Cornelius Vanderbilt started with a single borrowed boat and built the largest fortune in American history through a combination of brilliant business instinct and total indifference to the rules. He crushed competitors with price wars, bribed legislators, manipulated stock markets, and treated his own family with the same ruthlessness he applied to his rivals.

This episode traces Vanderbilt from his Staten Island ferry business through his steamship and railroad empires, the stock market battles that made Wall Street tremble, and the dynastic feuds that consumed his family after his death.

• Vanderbilt’s rise from a single ferryboat to the largest steamship fleet in America
• The Nicaragua transit route and the corporate war with the Accessory Transit Company
• The railroad empire, the Erie War, and the stock manipulations that terrorized Wall Street
• The family feuds, the contested will, and how the Vanderbilt fortune was spent within generations