“At that day parents claimed the services and earnings of their children till they were twenty-one.  In other words, families made common cause against the common enemy, Want.  The arrangement between this young boatman and his parents was, that he should give them all his day earnings and half his night earnings.  He fulfilled his engagement faithfully until his parents released him from it, and with his own half of his earnings by night, he bought all his clothes.  He had forty competitors in the business, who, being all grown men, could dispose of their gains as they chose; but of all the forty, he alone has emerged to prosperity and distinction.  Why was this?  There were several reasons.  He soon became the best boatman in the port.  He attended to his business more regularly and strictly than any other.  He had no vices.  His comrades spent at night much of what they earned by day, and when the winter suspended their business, instead of living on their last summer’s savings, they were obliged to lay up debts for the next summer’s gains to discharge.  In those three years of willing servitude to his parents, Cornelius Vanderbilt added to the family’s common stock of wealth, and gained for himself three things—­a perfect knowledge of his business, habits of industry and self-control, and the best boat in the harbor.”

During the War of 1812, young Vanderbilt was kept very busy.  All the harbor defenses were fully manned, and a number of war vessels were in port all the time.  The travel between these and the city was very great, and boatmen were in demand.

In September, 1813, a British fleet attempted to run past Fort Richmond, during a heavy gale.  The commanding officer was anxious to send to New York for reinforcements, but it was blowing so hard that none of the old boatmen were willing to venture upon the bay.  They all declared that if the voyage could be made at all, Cornelius Vanderbilt was the only man who could make it.  The commandant at once sent for the young man, who, upon learning the urgency of the case, expressed his belief that he could carry the messengers to the city.  “But,” said he, “I shall have to carry them part of the way under water.”  He set out with the messengers, and in an hour landed them safe, but drenched through, at the foot of Whitehall Street, which was then the landing place of all the boatmen of the harbor.

He was now so prosperous in his calling that he determined to marry.  He had wooed and won the heart of Sophia Johnson, the daughter of a neighbor, and he now asked his parents’ consent to his marriage, and also requested them to allow him to retain his own earnings, in order that he might be able to support a wife.  Both of his petitions received the approval of his parents, and in the winter of 1813 he was married.  His wife was a woman of unusual personal beauty and strength of character, and proved the best of partners.  He has often declared since that he owed his success in life as much to her counsel and assistance as to his own efforts.