In 1920 after some thirty -nine years of problems with disease, high costs, and politics, the Panama Canal was officially opened, finally linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by allowing ships to pass through the fifty-mile around Cape Horn. It takes a ship approximately eight houses to complete the trip through the canal and costs an average of fifteen thousand dollars, one truth of what it would cost an average ship to round the Horn.  More than fifteen thousand ships pass through its locks each year. The French initiated the project but sold their rights to the United States, which actually began the construction of the project. The later will control it until the end of the twentieth century when Panama lakes over its duties.