Commander John Richards agrees to join the Western Flotilla in the role of observer as a compromise with his new wife, but his temperament will not let him sit idly by while a war rages around him. Richards takes command of the gunboat MACHINEEL and brings navy discipline to the rough volunteers of the river fleet. He learns new ways to fight along the narrow confines of the inland waterways but finds his marriage endangered by his recklessness. From Memphis to New Orleans, his small command faces snipers, gunboats and cannon plus the growing threat of sinister new weapons: torpedoes, rams, and ironclads. Can he and his men open the Mississippi by aiding in the capture of the Gibraltar of the Confederacy: Vicksburg? The second book in D.A. Joy's Richards' Family Line explores a firsthand perspective of the actions between Union and Confederate naval forces on the rivers in 1862 and 1863.