Costa Rica banknotes 10 Colones banknote 1950 Banco Central de Costa Rica
Obverse: Portrait of Manuel José Carazo Bonilla (1808–1877) was a Costa Rican politician.
Reverse: Clipper Ship "William Le Lacheur" (Coffee transport directly to London).
Printed by American Bank Note Company, New York.
Costa Rica Banknotes - Costa Rica Paper Money
Banco Central de Costa Rica 1950-1967 "Provisional Overprint" Issue
William Le Lacheur
William Le Lacheur (15 October 1802 Forest, Guernsey, Channel Islands – 27 June 1863, London), was a Guernsey sea captain who played an important role in the economic and spiritual development of the Central American country of Costa Rica. Le Lacheur is widely credited in Costa Rica with having transformed the economy of the country by establishing a direct regular trade route for Costa Rican coffee growers to the European market, thereby helping to establish the Costa Rican coffee trade.
In 1830, he entered the Azores fruit trade with the ship Minerva. By 1836, he had formed a company Le Lacheur & Co, which owned two ships: Minerva and Dart. Over the following years, he continued to add to his fleet, and to seek out new markets. In 1841, Le Lacheur took delivery of the barque Monarch. The Monarch was a much larger vessel and capable of journeys further afield. During a stop at the port of Mazatlán, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, he learnt from the British Consul of the difficulty that the Costa Rican coffee growers were having in finding a market for their produce.
Since its independence in 1821, Costa Rica had found no regular trade routes for its coffee in European markets. This was compounded by transportation problems. The coffee-growing areas were located in the central part of the country and it was impossible, because of the mountains and the rainy forest, to send the coffee to the Caribbean Sea and therefore to the Atlantic. It was much easier to ship the coffee to a Pacific port, Puntarenas, and to sail around Cape Horn to the Atlantic. It was before the Caribbean railway from San José to the Caribbean and the Panama Canal were built.
William saw a business opportunity, and agreed with Costa Rican coffee growers to establish a regular service to carry their coffee to London. In 1843, the Monarch arrived in Puntarenas and loaded the first cargo of nearly 5,000 bags of coffee.
The venture was a success, and he began increasing the size of his fleet to accommodate the increasing demand for coffee in London. During the rest of the 1840s, he diverted his other ships from the fruit trade to the coffee trade. Then, starting in 1850, he commissioned the construction of five ships designed especially for the coffee trade. During the 1860s, a further seven ships were added to the fleet.