This work describes the activities of a handful of American companies and about eighty American captains who were trying to run ships on China's great river during the treacherous days between the two world wars. The considerable physical dangers of the Yangtze itself were compounded by the greater human hazards imposed by constant fighting among warlords, piracy, brigandry, kidnapping, opium and munitions smuggling, corruption, seizures, and other forms of intimidation. The events recall--and surpass--anything of the Wild West in American frontier history. No American steamship company...