Well, if she’s a countess, then she’s related to this guy.
“There will not be enough trees in the jungle to make crosses for your workers’ graves!” The warning was stark and terrible, but Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man who had built the Suez Canal, and who now intended to crown his career by constructing a Panama canal, took no notice.
The warning was given to him by a fellow-Frenchman, who knew what he was talking about. De Lesseps did not, and set in motion a catastrophe so appalling that even a century later the tragedy chills the blood of everyone who hears about it.
In the early 1870s, surveyors, hopelessly hampered by dense forests, considered every possible route for a canal, and most of them decided that one built using the Lake of Nicaragua seemed best, even though locks would have to be built. Alas, a Frenchman named Wyse, after a feeble survey, obtained permission from the government of Colombia (which then included Panama) to build a canal roughly where today’s canal is. Unfortunately for many thousands, Wyse found an eager listener in Count Ferdinand de Lesseps.
The Count was known to every Frenchman as “the Great Frenchman” and he was now 74 years old. Suez had made him world famous. A man of great charm, capable of raising fortunes to finance his schemes, he had been in overall command at Suez, but was not so much an engineer as a general in charge of operations.
The Suez Canal had taken ten years to build, but it was really a giant ditch. Panama, he foolishly believed, was an even easier task. He even refused to accept the fact that the new canal would need locks. De Lesseps brushed aside the two main obstacles, the hills of Culebra, which were 100 metres above sea level, and the raging Chagres River. This flooded regularly, and many millions of tarantulas would blacken the trees of the area as they tried to escape from the floods.
At a meeting of the International Congress of Geographical Sciences in Paris in 1879, most experienced engineers present voted against de Lesseps’ plan. However he carried the majority and rapidly raised vast sums to finance his scheme. His son Charles, despite misgivings, agreed to act as engineer-in-charge. Incredibly, none of those involved had surveyed the route.
De Lesseps reached Panama in the dry season and conquered nearly everyone with his infectious optimism. The ground was struck with a ceremonial pickaxe by his seven-year-old daughter in January 1880, and de Lesseps left to raise more money. Just a year later, after a reconnaissance that alarmed many experts, work began.
Soon the rains came and with them stark horror. No one knows just how many died before the scheme was finally abandoned in 1889. At least 2,000 French technicians perished, two thirds of those who went there. At least ten times as many labourers died.
Her ex-husband was a count. So is she still a countess even though she divorced him, and has since remarried and divorced again?