Big Science, 1882--Hauling (Really Big) Ships Overland and up a Mountain

In 1982 Werner Herzog, in what may have been the culmination of a weirdly fashioned and irresistible death-wish effort, released a film that he wrote and directed:  Fitzcarraldo.  It is a spill-over big, magnificent film about a would-be ice-making rubber baron bringing an opera house into the trans-Andes, trying to make his way into the dense forest in a huge (320 tons) steamboat on the Amazon to stake a claim in exploiting previously un-leased lands filled with rubber trees  The problem faced by Fitzcarraldo (played by the probably-slightly-insane Klaus Kinski¹--just see Herzog's 1972 Aguirre, Wrath of God and you'll know what I mean) is that his path is blocked by unnavigable rapids--he can however reach his destination by hauling his very large ship up and over a mountain to get to a more pliant river and then to his goal.  Herzog actually does this for the film--no digital anything here^2,3--in what is one of the most glorious things I've ever seen in the movies.  He really does have native people clear a path up the side of a mountain, and they DO haul this ship up and over.  It is truly magnificent, especially seeing the boat moving slowly up a mountain as background to a sweating Fitz.  

The story is partially based upon the adventure of Carlos Fermín Fitzcarrald, who in 1890 attempted a similar feat, though with a much smaller vessel, and who also dismantled the craft to haul it overland. (Its not a bad idea, necessarily, to do this dismantling thing, especially if it has to be done and there's no other way to do it. The North Vietnamese famously did the impossible by hauling artillery up through the jungle and up mountains to shockingly surround the French at Dien Bien Phu.) 

   The bigger and deeper back-story though is the effort--mainly by Elmer Corthell and James Eads--to build a combination railroad ship canal across the Tehuantepec isthmus in Nicaragua.  The idea of moving across Central America rather than taking the enormously long route around the tip of South America and up again is hundreds of years old.  The Corthell/Eads plan, begun in 1870's and alive in the early '80's, was really the first feasible (and workable) initiative.

 

It would have been a gigantic undertaking, and even though it was much longer (130 miles or so)  than the more-favored Panama location for the canal, it seemed more workable as there would be less digging and no need for a lock/canal system as required at Panama. 

The French began a doomed attempt at conquering Panama shortly before this.  Ferdinand de Lesseps tried to build a canal in 1880, but the organization and general construction plan was truly inferior; also, the sanitary and medical conditions were terrible, with the French losing perhaps 22 thousand men in the failed process to disease (mainly malaria).  (The United States would lose 5,609 workers while building the Panama canal, on land granted as a payback for "helping" Panama release themselves from Columbia.)

The Corthell/Eads (who by the way was a master builder perhaps best known for his inspired masterpiece of a bridge at St. Louis) plan called for hauling the ships up and out of the water in a short canal and placing them on an enormous floating roundabout; the roundabout would then be raised, and the ship place on huge cradles borne upon vastly augmented railway lines.  Once on the cradle, the ship would be pulled and pushed by a team of four large locomotive teams which were in turn composed of two large engines.  Happily aboard, the ship would then be taken on the extended, expanded wide and augmented rail 130 miles overland and dumped into the Pacific.

It was evidently not a workable deal all the way around, though, as the U.S. decided on the new Panama to works its engineering miracle.

There is something pleasing though about the Ship Railway, though, something that appeals to the little bit of Mr. Herzog in me.  Perhaps it was the appraisal of the very stiff-lipped Sir Edward Reed--who was the former master engineer for the British navy and consultant to Eads—that makes it all so irresistible.  “It would be best to avoid a very high rate of speed” when hauling the massive ocean-going and heavily laden cargo ships.  Indeed.

Notes

1. The original actor in the Fitzcarraldo role was Jason Robards, who had to give the film up after about a third or so the way through as he came down with dysentery. Kinski came into the role after that, and the film was re-shot. 

2. There is a scene showing the steamboat being unmoored and sent down the rapids on its own--that is done with a model. So far as I know, that is the only bit of post production trickery for the film. 

3. There's an interesting documentary of the film also released in 1982, Burden of Dreams.

Comments

[jasper]

It is interesting where Herzog's inspiration comes from. His film is rooted in history but it is also rooted in his fascination with the neolithic standing stones that one finds in France and the U.K..

Kinski was a tad on the peculiar side... but the same can probably be said of Herzog himself. He has claimed that a leader of one of the indigenous tribes offered to kill Kinski. He turned him down because filming had not been completed.

[Rick]

I enjoyed this post man's various efforts, real and imagined, to conquer the comparatively narrow bit of land separating the two great oceans. The recommendation to avoid high speed while towing/pushing huge ocean-going vessels across the Nicaraguan route makes one wonder if Eads may have paid Sir Edward too much, regardless of what he paid him. Sir Edward was former master engineer of the British navy, but he was still an active master of the obvious.

The interesting choice you made to use "irreproachable" in defining the sanitary conditions and available medical care during the French disaster of a canal attempt puzzled me at first. Then, after thinking about it, I decided I could get behind this new use of the word. It is most-typically used in situations to indicate someone has done such a good job or something was so perfect for its role that the person or thing is beyond reproach. Here, it is exactly the opposite: the situation was so horrible for the workers, that reproach would not be strong enough condemnation; the situation was beyond that, or irreproachable.

There's always the chance that you could simply have meant a different word and that this one was accidentally put onto the screen by rebellious fingers, but I'll go with my explanation until the truth comes out.

[jon swan]

Hmm ... you start by saying Fitzcarraldo is a Wim Wenders film then mention Herzog - thus correcting yourself. But will you edit out Wenders and replace with the correct Werner Herzog in the beginning or am I missing something.....?

[John PTak]

Mea culpa! THanks Joe.