Instead it writhed in bankruptcy-mercilessly exploited by the Navigation Company (formerly the Transportation Company) and tormented by a feud between its angry stockholders and the Philadelphia bankers who held its bonds. Though it would one day become a commuter line, it was designed to connect New York and Boston by way of a steamboat ferry from its eastern terminus to New England's railways.Įven among these competitors, the Stonington should have throbbed with traffic and profits, for it was still the fastest route between New York and Boston. And the Long Island Railroad advanced eastward by the hour. The decade began with the completion of both the Hartford & New Haven and, more important, the Norwich, a line that descended from Worcester, Massachusetts, to the Connecticut seaport that gave it its name. In the 1840s, the strategic balance in the transportation network of Long Island Sound destabilized as new railways were constructed alongside the Boston & Providence and the Stonington.

He was quick to turn trouble to his advantage, and to prey on the weak and vulnerable. How many times had Vanderbilt embarked on important enterprises only because of chance? His start in steamboats under Gibbons, his Dispatch Line to Philadelphia, his lower Hudson route, his People's Line to Albany, all originated in the unexpected. 1 He forgot to add that great plans often come about by accident. Marx says somewhere that men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves.

The first tycoon