Morning of Fire

Just four years after the Revolutionary War and more than a decade before Lewis and Clark's expedition, a remarkable-but now forgotten-plan was hatched along the docks of Boston Harbor. Two ships carrying the flag of the newly formed United States would be dispatched in 1787 on a landmark adventure around South America's Cape Horn and into the largely uncharted waters of the Pacific Ocean, far past the western edge of the continent. The man chosen to lead the expedition was Captain John Kendrick, a master navigator who had made his name as a charismatic privateer during the Revolution. On the harrowing seven-year voyage that followed, Kendrick would establish the first American outpost in the remote Pacific Northwest, sail into a deadly cauldron of intertribal war in the Hawaiian Islands, wage a single-ship campaign to hold off advances of the British and Spanish empires, and narrowly escape capture by samurai in Japan before meeting his own violent and tragic end thousands of miles from home. Brilliantly brought to life by historian Scott Ridley Morning of Fire is a startling rediscovery of a thrilling lost chapter of American history. Book jacket.

Descended from a long line of New England sailors and shipbuilders, Scott Ridley has written for the New Republic, The Nation, Newsday, the Denver Post, and other publications. He lives with his family in East Harwich, Massachusetts.