The New International Encyclopædia/Wheelwright, William

WHEELWRIGHT, William (1798-1873). An American capitalist, born at Newburyport, Mass. He was United States consul at Guayaquil, in Ecuador, from 1824 to 1829, when he removed to Valparaiso, in Chile, where he established a line of passenger vessels along the coast. He founded a line of coasting steamships to connect all the ports between Valparaiso and the Isthmus of Panama, and in 1840 the first two vessels of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company reached the west coast. Wheelwright also built a number of railroads in South America, established the first gas and water-works, and strung the first telegraph line on that continent. He wrote Statements and Documents Relative to the Establishment of Steam Navigation in the Pacific (1838) and Observations on the Isthmus of Panama (1844). Consult: Alberdi, La Vida y los trabajos industriales de William Wheelwright en la America del Sur (Paris, 1876), which was translated into English by Caleb Cushing (Boston, 1877); and Codman, Biographical Sketch of William Wheelwright, of Newburyport, Mass. (Philadelphia, 1888).