This is the detailed history of the clipper Frolic, a sailing ship built in New England in the 1840s specifically for the Asian opium trade: its design and construction, the voyages between Bombay and China, its personal stories of skipper, crew, and owners, its conversion to the Chinese cargo trade to Gold Rush California, and, finally, the end of the Frolic in 1850 when it wrecked on the rocks of the Mendocino coast north of San Francisco.