DIRECTOR paddle steamer 1850.

[aukepalmhof]

Built in 1850 by the yard of J.Simonson’s , New York for Capt. Vanderbilt, New York (Nicaragua Transit Company).
11 June 1850 launched under the name DIRECTOR.
Tonnage 65 tons, dim. 80 x 20 x 4½ft (draught).
Steam engine 30 hp.
Passengers 150.

The discovery of gold in California drew attention from American and European powers who wanted to establish and control routes across Panama and Nicaragua.
Americans, French and British were among the contenders, and in a move to control a route from the sultry, swampy Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua, the British occupied the Eastern seaboard port of San Juan del Norte between 1848 and 1850, renaming it Greytown.
In spite of an extraordinary rainfall (236 inches a year), Cornelis Vanderbilt established a highly profitable route across Nicaragua by waterway and carriage road. In 1851 he developed the route in competition with the Pacific Mail Line, which had joined the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the overland Panama route, which was laborious until the railroad was completed across the Isthmus in 1855.
Vanderbilt’s route was easier in that once passengers reached San Juan del Norte, most of the journey between the oceans was covered in small boats (bungoes) and steamers. The bungoes ferried passengers and cargo up the San Juan River trough 125 miles of jungle to Lake Nicaragua, then across the lake with DIRECTOR to La Virgin (Virgin Bay) near Rivas, ranada on the lake’s northwest shore.
The final leg of the journey was atop mules along a precarious 11-mile path across the Isthmus through the jungle to San Juan del Sur (referred to as San Juan del Sud during the mid 1800s) on the Pacific Ocean where ships were met for the voyage to San Francisco.
Vanderbilt sailed to Nicaragua aboard one of his new larger steamships, the PROMETHEUS, with the DIRECTOR in tow.
On arrival natives warned him that the San Juan River was filled with rapids and rock boulders, fallen trees and hidden bars, and was navigable only by dugout canoe. The Commodore took the helm of the DIRECTOR himself and announced that he was going upstreams to the lake ‘without any more fooling.’
He arranged for part of the San Juan River to be dredged, obstacles blasted out, docks to be built at the Atlantic and Pacific ports, and for 12 miles of macadam read to be laid through the jungle.
The route was opened on 2 July 1851 and was a horrendous journey of 4.531 miles from New York via the new route to California.

The crossing herself was a journey of 182 miles, and the DIRECTOR was used only for some part of the crossing.

Nicaragua 1990 500cor sg?, scott1781.

Source A.Vanderbilt II, Fortune’s Children, The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt;
http://www.maritimeheritage.org/ports/c ... l#director Watercraft Philately May 2002