William Wheelwright, the son of Ebenezer and Anna Coombs Wheelwright and a descendant of the Rev. John Wheelwright, was born on March 16, 1798 in Newburyport, Massachussets His father was at first a sea-captain and then engaged in the West India trade.
Education
William attended Phillips Academy, Andover, with the class of 1814, then at the age of sixteen shipped as a cabin boy to the West Indies, and after three years of adventure commanded a Newburyport bark to Rio.
Career
In 1823, the Rising Star, bound from Newburyport for Buenos Aires under his command, ran ashore in the Rio de la Plata. Depressed by the accident, he refused to return home and shipped as a supercargo on a vessel bound for Valparaiso. In 1824, he became United States consul at Guayaquil for five years. There he engaged successfully in trade and observed the many neglected possibilities of the continent which was just emerging from the wars of liberation. In 1829, he made a hurried trip to Newburyport, where he married Martha Gerrish Bartlet. Returning to Guayaquil and finding that his $100, 000 business had been wasted by bad management in his absence, he moved to Valparaiso, which, with London, was to be his chief scene of action for many years. He did much to develop the city, building a lighthouse and other port facilities and providing gas and water works. Becoming impressed with the potential advantages of a steamship line along the west coast of South America, where baffling winds and calms made the progress of sailing vessels uncertain and the mountainous terrain precluded a coastal railroad of any length, Wheelwright in 1835 started to seek the permission of the westcoast nations for such a line. Even the British minister at Lima called him a "wild visionary, " while the conservatism, inertia, and instability of the new republics, often dominated by adventurous despots, led to vexatious delays. By 1838, however, he had obtained the necessary concessions. Finding that American capital was not available, he went to England to raise funds. The propaganda of Junius Smith for ocean steamships had just put London in a receptive mood, and with the backing of Sir Clements Markham, P. C. Scarlett, and others, Wheelwright finally secured on Feburary 17, 1840, a British charter for the Pacific Steam Navigation Company (not to be confused with the American Pacific Mail Steam Ship Company formed by W. H. Aspinwall in 1848 to operate from Panama to California). Wheelwright became chief superintendent of the company, capitalized at £250, 000, and late in 1840 took the twin 700-ton steamships Chile and Peru through the Straits of Magellan to enthusiastic receptions at Valparaiso and Callao, the first termini of the line. The lack of coal was a handicap in the beginning, but Wheelwright was constantly prospecting mineral deposits and developed a Chilean supply. The company lost £72, 000 in the first five years and for a time the dissatisfied directors suspended Wheelwright from management, but later prosperity came, and the service was extended to Panama. Wheelwright in 1844 proclaimed the advantages of a railroad across the Isthmus. Soon afterward, railroad development became his absorbing interest. Between 1849 and 1852 he built the first railroad in South America, running fifty-one miles from Caldera, the Chilean port which he developed, into the rich silver and copper mines at Copiapó. He soon extended branches to Chañarcillo and to Tres Puntas, 6, 600 feet above sea level. In a few years, dividends amounted to double the initial cost of $3, 375, 000. In 1850 he gave Chile the first South American telegraph line. Before the railroad from Caldera to Copiapó was completed, Wheelwright had conceived his dream of a transandean railroad, to run southeast diagonally across South America nearly a thousand miles from Caldera in Chile to Rosario on the Parana in Argentina, crossing the Andes at San Francisco pass, 16, 000 feet above sea level. Finding that Chile regarded the stupendous undertaking as impracticable, Wheelwright decided to begin from the Argentine end and in 1855 secured a concession running from Rosario, 189 miles above Buenos Aires, northwest 246 miles across the pampas to Cordoba in central Argentina. Constant delays resulted, from the rival plans of the American railroad builder Henry Meiggs, from political upheavals, and from the Paraguayan war, but Wheelwright received the political backing of the Argentine presidents Mitre and Sarmiento, and the financial support of Thomas Brassey, the British railroad magnate, for the necessary $8, 000, 000 capital. The Grand Central Argentine Railway from Rosario to Cordoba was finally opened on May 16, 1870. For the remaining portion of the transandean railway, Wheelwright and Brassey raised $30, 000, 000 capital, but this was either diverted to naval and military purposes by President Sarmiento of the Argentine or else withheld by Wheelwright and Brassey because they feared such action. International jealousy and other complications delayed the final completion of the transandean railway until 1910. The creation of the port of La Plata was Wheelwright's final important accomplishment. He noticed that the shallowness of the Plata estuary made it difficult if not impossible for large ships to reach Buenos Aires, and pointed out the advantages of the Bay of Ensenada about thirty miles below, near the spot where he had been wrecked fifty years before. On December 31, 1872, he completed a railroad linking this port of La Plata with Buenos Aires. By this time the iron constitution of the old man had begun to give way and in 1873 he sailed for England, where he died.
Achievements
Personality
His death was sincerely mourned by all Latin America and a bronze statue was erected in his memory at Valparaiso in 1876. It indicates a rather stocky, amiable man of the "John Bull" type; his portrait shows flashing eyes and strong features. Though he had visited his birthplace rarely - in 1829, 1853, and 1855 - he was very generous to his relatives there and left a portion of his ample fortune for the technical education of Protestant youths of Newburyport.
Connections
He married Martha Gerrish of Newburyport on February 10, 1829. They had two daughters and a son.