In eight engaging chapters, this book portrays the steamboat era (1813-1963) on the Chesapeake, which matched in glamour and excitement the steamboats' history on the Mississippi. The book begins with the building of the first steamboat on the Bay in the shadow of the bitter struggle between Stevens, Livingston, Fulton, and Latrobe, among others, over monopoly on the Delaware and Chesapeake. Some of the accepted history on the origin of the first Bay steamboat is called into question.

The chapters continue with stories of the genius of early engine builders, the legends arising from dramatic steamboat disasters, spirited adventures of the Civil War (including the mystery of the "French lady spy"), the romance of steamboat excursions and resorts, the personalities of many steamboats and their masters, the Pennsylvania Railroad's near achievement of monopoly on the Bay, and the denouement when trucks and automobiles eclipsed the role of the steamboat.

An appendix details the workings of early steamboat engines. Other appendices provide data on steamboats discussed in the text and maps of the region. The narratives extend the history of the era from that included in other books on the topic. The book, above all, is an enthusiastic, nostalgic, and thoroughly readable exposition of a bygone era and a "vanished fleet."