William Wheelwright, (born March 16, 1798, Newburyport, Mass., U.S.—died Sept. 26, 1873, London), U.S. businessman and promoter, responsible for opening the first steamship line between South America and Europe and for building some of the first railroad and telegraph lines in Argentina, Chile, and Peru.
Wheelwright came from a Puritan New England family and was educated at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. On graduation he became a seaman and at the age of 19 captain of a New England merchant ship. Shipwrecked near Buenos Aires in 1823, he went to Chile and began to explore the Pacific coast of South America, quickly realizing the commercial possibilities of the seaways off the South American coast. Between 1835 and 1840 he raised the necessary capital in England to form a steamship line, the Pacific Mail Steam Company, which linked Valparaiso, Chile, with what is now Panama and then connected with a line that went from Panama to England. In 1851 he also built the first railroad in Chile, which connected Copiapó, a mining town, with the port of Caldera, and subsequently he built a line linking Valparaiso with Santiago. He also was the first to bring the electric telegraph, gas lighting, and water sanitation systems to several cities in Chile and Peru.
In 1863 he returned to Argentina and built a railway line between Rosario and Córdoba. He was responsible for planning the famous trans-Andean railroad between Argentina and Chile.