The Man Who Swam the Panama Canal
Born in Brownsville, Tennessee, in 1900, Richard Halliburton overcame a sickly childhood to become a celebrated daredevil—circling the world in a biplane, riding elephants in Nepal and, in 1928, becoming the first person to swim the length of the Panama Canal, just 14 years after it opened. Alas, our dashing hero disappeared in 1939 while attempting to sail his custom-built Chinese junk Sea Dragon from Hong Kong to San Francisco, where he intended using it to show tourists the recently opened Golden Gate Bridge. Initially, the Coast Guard delayed searching for him, suspecting a publicity stunt, but neither Halliburton, his crew nor the Sea Dragon was ever found—despite a subsequently extensive search by the U.S. Navy. In 1940, an ocean liner encountered barnacle-covered wreckage that might have come from the Sea Dragon, but this was never confirmed. Richard Halliburton: born 1900; disappeared March 1939; legally declared dead October 1939. Credits: Miraflores Locks time-lapse footage: Uwebart/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Cropped and edited. Historical footage: Panama Canal, Duhem Motion Picture Manufacturing Company—Internet Archive. Music: “Silent Movie – Swing Delight” by Diana Production Music—Pixabay. Based on the nonfiction cruise books HIGH SEAS LOW COST and DON’T MISS YOUR SHIP! by John Griffiths, available in Kindle, print and audiobook editions on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/author/johngriffiths #PanamaCanal #RichardHalliburton #MaritimeHistory #CruiseFacts #Shorts