Although the state of Missouri is located hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, ships with Missouri names and connections have served the United States for decades. In Missouri at Sea, Richard Schroeder uses the ships that were named after the state, its cities, and its favorite sons, to explore the important role that each has played in American history. For each vessel, a brief history is supplied, along with many extraordinary images and photographs taken from official U.S. government records and archives. Schroeder begins his volume with the first St. Louis and other small early ships that were symbolic of America's modest nineteenth-century commercial and political ambitions. The first Missouri, one of the earliest American steamships, depicts the United States' move into the industrial and technological revolution of the nineteenth century. Another Federal St. Louis and a Confederate Missouri highlight the Mississippi River Civil War campaign. Schroeder then turns to America's rise as a global military power at the beginning of the twentieth century with stories of the St. Louis in the Spanish-American War and the first battleship Missouri of Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet.