The Swimmer Who Paid 36 Cents to Cross the Panama Canal
Panama Canal transit fees are strictly calculated from a vessel's volume, displacement, and weight. In 1928, American travel writer Richard Halliburton swam the entire 50-mile length of the waterway over ten days. Canal authorities treated Halliburton as an official registered vessel, measured his 140-pound displacement, and charged him a transit toll of exactly 36 cents. It remains the lowest toll ever collected in the canal's operational history.
The Calculus of Canal Tolls
When the Panama Canal opened to maritime traffic in August 1914, it introduced one of the most rigorously standardized tolling frameworks in global trade. Constructed through the mountainous terrain and dense jungles of the Isthmus of Panama, the canal eliminated the grueling and perilous voyage around Cape Horn. The immense capital cost of digging the waterway, combined with the ongoing operational expense of maintaining its mechanical locks and dredging silt, required an exact formula to bill passing traffic. The canal administration based its fee structure entirely on vessel volume and cargo-carrying capacity, using a standardized maritime measurement known as net tonnage.
Under this administrative framework, every vessel seeking passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans had to be measured, registered, and assessed before entering the locks. Canal officials did not treat tolls as discretionary entry fees, nor did they charge flat rates for mere access to the water. Instead, the calculation was an exercise in pure naval mathematics: a ship was charged according to its displacement, cubic capacity, and commercial utility. These rules applied universally, whether the vessel was an industrial cargo carrier laden with grain or an international military cruiser.
An Adventurer Seeking an Unorthodox Route
In the late 1920s, American travel writer and lecturer Richard Halliburton arrived in Central America with an eccentric ambition. A Princeton graduate with an appetite for theatrical exploration, Halliburton had built a celebrity following through best-selling books chronicling his physical feats. He made a career of retracing legendary historical and literary journeys, having already swum the Hellespont in emulation of the poet Lord Byron, climbed Mount Olympus, and scaled the Matterhorn. For his next public sensation, he set his sights on the newly operational Panama Canal.
Halliburton proposed to traverse the entire 50-mile expanse of the canal entirely under his own power. Rather than booking passage on a steamship, he intended to swim from the Atlantic entrance in Colón across Gatun Lake, through the narrow continental divide at the Gaillard Cut, and down to the Pacific terminus at Balboa. When he presented his plan to the Panama Canal authorities, he encountered an administrative barrier: the waterway was an active industrial shipping lane governed by strict maritime statutes, with no legal framework permitting pedestrians or recreational swimmers.
Registering the S.S. Richard Halliburton
Faced with Halliburton's insistence, the canal's governing authorities reached an unusual bureaucratic compromise. They determined that the waterway could not open its gates to an unregulated individual, but it could legally accommodate any vessel willing to submit to standard maritime procedures. If Halliburton insisted on traveling from ocean to ocean, he would have to be logged as an official, registered vessel, subject to the exact regulations, inspections, and billing equations that applied to multi-thousand-ton cargo ships.
Canal officials escorted Halliburton to the scales to determine his official transit tonnage. Weighed in at 140 pounds, Halliburton registered as roughly one-thirteenth of a maritime ton. The canal clerks applied the prevailing rate per net ton to his recorded displacement, which yielded a required fee of exactly 36 cents. Halliburton paid the sum, received his formal documentation, and was officially granted clearance to proceed through the waterway as if he were a motorized cargo ship.
Swimming Among Crocodiles and Steamships
Halliburton's swim was far more arduous and hazardous than a routine open-water exhibition. The fifty-mile crossing took ten days of swimming, conducted in stages under intense tropical heat. Gatun Lake, an artificial body of water created by damming the Chagres River, was populated by alligators and large crocodiles, while the surrounding jungle environment presented persistent threats from tropical parasites and sudden downpours. The narrow waters of the Gaillard Cut also carried heavy industrial traffic, with massive steel hulls passing through the channel.
To ensure his survival, Halliburton was accompanied throughout the crossing by a small support launch carrying an armed marksman. The sharpshooter stood watch at the bow of the rowboat, tasked with scanning the murky water and shooting any crocodiles or large sharks that approached the swimmer. Halliburton swam alongside the escort boat, pacing his energy across several hours each day, hauling himself out of the water each evening to rest before resuming his stroke at the exact spot where he had exited.
Cycling the Locks for Thirty-Six Cents
The most surreal phase of the journey occurred when Halliburton reached the canal's massive lock complexes: Gatun Locks on the Atlantic slope, and the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores Locks on the Pacific side. Because Halliburton was legally recorded as a registered transiting vessel, the canal authority could not simply allow him to climb ladders around the barriers. He had to be elevated and lowered through the lock chambers exactly as an ocean liner would be.
Each lock chamber measured 1,000 feet in length and 110 feet in width, requiring millions of gallons of freshwater to be gravity-fed from Gatun Lake to raise or lower a vessel through the 85-foot elevation change. As canal operators worked the massive control boards, the culverts opened, churning turbulent currents into the concrete chambers. Halliburton floated inside the colossal enclosures, riding the rising and falling water surrounded only by sheer concrete walls. The canal system burned through operational resources worth thousands of dollars to process an entry fee of less than half a dollar.
An Unbroken Record
Halliburton completed his Pacific emergence successfully, and his 36-cent toll slip instantly became a legend of interoceanic commerce. He chronicled the adventure in his 1929 book, New Worlds to Conquer, solidifying his reputation as one of the preeminent romantic adventurers of the interwar era. His daring career continued for another decade until March 1939, when he disappeared at sea in the Pacific Ocean while attempting to sail a custom Chinese junk, the Sea Dragon, from Hong Kong to San Francisco.
Nearly a century later, Halliburton's 36-cent fee remains the lowest toll ever collected in the operational history of the Panama Canal. As global commercial shipping expanded over the subsequent decades, container ships grew vastly larger, culminating in the construction of the expanded Neopanamax locks in the 21st century. Modern cargo and cruise vessels routinely pay transit fees exceeding several hundred thousand dollars per voyage, and peak auction slots for priority passage have topped one million dollars—leaving Halliburton's displacement fee as an entirely unmatched historical singularity.
Key takeaways
•Panama Canal tolls are legally determined by a vessel's volume, displacement, and net tonnage rather than standard passage tariffs.
•In 1928, travel writer Richard Halliburton was classified as an official registered vessel weighing 140 pounds to permit his 50-mile swim through the waterway.
•Canal operators cycled multi-million-gallon lock chambers at Gatun, Pedro Miguel, and Miraflores to raise and lower a single human swimmer.
•Halliburton's 36-cent fee remains the lowest transit toll ever paid in the Panama Canal's operational history.