It contains eight poems: "Our Fallen Heroes," "Lines Suggested by Scenes of Long Ago," "The Destiny of Our Republic," "A Hundred Years Ago," "After Twenty Years," "Thoughts in Storm and Solitude," "The Nocturnal Wedding," "The Dirge of the Sea." Never reticent in her prefaces, she said in this one:
"In submitting my unpretending rhymes to public criticism in the present form, I frankly acknowledge my motives to be mercenary. If the friends who have urged their publication will now purchase them and save me from a pecuniary loss which I am not able to sustain, I shall be satisfied—no matter what the opinion of the critics.
"Should this venture be successful, it will be followed by a larger one in blue and gold. Should it fail, no matter—mine wouldn't be the first of the kind. Others have survived such shocks, and so (no doubt) shall I."
Major Eckerson was a rhyming army officer stationed in Oregon in early territorial days, and he came back to the state to spend his old age. In 1850 he contributed to the Oregon Spectator a poem called "Oregon," a copy of which was deposited in the corner stone of the Lewis and Clark monument on May 21, 1903. When My Ship Comes In, however, contains no poems about Oregon. Frederick W. Skiff has a copy of an edition of 1891 with the line "Second Thousand" proudly appearing on the title page. Though to be the cynosure of all eyes seems not to have been disagreeable to the Major, he spoke with great modesty in his Preface and Dedication, the latter being to Mrs. Eckerson: "These rhymes are now, at the request of friends whose judgment is perhaps warped by their partiality, thrown together in their present form. Criticism upon these effusions is not invited, as no poetic merit whatever is claimed for them. They are simply rhymes jotted down from time to time, and extending over many years."
A compilation. A little 30-page book that is now very rare.
