ASK AN American in New York about the name Goethals, and she’ll point to the bridge between Staten Island and New Jersey. Can’t argue about tastes, for the old one was a monster, but the new bridge that has more recently been installed is a joy to behold. The water it spans across is called Arthur Kill, but that’s a misspelling. Staten Island is named after the States General parliament in The Hague, and the original spelling of the water between the island and the mainland is Achterkil, aka backwater, a stream that passes behind the island.
However, if you ask a Dutchman of a certain age about the name Goethals, he will tell you: that was a Belgian soccer coach. That’s right, and Raymond Goethals was a good one too. But that memory also explains why the name evokes something Belgian. Even though it is a Dutch-speaking family from a region that for a very long time was part of the Netherlands. Which is particularly true for the man of the bridge, George Washington Goethals. He came from Stekene, smack dab on the Zeeland border and practically siamese twins with Hulst since forever.
George Goethals built the Panama Canal.
THAT’S ONE of those waters that everyone knows by name, but that by far most people never get to see. Once you’ve seen it, you’ll never forget it. In Panama City a huge bridge spans it with such steep slopes that the colorful buses must do all they can to make it across. The noise they make during that effort, especially in the middle of the night – that too stays with you forever.
Dutch American President Teddy Roosevelt forced the construction of the canal by helping a small army of insurgents to secede the province of Panama from Colombia, and next by taking over the canal zone, then still dry, from a French team that had no idea how to dig a canal. A tragic episode, by the way, because French laborers had died by the thousands from yellow fever and malaria, and it was not until the Americans arrived that both diseases were eradicated in Panama.
ANYWAY, Roosevelt probably thought, this Goethals, he’s from the same Zeeland where the Roosevelts hailed from, so he’s got to know a thing or two about how one digs a canal. What helped was that engineer and general Goethals had already once demonstrated in Alabama how to do this, pioneering there with a lock that resolved a 28-ft height difference. In the 51-mile Panama Canal, he built twelve locks that negotiate an 85 feet elevation difference. The canal shortened the distance over water between the US east and west coasts by roughly 8,000 nautical miles, and saved travel time by three weeks.
Goethals completed the job two years under target, which made him a legendary engineer. He then was put in charge of water traffic between New York and New Jersey, which is why they eventually built that bridge in his name across the Achterkil. But in the meantime, don’t think they know how to honor the man with the correct pronunciation of his name here. Goa-th-awls, some say, others turn it into a goat’s neck: goat-hals.
It’s Gggg, the Dutch version, yes? GggOOt-hawls. Okay? Good enough.
* Panama Canal is not the straight line that typically defines a canal, but a winding 51-mile waterway, as dictated by the landscape. Clearly visible: two sets of locks. The canal handles 32 ships per day.
