The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (48 page)

The San Juan River flows from Lake Nicaragua to the Atlantic through a dense rain forest. This 1880s photograph shows a steamboat in a wide, shallow section. Vanderbilt personally piloted the first passengers on his Nicaragua line up the river in 1851.
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At the head of the San Juan River was the village of San Carlos. This photograph from the 1880s shows the great Lake Nicaragua in the background, along with typical thatched-roof huts. A fort also guarded this strategic point.
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On leaving the San Juan River, passengers transferred to larger sidewheel steamboats that traversed Lake Nicaragua's 110-mile expanse. The western landing was at Virgin Bay, where a large pier was eventually constructed. This somewhat exaggerated engraving shows the twin cones of the island of Ometepe.
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A twelve-mile carriage road connected Virgin Bay with the little Pacific port of San Juan del Sur, which was virtually uninhabited until Vanderbilt personally chose it as the terminus of the transit route. Passengers transferred between steamship and shore by means of launches.
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By 1851, San Francisco had emerged as a major American city, nourished in part by Vanderbilt's steamship line to and from New York. This photograph looks east across the bay toward Yerba Buena Island. It reveals the shipping that thronged the new wharves and the dense grid of substantial brick buildings that were constructed in the wake of repeated fires.
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This 1854 engraving shows the Narrows at the mouth of New York Harbor, with Staten Island in the foreground, Long Island to the right, and in the distance on the far right the cities of Brooklyn and New York.
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The offices of Vanderbilt's various lines to California could be found next to those of his competitors on Steamship Row, the nickname for this stretch of buildings just to the left of the small oval park of Bowling Green. Vanderbilt maintained a personal office here, at the southern tip of Manhattan, until he sold his steamship interests during the Civil War.
Museum of the City of New York

Shrewd, dashing, and more than a bit slippery, Cornelius K. Garrison became the San Francisco agent for Accessory Transit, the company Vanderbilt had started to carry passengers via Nicaragua. He was manipulated into opposing Vanderbilt in late 1855.
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A small, quiet, intense man, Nashville-born William Walker emerged as a leading “filibuster”—a private citizen who launched armed invasions of foreign countries. In 1855, he landed in Nicaragua with fifty-six men to fight in its civil war. He won, formed a new government, and abolished Accessory Transit. He gave the transit rights to a friend, who resold them to Garrison.
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Granada was the capital of the Conservative government that ruled Nicaragua when Vanderbilt established the transit route. He visited the city on two of his three expeditions to the country. William Walker captured Granada in 1855 and consolidated his power by executing Conservative general Ponciano Corral on the city plaza, shown here.
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Vanderbilt resumed control of Accessory Transit just as Walker revoked its corporate charter and gave its property to Cornelius Garrison and his partner Charles Morgan. Vanderbilt made an alliance with Costa Rica to oust Walker. Walker's downfall began when Sylvanus Spencer, Vanderbilt's personal agent, led a force of Costa Rican soldiers in a surprise assault on a filibuster garrison at Hipp's Point on the San Juan River, shown here.
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