Cornelius Vanderbilt strikes out on his own…

Cornelius Vanderbilt strikes out on his own to provide steam service on the Hudson River between Manhattan and Albany, New York in 1829.

Vanderbilt had worked on ferries in and around New York as a young boy, quitting school at age eleven.

He was operating his own business by age sixteen—after having borrowed money from his mother—ferrying freight and passengers between Staten Island and Manhattan.

During the War of 1812, the twenty-year-old entrepreneur had received a government contract to supply the forts around New York City.

He had operated sailing schooners, gaining his nickname of "Commodore."

The New York legislature had in 1800 granted a thirty-year legal monopoly on steamboat traffic to Robert Fulton and his cousin by marriage, Robert Livingston, with whom he developed the first viable steamboat, the North River Steamboat.

Vanderbilt, working for a ferry operator named Thomas Gibbons, had in 1818 undercut the prices charged by Fulton and Livingston for service between New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Manhattan—an important link in trade between New York and Philadelphia.

During this period, his wife, Sophia Vanderbilt, had operated a very profitable inn and tavern near the New Jersey mooring, adding significantly to the early family fortune.

Vanderbilt had avoided capture by those who sought to arrest him and impound the ship.

Livingston and Fulton had offered Vanderbilt a lucrative job piloting their steamboat, but Vanderbilt had rejected the offer, stating, "I don't care half so much about making money as I do about making my point, and coming out ahead."

For Vanderbilt, the point is the superiority of free competition over the government-granted monopoly.

Livingston and Fulton had sued; the case had gone before the United States Supreme Court and ultimately broken the Fulton-Livingston monopoly on trade.