Panama Canal Ship Pilot Navigates Tricky Waters, and Trump

Hanging from a ladder attached to the hull of a giant, bobbing tanker, Capt. Efraín Hallax began his climb up to the crew awaiting him atop the Athina, a ship anchored in Panama Bay and third in line to transit the Panama Canal.

The daunting ascent up the shifting ship was nothing new for Captain Hallax, 73. He has been a ship’s pilot in the Panama Canal for over 40 years, responsible for guiding vessels through the trade-critical corridor that connects the Pacific Ocean with the Caribbean Sea.

On this night in February, Captain Hallax reported for work a half-hour before midnight — and just a few hours after President Trump had canceled a call with President José Raúl Mulino of Panama to continue their negotiations over the future of the canal, which the U.S. president wants returned to American control.

The overnight crossing was nothing out of the ordinary for the captain. With about 3 percent of the world’s maritime trade carried through its locks, the Panama Canal is a 24-hour operation.

“Business as usual,” said Captain Hallax. “Always business as usual in the Panama Canal, no matter Christmas, no matter rain, no matter fog, no matter nothing, no matter Trump.”

As he took his first sip of the night’s many coffees, Captain Hallax said alertness was a pilot’s essential ally, and he counts on the caffeine — plus ice over his eyes — to help keep him awake. “You see nothing at this time, just little lights,” he said. “Blinking can cost you your life.”

Captain Hallax is one of 310 pilots — six are women — authorized by the Authority of the Panama Canal to steer a ship through the waterway. These pilots are the only ones allowed to make the 50-mile transit, with the ship’s captain required to cede control for the complex journey through the isthmus passage.

Informed by the marine traffic control tower about the night’s traffic, he knew what to expect: which ship to follow and what restrictions were in place. “It’s a bit like chess, a constant calculation,” he said.

The Athina is small enough to fit through the three sets of locks, named Miraflores, Pedro Miguel and Gatun, which were built by the American government and have been operating since the canal opened in 1914. (In 2006, wider locks for bigger ships were opened.) In good weather, the transit takes about 10 hours.

About 40 ships can make the journey daily, and the more ships that cross, the more money Panama makes. And it’s a lot.

Always profitable, the canal “is a cash cow for the country,” Captain Hallax said. In 2024, it contributed $2.4 billion to government coffers.

The canal is narrow and crowded, and job No. 1 for the pilots is using their expert local knowledge to make sure the ships they are helming don’t hit the sides, or another vessel.

“They are highly specialized drivers,” said John Feeley, a former United States ambassador to Panama, “trained to move the biggest moving structures on Planet Earth, like watching a horizontal skyscraper move.”

As was made clear by the global trade bottleneck created when a container ship got stuck in the Suez Canal, a mistake made in a canal’s constricted waterway can have consequences felt around the world.

Captain Hallax was told the Miraflores locks were available at 2:30 a.m., so as soon as he arrived on deck, he took command of the ship.

“Sometimes there is friction with some of the captains,” he said of the power transfer. “It’s like asking someone for his wife.”

Steering from inside the bridge on a foggy night or during a downpour can get especially difficult, and dangerous. “I sometimes cannot see my nose,” Captain Hallax said. But tonight’s crossing would at least start out easy. “Sea is calm now,” Captain Hallax said as he surveyed the water around him, “but this time of the year the winds can be tricky out there.”

While tankers like the Athina are common assignments, the range of ships he pilots is wide. “Anything that floats,” he said, including military vessels. “U.S. submarines pop up often, he said.

Raised in a semirural neighborhood on the outskirts of Panama City, Captain Hallax said that from a young age he had always wanted to see what the outside world looked like.

Both his father and stepfather were seamen, “so that was an influence,” he said. But it was the advice he received at a young age from an American canal pilot who was a family friend that really stuck. “If you want a future in this country,” the American pilot told him, “find yourself a job in the Panama Canal.”

At the time, that dream was out of reach. The U.S. Canal Zone was a mostly forbidden fantasy land — except for a once-a-month visit with an aunt to visit her friend in the Zone. To the boy living at times without water and electricity, “everything was perfect in the Zone,” he recalled. “The streets, the trees, the mangoes. The lightbulbs worked. The buses ran.”

When he reached adulthood, the Canal Zone was still shut to Panamanians. “It was impossible to go knock on the door of a maritime agency, he said. “They were all inside the Zone.”

Thanks to a scholarship, Captain Hallax attended the Arturo Prat Naval Academy in Chile, and his peripatetic sea career began. But the jobs open to a Panamanian weren’t the best: “From lousy tramp steamer to lousy tramp steamer,” he said.

He picked up additional maritime training wherever he could, from New York to Italy. Some ships on which he served crossed the Panama Canal. “I felt like I was in another country, not my own,” he said.

In 1977, when the globe-sailing Captain Hallax was in his mid-20s, Panama signed the treaty with the United States that would give it full control of the canal in 20 years.

Knowing it needed to fill a huge void of trained pilots, Panama’s government put out an open call for all Panamanian seamen with a first officer license and at least eight years of navigation experience. At the time, Captain Hallax was working on a cruise ship in Oregon.

He applied immediately, and in 1983, he became one of the nine Panamanians who made up the first batch of pilots hired to start replacing the Americans.

Today, the pilots come from varied backgrounds, but share one thing. “They are exquisitely paid,” said Mr. Feeley, the ex-ambassador.

Pilots make about $350,000 a year — and double that if they’re willing to forego a normal life and work all the time.

But Captain Hallax opted not to spend every hour at sea. A single man until he was 62, his other jobs included owning three bars, two named after pirates.

The most difficult moment of his canal-crossing career is one he has rarely talked about since: He once stopped a ship on purpose, in protest.

During the final days of the dictatorship of Gen. Manuel Noriega, who ruled Panama from 1983 to 1989, Captain Hallax one day on his way to work saw “a bunch of policemen beat up women indiscriminately.”

A few hours later, as he piloted a Turkish boat through the Pedro Miguel locks, “tears rolling down my face from rage,” he dropped the ship’s anchor at the narrow entry to Gatun Lake and took to the ship’s radio to announce his protest against Noriega.

The stoppage — “the dumbest thing I’ve ever done,” he said — lasted 15 minutes.

He was fired, and with Noriega’s goons looking for him, he went into hiding. But just two weeks later, President George H.W. Bush ordered an invasion of Panama. The canal was closed for a week, and Noriega was soon arrested.

Captain Hallax’s lawyer argued that his action should be considered heroic resistance, not insubordination, and weeks after “that stupidity,” he said, he was rehired.

The night’s crossing of the Athina went off without a hitch, and Captain Hallax arrived home the next morning. “Sleepy,” he said.

He plans to keep piloting another two years, then retire to see more of the world — this time on foot. “I’ve discovered I like to walk,” he said.

Whatever becomes of Mr. Trump’s Canal interest, Captain Hallax doesn’t expect much to change for pilots.

The sea, the wind, the fear, the exhaustion and the bad shipboard food will remain.

“Politics,” he said, “won’t change these things.”