Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt: Steamboat and railroad tycoon

Cornelius Vanderbilt was a 19^th century entrepreneur who made made his riches in producing and sailing steamboats and creating some of the biggest railroad lines. He was born on Staten Island on May 27, 1794 into a poor family who couldn't give him a very good education. But with perseverance and hard work Vanderbilt became one of the most wealthy people in American history. As a boy he worked with his father on a steamboat line and found his interest for ships there. As a teenager he started shipping things on his own steamboat and a few years after that he bought a small fleet of ships and became a captain.

During the California gold rush of 1849 Vanderbilt started a steamboat line on the Atlantic and Caribbean to help ship things from California back to the east. And instead of going down to Panama to get to the west, Vanderbilt's ships went through Nicaragua and went back and forth a lot faster than going down to Panama. He even proposed putting a canal in Nicaragua because it was faster and most of it was already there with Lake Nicaragua and the San Jose River but Vanderbilt didn't get enough endorsements so the plans never followed through.

In the 1860s Vanderbilt started focusing on the up and coming Railroad industry. He started by buying a couple of lines that ran between Chicago and New York and introduced a new system called the inter-regional railroad system. It changed the way the railroads work by putting long lines in, instead of a lot of short lines. It made traveling cheaper and faster. Vanderbilt's system changed the railroad industry very positively.

At the start of the Civil War, Vanderbilt went to the Union army and offered his biggest and best steamboat the Vanderbilt but the army wasn't interested at that point claiming the war wouldn't last very long. But when the famous Confederate ship, the Merrimack, started raiding the east coast, the army took Vanderbilt's deal and his ship. The Vanderbilt stopped the Merrimack in its tracks. After stopping the Merrimack, the Vanderbilt helped track down another of the Confederate's ships. And for Vanderbilt's service to the Union army he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

In 1869 the cousin of Vanderbilt's wife talked him into endorsing a University which eventually became, Vanderbilt University named in Vanderbilt's honor. And by no coincidence the schools nickname became the Commodores.

Cornelius Vanderbilt died on January 4, 1877, at his home in New England. His net worth at his death was over $100 million and in today's that's approximately $2,333,296,875 in 2016 dollars!