Ocean Queen was a side-paddled wooden ship built in 1857 by Stephen G. Bogert, of the Westervelt & Co. Shipyard of New York City.

The Partnership had been set up in connection with the armed takeover of Nicaragua by the American adventurer William Walker, with the help of some 100 other United States citizens.

Declaring himself President of the Republic, Walker then cancelled the charter of Vanderbilt's Transit Company to transport passengers across the Isthmus of Panama and seized its property, transferring it to Morgan & Garrison.

[1][2] After the Civil War, she once again sailed between New York and Panama, carrying passengers destined for California, who then had to take a train across the Isthmus and find passage on the Pacific side.

The only passenger known (so far) to have achieved some note of fame was William Jay Gaynor, later the Mayor of New York (1910-1913), who eventually died of an assassin's bullet in 1913.

They set sail from New York on the Ocean Queen on 16 July 1868, landing in Aspinwall, Panama, from which they then proceeded to San Francisco by train and ship.