SS Ancon was an American cargo and passenger ship that became the first ship to officially transit the Panama Canal in 1914 although the French crane boat Alexandre La Valley completed the first trip in stages during construction prior to the official opening. The ship was built as Shawmut for the Boston Steamship Company by the Maryland Steel Company, Sparrows Point, Maryland and put into Pacific service operating out of Puget Sound ports for Japan, China and the Philippine Islands. Shawmut and sister ship Tremont were two of the largest United States commercial ships in service at the time and the company eventually found them too expensive to operate.

Shawmut and Tremont were acquired by the United States Government through the agency of the Panama Railroad Company's Panama Railroad Steamship Line, whose assets were entirely owned by the government and critical to construction of the canal, to serve between New York and the Atlantic terminus during canal construction. Both ships were renamed for features of the canal; Shawmut for the Pacific side terminus Ancon and Tremont as Cristobal for the Canal's Atlantic port. Though not the first vessel to make a complete transit, Ancon made the first official and ceremonial transit with a delegation of some two hundred dignitaries aboard. After the end of World War I the ship saw very brief service from 28 March to 25 July 1919 as a commissioned United States Ship, USS Ancon (ID-1467), making two round trip voyages from the New York Port of Embarkation to France returning troops home. Ancon was returned to Panama Canal service and was in service with the canal until 1939 when the ship was sold to private parties known as the Permanente Steamship Company and renamed Permanente.

The Panama Canal (Spanish: Canal de Panamá) is an artificial 82 km (51 mi) waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a conduit for maritime trade. One of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken, the Panama Canal shortcut greatly reduces the time for ships to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, enabling them to avoid the lengthy, hazardous Cape Horn route around the southernmost tip of South America via the Drake Passage or Strait of Magellan and the even less popular route through the Arctic Archipelago and the Bering Strait.

Colombia, France, and later the United States controlled the territory surrounding the canal during construction. France began work on the canal in 1881, but stopped because of lack of investors' confidence due to engineering problems and a high worker mortality rate. The United States took over the project on May 4, 1904, and opened the canal on August 15, 1914. The US continued to control the canal and surrounding Panama Canal Zone until the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties provided for handover to Panama. After a period of joint American–Panamanian control, the canal was taken over by the Panamanian government in 1999. It is now managed and operated by the government-owned Panama Canal Authority.

Canal locks at each end lift ships up to Gatun Lake, an artificial lake created to reduce the amount of excavation work required for the canal, 26 m (85 ft) above sea level, and then lower the ships at the other end. The original locks are 33.5 m (110 ft) wide. A third, wider lane of locks was constructed between September 2007 and May 2016. The expanded waterway began commercial operation on June 26, 2016. The new locks allow transit of larger, New Panamax ships.Annual traffic has risen from about 1,000 ships in 1914, when the canal opened, to 14,702 vessels in 2008, for a total of 333.7 million Panama Canal/Universal Measurement System (PC/UMS) tons. By 2012, more than 815,000 vessels had passed through the canal. In 2017 it took ships an average of 11.38 hours to pass between the canal's two locks. The American Society of Civil Engineers has ranked the Panama Canal one of the seven wonders of the modern world.