For millennia, humans well-knew that there was a force far more powerful than they upon the Earth, and that was Nature itself. They could only dream of overcoming its power, or try to believe in the myths and fables of others who supposedly had done so. Then, at the dawn of the 19th century, along came a brilliant, creative, controversial American by the name of Robert Fulton. In the late summer of 1807, he ran his experimental "steamboat" from New York City to Albany, not once, but repeatedly. With these continuing commercial trips, Fulton showed that it was possible to alter artificially both a person's location and the amount of time it took to change it. In so doing, he also broke through an enormous psychological barrier that had existed in people's minds; it was, in fact, possible to overcome Nature to practical effect. But running these steamboats on rivers, lakes and bays was one thing. Taking such a vessel on a voyage across the ocean was a different proposition altogether. Experienced mariners didn't think it could be done. These early steamboats were just too flimsy and unwieldy to withstand the dangers of the deep. Yet there was at least one man who believed otherwise. His name was Captain Moses Rogers. He set out to design a steam vessel that was capable of overcoming the vicissitudes of the sea. This craft would be not a steamboat, but a steamship, the first of its kind. Finding a crew for such a new-fangled contraption proved to be exceedingly difficult. Mariners--conditioned as they were to "knowing the ropes" of a sailing ship--looked upon this new vessel, and its unnatural means of propulsion, with the greatest suspicion. To them, it was not a "Steam Ship"--instead, it was a "Steam Coffin."

This is the story of a ship and her pioneer master, Moses Rogers, who had the idea of making the first transatlantic voyage in a steam-propelled vessel. His "laudable and meritorious experiment" marked one of the world's maritime epochs. The conception and building of the S. S. Savannah was guided by the engineering genius of Captain Rogers who, with Robert Fulton, was a leading exponent of steam in his day. The momentous voyage began in Savannah, Georgia, in 1819, and took the courageous crew to England, Sweden, and Russia. These were the elegant steam ship's times of triumph. Yet she also had moments of pathos, from the first doubts and fears of a public that dubbed her a "steam coffin" to that sad day when a Washington newspaper said her engine could be removed for only $200, leaving her "just as good" as any other ship. The previously untold story of the first steam-powered vessel to cross the Atlantic is written in a scholarly, well-documented fashion, yet with the color, imagination, and humor of the men who lived it.