The Commodore had spent some $700,000 on its hull, and by the time he installed the plush sofas, carved rosewood, and titanic twin engines, he would pay out more than $900,000. This sum suggests that the Mercantile Agency sorely underestimated his wealth when it guessed that he was worth $5 million—for not even the risk-taking Commodore would have devoted almost 20 percent of his entire fortune to just one ship.2 But the great cost of the Vanderbilt does reveal his confidence. He constructed this ship to compete on the Atlantic; he was staking a huge sum on his ability to defeat the heavily
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