Lost in Florida

In 1836 The Proprietors of Locks and Canals on Merrimack River sold two locomotives to a start-up railroad in the Florida Territory. The Pensacola Railroad never built an inch of track or a whit of system infrastructure.

The railroad was mere conception. Part of a grandiose scheme of a group of Floridians, led by William H. Chase, to channel cotton and lumber from Alabama and Georgia through Pensacola Bay. The Floridians would reap the benefits through a Pensacola real estate development project and the new Bank of Pensacola. The bank controlled the railroad. It was intended to control U.S. federal government largess for building forts and military installations in Pensacola and the Gulf of Mexico.

The Bank of Pensacola issued bonds to finance the scheme. The Florida Territory guaranteed the bonds. Northern financiers were enlisted to purchase the bonds. Those financiers took control of the Bank of Pensacola and the real estate development project.

The Bank of Pensacola collapsed in the Panic of 1837. Florida repudiated its bond guarantee. The two locomotive engines disappeared.

Patrick Tracy Jackson, the Locks & Canals treasurer, took his lessons from the Pensacola Railroad debacle. In subsequent engine sale transactions, Jackson developed the core elements of an equipment finance structure. The structure was refined in rolling stock sales to the Baltimore & Susquehanna and the Philadelphia & Reading. It was the core of the Schuylkill Navigation boat loans and the car and equipment trusts of Lehigh Coal & Navigation, the Jersey Central, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. It is used still for financing acquisitions of all manner of equipment and projects.

This book explores the intricate web of transactions surrounding the Locks & Canals sale of locomotives to the Pensacola Railroad and the mystery of the two lost engines.

Available formats: (a) hardcover with color interior; (b) paperback with color interior; and (c) paperback with black and white interior.