Heavy or smooth, the old whalers ran the oceans with their spread of canvas, their gallant crews and captains who nosed their ships into the strange and far reaches of the seven seas. Then there was Captain Richard Loper of Stonington. For him it was only a dream, just a dream that filled his life to the exclusion of everything else. He wanted to be a whaler like his father, and his father before him, but in the year 1820, he found himself not a whaling captain, but the owner and skipper of a passenger packet...