When his father is killed fighting for the Union in the War Between the States, thirteen-year-old Tom Carroll must take a job to help support his family.€He manages to find work at a bustling ironworks in his hometown of Brooklyn, New York, where dozens of men are frantically pounding together the strangest ship€Tom has ever seen.€ A ship made of iron. Tom becomes assistant to the ship's inventor, a gruff, boastful man named Captain€John Ericsson...
From the community