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Isaac StrainIsaac G. Strain was born March 4, 1821 in Roxbury, Pennsylvania of Scotch-Irish origin and died May 14, 1857 in Aspinwall, Columbia. In 1838 he joined the U.S. Navy to apprentice at sea and become a midshipman. His inclination toward exploration culminated in 1853 when as a lieutenant he received orders from Secretary of the Navy James C. Dobbin to command an U.S. Darin Exploring Expedition. Leading a country at peace and in exercise of a manifest destiny to expand, U. S. President Franklin Pierce envisioned a survey and maping of an Atlantic-to-Pacific ship canal route through the Isthmus of Darin, in Panama, Central America, a region also known as the Darin Gap. His expedition was deprecated by malnourishment, footsore, flesh-embedding parasites and infectuous tropical diseases resulting in the loss of six of his party of twenty-seven. Strain's exploration of the topography and geography of the area contributed to the 1914 linking of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Panama Canal. References Todd Balf, The Darkest Jungle: The True Story of The Darien Expedition and America's Ill-Fated Race to Connect The Seas, 2003, Crown Publishers, New York, ISBN 0-609-60989-0 External links *Virtual American Biographies, Book I: Continental Discovery to 1899
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