"America means skyscrapers and haylofts, the crack of the pioneers’ flintlock and the sound of the riveters’ machine, the glow of a fireside and the glare of a blast furnace against the midnight sky. America is your story. America is you and everyone you know."

For ninety years the Fall River Line sent its steamers down narrow Narragansett Bay around point Judith, through the waters of Long Island Sound. Presidents and farmers, businessmen and adventurers, brides and grooms, they all took the Fall River Line to Boston or New York or Newport or Fall River. The story opens as one of the steamers the Pricilla nears New York.

In the captain's cabin, a grey haired man gathers his belongings, as it is his last trip on the steamer he had commanded for ten years. The man's name is Dan Hamilton, and he recalls how he started as a deckhand and rose through the years to the rank of Captain on the steamship line that grew with America...