo-political struggle behind the heroic vision of the canal, and the immense engineering and medical battles that were fought. But he also weaves in the stories of the ordinary men and women who worked on the canal, to evoke everyday life on the construction and depict the battle on the ground deep in Hells Gorge. Using diaries, memoirs, contemporary newspapers and previously unseen private letters, he draws a vivid picture of the heart-breaking struggle on the Isthmus, in particular that of the British West Indians who made up the majority of the canal workforce.

Hells Gorge is a tale of politics, finance, press manipulation, scandal and intrigue, populated by a dazzling cast of idealists and bullies, heroes and conmen. But it is also a moving tribute to the Forgotten Silvermen, so many of whom died to fulfil the centuries-old canal dream.