Expert on regional history and a historian at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, Lorraine McConaghy visits to discuss her book, which traces the warship USS Decatur’s five-year tour in the mid-1850s including stops in Honolulu, San Francisco, and Central America as well as Puget Sound. Using a rich record of logbooks, medical and punishment records, correspondence, personal journals, and drawings, McConaghy presents the ship and its crew in a vigorous, keenly rendered case study that illuminates the forces shaping America's antebellum navy and foreign policy in the Pacific. Her book includes a Seattle war story that contested American treaties and settlements. One of only five ships in the squadron, the Decatur participated in numerous imperial adventures in the Far West, enforcing treaties, fighting Indians, suppressing vigilantes, and protecting commerce. With its graceful lines and towering white canvas sails, the ship patrolled the sandy border between ocean and land.