Morning of Fire: America's Epic First Journey into the Pacific

by Scott Ridley

Overview

Morning of Fire by Scott Ridley is the thrilling story of 18th century American explorer and expeditioner John Kedrick as he journeyed  for land and trade in the Pacific. Set against the backdrop of one of the most exciting and uncertain times in world history, John Kendrick’s odyssey aboard his sailing ship Lady Washington carries him from the shores of New England across the unexplored waters of the Pacific Northwest to the contentious ports of  China and the war-ravaged islands of Hawaii, all while avoiding intrigues and traps from the British and the Spanish. Morning of Fire is riveting  American and naval history that brings the era of George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson gloriously alive—a tale of danger, adventure, and discovery that  fans of Nathaniel Philbrick will not want to miss.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061700194
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	12/06/2011
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Prologue Morning of Fire 1

PART I The Journey Outward 9

Chapter 1 Out of a Time of Great Peril 11

Chapter 2 Passage to the Underworld 25

Chapter 3 Spain's Frontier 35

Chapter 4 Refuge 47

Chapter 5 Halting the Incursion 66

PART II Lufinite Wilderness 73

Chapter 6 Nootka 75

Chapter 7 Seizure 99

Chapter 8 The Golden Fleece 119

Chapter 9 Divided Dreams 137

Chapter 10 A Place of Skulls 150

PART III Odyssey 155

Chapter 11 Volatile Paradise 157

Chapter 12 House of Cards 179

Chapter 13 Columbia's Homecoming 199

Chapter 14 An American Presence 217

Chapter 15 Long-Awaited Return 239

PART IV Edge of Empire 251

Chapter 16 A Soft War 253

Chapter 17 Survival and Seduction 280

Chapter 18 A rising Tide 300

Chapter 19 Possession 317

Chapter 20 Last Season 334

Chapter 21 The Fire's Reach 345

Epilogue Legacy for a New Nation 362

Acknowledgments 371

A Note on the Sources 375

Notes 377

Bibliography 427

Index 445

What People are Saying About This

John Pomfret

“Scott Ridley’s work on John Kendrick and his voyages to the Northwest, Hawaii, and Canton mark an important contribution to the unfolding story of the relationship between America and China...A great story.”

Nathaniel Philbrick

“Scott Ridley brings to life a fascinating and largely forgotten episode in the United States’ early maritime history. A tale of exploration, desperation, and outrageous ambition, Morning of Fire is a terrific and meticulously researched read.”

Editorial Reviews

Compelling.... An edge-of-your-seat adventure about a piece of history you might not know much about.

Cape Cod Times

Scott Ridley brings to life a fascinating and largely forgotten episode in the United States’ early maritime history. A tale of exploration, desperation, and outrageous ambition, Morning of Fire is a terrific and meticulously researched read.

Nathaniel Philbrick

Scott Ridley’s work on John Kendrick and his voyages to the Northwest, Hawaii, and Canton mark an important contribution to the unfolding story of the relationship between America and China...A great story.

John Pomfret

A tale of maritime adventure, intrigue and high-stakes diplomacy.

Ridley (co-author:Power Struggle:The Hundred-Year War Over Electricity, 1986) looks at the first American voyage to sail the entire coast of the Americas. Embarking from Boston in 1787, two ships—under the command of Capt. John Kendrick, a former privateer said to have smuggled powder and arms for Washington's Army—were sent to "carve an American trade route around Cape Horn to the Far East....barter for furs in the north, then cross the Pacific and stop at the Sandwich Islands on the way to Macao, China. The trip homeward would cross the Indian Ocean and round Africa's Cape of Good Hope." Despite the U.S. victory in the Revolutionary War, the British maintained a stranglehold on commerce in the Atlantic. Along with the French and Spanish governments, they were determined to keep the new republic in a state of economic dependency. To counter the British, Americans hoped to open up China and Japan to U.S. traders, while at the same time establishing claim to the Northwest Territory. During his five-year trip aboard Lady Washington, Kendrick and his crew faced hardship and danger, including storms, scurvy, dissension in the command and the incursions of Spanish, British and French ships, who were also intent on making territorial claims. "A dozen years before the Louisiana Purchase," writes Ridley, "Kendrick held more than a thousand square miles of land on the Pacific"—a feat he accomplished by gaining the cooperation of native chieftains and the Spanish naval command against the British. Though Kendrick reached China and Japan, his success there was limited, and when he anchored in Hawaiian waters on his return trip, he was fatally wounded in 1794 when his ship was fired upon by a British ship, in what was claimed to be an accident.

A solid reconstruction of an important piece of American history, on par with Lewis and Clark's historic journey.

Kirkus Reviews