Recent Reads: Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Davis, and Their Respective Navies

A Comparative Review of

Life in Mr. Lincoln’s Navy by Dennis J. Ringle, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1998. 

and 

Life in Jefferson Davis’ Navy by Barbara Brooks Tomblin, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2019.

Published over two decades apart, Life in Mr. Lincoln's Navy and Life in Jefferson Davis' Navy compliment one another yet take differing approaches towards their contemporaneous subjects. (Courtesy of the Naval Institute Press)

By Matthew Headrick
HRNM Educator

Dennis J. Ringle, author of Life in Mr. Lincoln’s Navy and Barbara Brooks Tomblin, author of Life in Jefferson Davis’ Navy, have produced two very important studies on one of the most transitional periods in naval history: the Civil War. Taking a micro perspective approach to their research, both authors succeed in reconstructing the daily life of the common Sailor who served under either United States President Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy. Through persuasive writing and thorough research, Ringle and Brooks show that during the transition from wood to iron, along with the progression of steam engineering, it was the Sailors serving onboard these vessels who deserve recognition for advancements in the era of pre-dreadnought ships. These are two wonderfully written social histories.

Not only do the authors view their work as simply adding to our understanding, but it is also quite evident Life in Jefferson Davis’ Navy was inspired by Ringle’s book. In the introduction, Ringle wrote, "since this book deals only with the Union enlisted sailor, future naval studies could expand to include the life of the Confederate sailor."1 Tomblin makes mention of Ringle's book as describing "the lives of Union navy sailors," and that her own work focuses on "their daily lives and the challenges of wartime service onboard ships, serving in gun batteries ashore, or surviving imprisonment or hospitalization."2 One of the more notable contrasts between the two works is the treatment of primary sources and how they are applied in the writing. Yet, despite their differences in style, Ringle and Tomblin both advance our knowledge and make substantial contributions to the study of American naval history without criticizing their respective fields’ historiography.

U.S. Navy Sailors photographed during the Civil War. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

While Tomblin is more interested in simply telling the Confederate States Navy's story, Ringle’s sources allow him the mobility to develop what some might argue a multi-layered thesis. First, he argues that the Sailors themselves were the ones who built a navy capable of putting Lincoln’s Anaconda Plan into action. From their hard work and dedication emerged the world’s greatest navy. Secondly, he adds that it was the engineering division that was most valuable to Lincoln’s navy, proving “critical to the success of the wartime ironclad monitors and the development of the powerful pre-dreadnought ships two decades later,”3 Maintaining “a blockade of 185 harbors and approximately 3,500 miles of southern coastline” meant recruiting only engineers of the highest skill level to produce steam-powered warships capable of getting the job done.4 Lastly and most important, Ringle answers why the US Navy possessed so many advantages over the CS Navy.

Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and President Lincoln understood how enforcing institutional changes aimed at bettering the lives of Sailors would enhance fighting effectiveness and propel their respective navies into the modern era. Ringle praises Welles for quickly addressing manpower shortages by employing African Americans and Northern Europeans. Even though the author does not shy away from pointing to examples of discrimination on the basis of color, this integration of the races is revealing of a very diverse navy. He also points out how veteran petty officers were empowered by their commanders, allowing them to guide new Sailors through their transition from a civilian to a Sailor.

Ringle also highlights some of the major contrasts between the Army and the Navy. Much attention is given to diet and medical practices. He writes that, unlike the Army, the Navy was able to provide "a steady diet of fresh meat and vegetables."5 He goes on to say that food helped break "the monotony of blockade duty and contributed to the morale of the crew."6 On the medical side, the author points out that the US Army lost one out of twelve Soldiers to disease and that the Navy lost one out of 50. The Army did not pursue the medical research that Ringle says did in fact exist. The Navy did. Again, all of which shows their "commitment to improving the quality of life for its sailors,” this being the main message Ringle is successful in getting across to his readers.7

(Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Life in Jefferson Davis' Navy explores many of the same themes as Life in Mr. Lincoln's Navy, but the tone is very different, perhaps darker. Readers will be convinced that the Confederate States Navy’s story was one of survival and hardship. Building off the idea that the CS Navy was a work in progress during the war, Tomblin looks at topics such as recruiting, liberty, medical care, the handling of prisoners, the challenges faced by naval officers, and, of course, one chapter dedicated to commerce raiders. One could describe Tomblin's book as an assortment of topically arranged short stories based on journals, letters, diaries and military/medical reports (official and unofficial).

Through superb storytelling, Tomblin proves to readers why this research is so important to our understanding of the social and cultural history of that time period. The author shows less interest in constructing a thesis-based narrative than Ringle. Instead, Tomblin exhausts all available resources to get the CS Navy's story out, and like Ringle, the Sailors who served ashore and aboard ships in all theaters take center stage. She does not address any specific historian’s interpretation, nor does Tomblin make a broad statement about Confederate States Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory's or Jefferson Davis’ footprint on naval strategy and technical advancement. What we learn is how and why Jefferson Davis' Navy, while successful in many areas, fell short in propelling the south to victory. The answer lies within the internal structure of this institution with no fault assigned to the Sailors themselves. The minimal amount of primary sources leaves little to go on, but somehow the author has made it work. The focus is on personal experiences.

Almost every chapter sheds light on the continuous problem of personnel and supply shortages that the Confederates faced throughout the war. They were forced to recruit from foreign ports for skilled personnel. The southern government was faced with the arduous task of filling jobs for noncommissioned officers and below with certain skillsets, as well as officers who “resigned their commissions in the U.S. Navy.”8 Discipline was also an issue. The author especially calls attention to the CSS Shenandoah and CSS Arkansas for alcohol smuggling and drunken behavior. Desertion was continuous, especially in the final year of fighting. In the winter of 1865, the James River Squadron was hit hard by desertion. According to accounts, which the author so elegantly plugs in, many officers deserted only to turn around and join the Union Navy. Many prisoners of war did the same; pledging allegiance to the Union, resulting in being put into volunteer regiments. As the war got closer to the end, getting supplies got harder. As a result, morale plummeted.

Where Tomblin's research shines the most is when she discusses the South’s medical capabilities. The word used to describe how the Confederate States Navy handled the problem of not having “a system of military hospitals or an organization to safeguard its military and naval personnel” is “improvise.”9 So, the Office of Medicine and Surgery, or OMS, was created. Their job was to establish hospitals, maintain supplies and medicine, and provide physicians where needed. By 1864, the OMS consisted of 753 commissioned officers and 4,450 men. Even with the OMS, the South’s medical facilities were inferior to those in the North. Sailors along the Mississippi and on the Coastal Waters suffered from scurvy due to a lack of fruits and vegetables. Yellow fever spread throughout because cargo and warships brought it over from the Caribbean and South America. The author goes on to discuss a first-hand account of a major outbreak that occurred on the CSS Florida. Other deadly diseases familiar to the Confederate Sailor included syphilis and gonorrhea, which the CS Navy was not remotely prepared for.

Barbara Brooks Tomblin’s Life in Jefferson Davis’ Navy actually puts Dennis J. Ringle’s Life in Mr. Lincoln’s Navy into perspective even more. Both books do a fantastic job of explaining the evolutionary process of how these two opposing navies were built by the hands of the men who served in them. Tomblin uses firsthand stories from Confederate Sailors to paint a picture of a very effective fighting force that, even though it did not prevail in the end, still deserves recognition. Ringle provides sufficient evidence to show how steady routine, leadership, integration, and above all, engineering won the day. One could recommend both works to historians and casual readers alike.


1. Dennis J. Ringle, Life in Mr. Lincoln’s Navy, (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1998), xvi.
2. Barbara Brooks Tomblin, Life in Jefferson Davis’ Navy, (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2019), 2.
3. Ringle, Life in Mr. Lincoln's Navy, xiii-xiv.
4. Ibid, 9.
5. Ibid, 65.
6. Ibid, 64.
7. Ibid, 108.
8. Tomblin, Life in Jefferson Davis’ Navy, 23.
9. Ibid, 92.

Seventy-Five Years Ago: FDR's Last Mission

USS Quincy (CA 71), seen here in San Francisco Bay after her return from the Western Pacific in the fall of 1945, was home to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and key members of his administration during a month-long, 14,000-mile diplomatic mission from January 23 to February 27, beginning and ending in Newport News, Virginia. (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

By M.C. Farrington
HRNM Historian

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s last, and longest-lasting, diplomatic mission began in secrecy.

At about 10:20 pm on January 22, 1945, the President slipped out of an entrance under the Bureau of Printing and Engraving Annex opposite the National Mall from the White House, where he had been sworn in for his fourth term four days before. Roosevelt boarded a train and traveled through the night, coming to a stop before dawn at Pier Number Six within the sprawling U.S. Army Port of Embarkation in Newport News. The cruiser USS Quincy (CA 71) had been waiting there since 5:37 in the afternoon the day before. Marines who had been patrolling the pier since five that morning watched the President and over 25 people in his entourage, accompanied by 10 Secret Service agents, board.

Captain Elliott M. Senn, Quincy’s commanding officer, noted, “By request, no honors, other than sideboys, were rendered the President as he arrived aboard.”

After a working party of dozens of Sailors loaded baggage aboard Quincy, Roosevelt gave Captain Senn the order to proceed. One minute later, Quincy cast off her lines and headed for Chesapeake Bay. Although by this time the Battle of the Atlantic was largely over, the task force performed its mission as though an attack could ensue at any moment. 

After passing through the Thimble Shoal Channel, Task Group 21.5 assembled with Quincy as its flagship.  Joining them for the first part of the 4,883-mile journey to the island of Malta were USS Satterlee (DD 626), USS Herndon (DD 638), and USS Tillman (DD 641), which formed an antisubmarine screen while the cruiser Springfield (CL 66) fell in behind Quincy for the journey to Bermuda.

Satterlee detached from the group late on the 23rd, followed by Herndon and Tillman on the morning of the 26th. At Bermuda they were replaced by Task Unit 21.5.3., comprised of USS Carmick (DD 493), Doyle (DD 494), and Endicott (DD 495) for the second part of the journey to Malta, which took them to a point 300 miles south of the Azores. There, Springfield was replaced on the 28th by TU 21.5.4 comprised of the cruiser Savannah (Cl 42) and the destroyers Baldwin (DD 624), Frankford (DD 497), and Murphy (DD 603).

Despite some false alarms over unsubstantiated U-boats on January 29, for the most part the sea itself proved the most formidable adversary to many in Roosevelt’s entourage, including his daughter Anna Roosevelt Bottiger and her husband John.

The sea, however, didn’t faze the President.  A lifelong sailor and naval enthusiast and Assistant Secretary of the Navy in Woodrow Wilson's administration over two decades before, Roosevelt took particular delight in the modifications that had been made to the great warship in the months before his transit.

Allied leaders pose in the courtyard of Livadia Palace, Yalta, during the Argonaut conference in early February 1945. Those seated are (from left to right): Prime Minister Winston Churchill (UK); President Franklin D. Roosevelt (USA); and Premier Josef Stalin (USSR). Also present are  Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham, R.N., Air Chief Marshall Sir Charles Portal, R.A.F. (both standing behind Churchill); and Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, USN, (standing behind Roosevelt). Note ornate carpets under the chairs. Photograph from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives.

Quincy had been selected to transport Roosevelt to the Argonaut conference more than three months before, and in September extensive work was done to the cruiser in Boston to make her wheelchair accessible. Two special gangplanks and an elevator were added to the vessel and two custom-built boats were also added for Roosevelt’s use in Malta and the other diplomatic initiatives he would pursue on the over 14,000-mile journey.

“The sea was moderate,” recalled Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, FDR’s chief of staff, “and we made a speed of twenty-one knots with a zig-zag course to avoid submarine attack; covered by destroyer escorts, lights out at night, and no radio communications at any time.”

Capt. Senn recalled later that Roosevelt "was not disturbed at all by the first few days of rough seas out of Newport News, and was a merry guest on January 30, when rival bakers aboard [Quincy] baked five grand cakes for the occasion."  On that day and the day following, the destroyers Laub (DD 613), Nields (DD 616) and Champlin (DD 601) joined the task force for the final leg of the journey to Malta. 

The ships and their crews, most of which like USS Quincy were battle-hardened veterans of operations from Operation TORCH in North Africa in November 1942 to NEPTUNE on D-Day in June 1944, helped make possible FDR's status as one of the "Big Three" convening at a former Imperial Russian palace in the Crimea.

“During our ten days’ cruise at sea on the ‘Quincy,’ the President held daily conferences on problems expected to arise at the Crimea meetings,” wrote Leahy. And the potential problems were formidable indeed.   

Before the airborne leg of the journey was to begin, however, the first order of business was to meet the other friendly member of the three, Winston Churchill, who was waiting in Malta.  Their relationship grew close in August 1941 after Roosevelt slipped away from Washington DC on a supposed fishing trip and resurfaced in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland aboard the cruiser USS Augusta (CA 31), where he met Churchill who had arrived aboard the battleship HMS Prince of Wales. The Atlantic Charter they released after the Arcadia conference detailed intentions for a postwar world which they hoped to codify at Yalta.  That is, if the two could agree upon actually meeting Marshal Josef Stalin there.    
During the journey radio silence had to be broken in order to address Churchill's protests about the venue for the Argonaut conference.  Earlier he had told presidential advisor Harry Hopkins "that if we had spent ten years on research, we could not have found a worse place in the world than [Yalta]..."

Despite their differences during nearly a dozen wartime meetings, Churchill, who wore his blue British colonel's uniform during most public events at the time, was waiting aboard HMS Orion which approached to starboard of Quincy as the cruiser entered Grand Harbor on the morning of February 2.  According to Quincy's Dictionary of American Fighting Ships entry, "The Royal Marine band mustered on her fantail struck up the 'Star Spangled Banner,' and the prime minister doffed his hat and waved to the president, who cheerfully responded in kind. Maltese manning small boats swarmed around the ship to watch the historic occasion, and thousands more gathered along the hillside. Quincy moored starboard side to Boat House Wharf, French Creek, at 1001."

British Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden later recalled: 

As the great warship sailed into the battered harbor, every vessel was manned, every roof and vantage point crammed with spectators.  While the bands played and amid so much that reeked of war, on the bridge, just discernible to the naked eye, sat one civilian figure... All heads were turned his way and a sudden quietness fell.  It was one of those moments when all seems to stand still and one is conscious of a mark in history.

It had not been an easy journey for Prime Minister Churchill, who developed a temperature of 102 as he flew from London on the 29th in a C-54 Skymaster Gen. Henry "Hap" Arnold had lent him. Despite this, he seemed back to normal and, while somewhat irascible, was otherwise in good health.     

Prime Minister Winston L. S. Churchill of the United Kingdom. Portrait inscribed to USS Quincy (CA 71), when Churchill was on board at Alexandria, Egypt, February 15 1945, for post-Yalta conferences with President Roosevelt. (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

Roosevelt, by comparison, was in far graver shape, even with the rest he had been able to get aboard Quincy during the voyage from Newport News.  Vice Admiral Ross McIntire, FDR's personal physician, had vouched for the President's vitality during his recent successful campaign against Governor Thomas Dewey, but accompanying the President aboard Quincy along with Commander Howard Bruenn, a cardiologist, McIntire knew that his health was deteriorating rapidly.  An exam conducted nine months before at Bethesda Naval Hospital found that the 62 year-old Roosevelt had acute bronchitis, heart disease, failure of the left ventricle of the heart, as well as skyrocketing blood pressure.  A decade after receiving an average reading of 136 over 78, the President's blood pressure reading before Yalta had reached a life-threatening 240 over 130.   

From the left, Vice Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, who in 1942 led U.S. Amphibious forces from his headquarters at the Nansemond Hotel in the Ocean View section of Norfolk, confers with President Roosevelt along with Admiral Harold Stark, Commander, Naval Forces Europe, in Malta after the President's arrival.  (Naval History and Heritage Command image)  

“Later there was much adverse comment in the American press about the condition of the President’s health,” wrote Adm. Leahy long after the conference, “but in working with him every day I saw no sign of deterioration of his physical or mental condition either at sea or ashore after we reached Europe.”

Despite the physical distance between them, the Soviet Union and the United States were closer than they had ever been at that moment, largely due to FDR's policies, yet it could be argued that because of this closeness the Soviets took the American president's generosity for granted. During FDR’s first term, American diplomatic recognition had been extended to the Soviet government for the first time.  Millions of dollars in aid and equipment, including naval vessels and aircraft, had been given to the Soviets since the American entry into the war.  At the time Roosevelt left Hampton Roads for Malta, Soviet pilots were receiving training for some of their new American-made maritime patrol aircraft just south of Hampton Roads at Naval Air Station Elizabeth City.

This excerpt from the forthcoming book Churchill: A Graphic Biography by Vincent Delmas and illustrated by Christophe Regnault and Alessio Camardella, illustrates the dilemma faced by the British prime minister at Yalta regarding Poland's fate after the war. Stalin's army had completely overrun and occupied Poland before the Argonaut conference at Yalta even began. (Greenhill Books/ Dead Reckoning)

Despite benefiting from American Lend-Lease largesse, not to mention their opening of a second front in Continental Europe through the invasions of Italy and both Northern and Southern France to drain German strength from their eastern front, the Soviets wanted much, much more. To get it, Soviet agents working for the American government had penetrated the military’s secret Manhattan Project to steal nuclear weapon technology.  Diplomatic secrets were also highly prized.  Among the diplomatic contingent flying from Washington to Yalta with Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius was Deputy Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs, Alger Hiss, who was also secretly working for the Soviet cause.

Whether Hiss nudged American diplomatic tactics at Yalta or merely informed the Soviets about his government’s negotiating positions during the talks is unclear. His cover would be blown by Time Magazine editor (and former Communist courier) Whittaker Chambers in 1948, but his denials were so convincing that the American public remained divided about his status for nearly half a century.  That is, until the Venona diplomatic intercepts of Soviet diplomatic communications declassified in the mid-1990s left little room for doubt. 


After meeting with Churchill and myriad other British and American officials throughout the day on February 2, FDR boarded a specially modified Army Air Corps VC-54C Skymaster known officially as The Flying White House, and unofficially as the Sacred Cow, at 3:30 the following morning for the seven-hour flight from Luqa Airport in Malta to Saki in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, from which the President would endure yet another five-hour journey along winding mountain roads to Yalta, finally arriving at the Livadia Palace at a little after 6 pm, local time.

The diplomatic give-and-take (or lack thereof) during the following week would make Argonaut the most controversial of the wartime conferences between the "Big Three," but another diplomatic mission conducted by FDR before sailing back to Hampton Roads aboard Quincy would have an even longer-lasting impact upon American foreign policy as well as the American economy.

Recent Reads: The Mystique Nautique

A Review of Men at Sea

By Riff Reb's, Translated by Joe Johnson. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2019.

By M.C. Farrington
Historian, Hampton Roads Naval Museum
and Elizabeth Bentley
Contributing Writer

There is an allure to the sea; a timeless draw to its depths. The promise of bounty and adventure as limitless as the eternal horizon propelled ancient Phoenicians and Polynesians into vast tractless expanses millennia Before the Common Era. This calling approached its zenith during the Age of Sail, when a bevy of small European powers became global empires following the exploration, expropriation and exploitation their mariners' mastery of the sea made possible. But there has always been a darkness behind the draw. For time immemorial until the present day the sea has been wild and untamed frontier; an uncertain, occasionally violent veil between the worlds of the free and the slave, the living and the dead.

French artist Riff Reb's has sifted through a plethora of literature in this vein, carefully choosing the choicest cuts that compose Men at Sea, emblematic of the steady march towards the sea he has been on during his third decade as an illustrator. Although at 116 pages it is a short book, it is nonetheless an ambitious sampler that punches above its weight, both introducing the unfamiliar to this particular genre and breathing new life into the selected works for those already well versed in them.

It would be interesting enough just to glance through this collection of stories just for their artistic merit. Riff Reb’s visual style blends angular masculinity with azure, jade and crimson-hued terror to create sailors who navigate unceasingly changing and terrible seas. However, the addition of excerpts and truncated passages, from writers well known and not, cements the legitimacy of the graphic novel itself. The stories lend context to the style, motion and color of each frame. Without the addition of literary excerpts from masters, this could be dismissed as just a highly sophisticated comic book, but by channeling these great stories, it becomes something different.

The binding theme weaving together the eight varied tales, interspersed by seven double-page excerpts, can only be described as anxiousness; an anxiousness laid bare in words and augmented by the uncomfortable imagery Reb’s has created. This anxiousness tirelessly churns up the characters and narrative devices; relationships, women, abandonment, enslavement, unknown and known creatures, ghosts and other paranormal sightings, loss of identity, and death. In fact, death seems to loom in the corners of every panel as it is given form by the text to the side. And the main character of these stories in aggregate? The sea itself. It is the obsession that is loved and despaired of in every story.

The characters are so inextricably linked to the sea that they all become part of it as they go from one existence to the other. None so much so as the first story, The Sea Horses, based on William Hope Hodgson’s story of the same name, with a style reminiscent of Jamie Hewlitt (Gorrilaz) but decidedly true to the deep well of material from which Reb's drew. Hodgson’s story of a young boy and grandfather living on the sea immediately sets the landscape as brutal and unforgiving. The characters immediately talk of violent death and the dangers of the nearby water. Hodgson’s own experiences of childhood death and the rigors of his own life at sea informs the tone of this somber yet fanciful tale.

Homer’s The Odyssey is the next work to be illustrated. This classic story relates the narrator’s regret of ignoring Circe’s warnings as he watches his men be sacrificed to the creatures of the deep waters. The haunting cries from his man are both a plea for rescue and accusation as they call out to Ulysses. 

The next story, a jarring switch from the previous two stories, is The Galley Slaves. These panels are based on the novels of Pierre Mac Orlan. Pierre Mac Orlan, a nom de plume, famously used his real name, Pierre Dumarchey, to pen pornographic stories, specifically dealing with flagellation and sadomasochism. The Galley Slaves is not one of his more scandalous writings, yet it is more sexually charged and violent than the other stories in Men at Sea. The jarring difference in tone regarding the sailors in this story is that they are not beleaguered friends and foes of the ocean but convicts who find delight in a death. The gender and sexual tension of the sailors is translated into murder but the loss of autonomy to gaining a taste of it again is the real theme of this strange tale. In contrast, Mac Orlan’s The Far South, which appears later in the book, is an adventure story and keeps with the straightforward themes of fear of death and isolation. This story seems to follow in the original tone of the stories where the hero is the sailor.

The stories progress to Kernok the Pirate by Eugene Sue. As one of the many literary excerpts that get a single complex panel treatment by Reb’s, it is darkly comic and cruel.  Kernok the Pirate was originally published in 1830, when the July Revolution took place that overthrew Charles X and the Bourbon.  Sue, who had joined the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis, who pledged under the Bourbon King of France, Louis XVIII, fought to help the Spanish Royalists restore King Ferdinand VII of Spain to reinstate his absolute power which had been rescinded by the Liberal Triennium. The anti-Spanish sentiment alongside the frustration of ever changing political climes leads to Kernok and his dark sense of humor regarding the detestable actions of men on the sea.

Malgorn the Whaler is a break from of the anxiety of hopelessness and death that has been the tone of the panels so far. Emile Condroyer’s prose waxes poetic as the third person narrator describes the awe that mixes with the anxiety of battling creatures of the sea. Condroyer’s approach falls into a more normative style of tales of the sea, which is why Reb’s illustration seems considerably more muted and more conservative than his other visual narration.

Marcel Schwob’s The Three Customs Officers brings the reader back to the mystery and horror of life on the sea. Schwob’s love of French slang in the dialogue provides humor to this dark tale. The three officers find themselves enmeshed in the paranormal and dreams which would be typical of Schwob. The Symbolist Movement, which favors dreams, visions, and associated powers of imagination, heavily influenced his work and those of his contemporaries. The ghostly visions and untimely deaths in the tumult of the sea that trapped and transported the hapless officers who fell to their own foibles made for a wonderful ghost tale.

B. Traven’s The Death Ship, Joseph Conrad’s A Smile of Fortune, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Sinking Ship are all stories that share the common link of labor, ethics, and incompetence of authority.  The Death Ship is a direct criticism of the lack of ethical considerations for the sailors who work to keep ships going without fanfare or respect.  Conrad’s A Smile of Fortune is a short musing on a sea captain’s desire for another man’s wife while stopping at a port. The captain navigates the deaths and misfortunes of the land-bound but is now reconsidering his life at sea after seeing a mysterious, beautiful woman.

Stevenson’s The Sinking Ship is an absurdist tale of a captain who endlessly bloviates while real action has to be taken to save sailors’ lives. This is another example of dark humor in the face of death. The sailors, when faced with musings on nonsensical directives given from the philosopher captain, begin to follow their own nonsensical rules, mostly involving earthly pleasures they were so long denied. The result is comical a tragedy for them all.

Victor Hugo’s The Toilers of the Sea is a part of the Romanticism movement and during his exile his works explored the past and nature in contrast to the ongoing Industrial Revolution which, seemed to destroy the lyrical lives of men who lived by the sea. This excerpt is an ode to the fearful beauty of the sea and the deadly treasures beneath.  Jack London’s approach to the harrowing tales of the sea relies more on experience than imagination as he draws from his time as a sailor in Japan. The story is fraught with anxiety and suspense as it tells of the experience of being on ship during a typhoon. The story stands on as the true testament on surviving the sea.

Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne are linked in their tales of sea suspense and fantasy. Edgar Allen Poe’s featured story is A Descent into the Maelstrom. This tale of a man’s story of terror and survival of the capricious weather and sea is a great example of Poe’s style and tone. Poe’s 1838 novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pim of Nantucket was the inspiration for Reb’s next selection, Jules Verne’s An Antarctic Mystery. This fanciful story of a ship stranded in ice is fanciful and amusing in the style of Verne but it is does touch on the sailors anxiousness over the many dangers and unexpected occurrences in the sea. This story does seem to give the reader a break from the high level of stress in the other stories and present some whimsy which can be taken as wink from Reb’s himself.

No less an authority than retired Admiral James Stavridis, former NATO supreme commander and chairman of the board of the US Naval Institute, praised Men at Sea for making these classic seafaring stories, some of which he referred to when teaching his students, so accessible. We could not agree more. For those without the time to leisurely dine on a surfeit of great sea literature, Dead Reckoning, a new imprint of the Naval Institute Press, has delivered a sumptuous yet svelte sampler of the meatiest morsels for American readers drawn to this rarefied kind of darkness.

Recent Reads: From Hampton Roads to Tokyo Bay in the 1850s

A Review of To My Dearest Wife, Lide: Letters from George B. Gideon Jr. during Commodore Perry's Expedition to Japan, 1853-1855

M. Patrick Sauer & David A. Ranzan, Eds., Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2019

Commodore Matthew C. Perry, USN, landing at Yokohama, Japan on March 8, 1854, with 500 men, amid pomp and ceremony to receive the answer to President Millard Fillmore's letter which he has personally delivered earlier. (Artist: W. Peters. Lithograph by Sarony & Co., New York. Naval History and Heritage Command image)

By A.J. Orlikoff
Hampton Roads Naval Museum Educator

Historians, scholars, and interested individuals owe a great debt to authors who toil to bring to life previously inaccessible or obscure primary sources. Patrick M. Sauer and David A. Ranzan are two such individuals who accomplish just that through their work in To My Dearest Wife, Lide: Letters from George B. Gideon Jr. during Commodore Perry's Expedition to Japan, 1853-1855. Sauer and Ranzan’s editorialization of the correspondence of Second Assistant Engineer George B. Gideon Jr. to his wife Eliza (Lide) Ward that occurred during Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s auspicious expedition to Japan stand as an example of important, relevant, and superlative historical scholarship.

Gideon, through recently uncovered correspondence, provides a rare first-person account of Perry’s Expedition to Japan, which normalized trade relations between the isolated island nation and the United States. Perry’s Expedition stands as an important chapter in the Opening of Japan, during which the Japanese ended their relative seclusion from the international world and began their rapid transformation from an insular island nation to a world power that threatened to dominate the Pacific 75 years later.  As such, Sauer and Ranzan add texture and enrich the historical knowledge base on this important event through their work in To My Dearest Wife, Lide.

Gideon witnessed a remarkable amount of notable world events during his nearly three-year voyage aboard the USS Powhatan, a sidewheel steam-powered frigate, which left Hampton Roads bound for Japan on February 13, 1853.  Gideon comes through as relatively pensive through his correspondences to Lide and he choose to include accounts and ruminations on occurrences both mundane and momentous such as the Taiping Rebellion in China, steam engineering, the quality of food, the leadership abilities of officers, the Crimean War, and life at sea. Of particular interest to many scholars will likely be Gideon’s account of the signing of the Convention of Kanegawa and his interactions with the Japanese people.

Gideon witnessed remarkable events such as the first burial of an American in Japanese soil, a ceremonial sumo wrestling match, and the aftermath of a devastating tsunami. Of equal interest to many individuals will be the insight into the Victorian world provided by Gideon’s letters as they reveal much about the social nature of the Antebellum American Navy and the gender dynamics of Victorian marriages.  Interestingly, Gideon, despite witnessing sights not seen by any American, was often far more preoccupied with declaring his love and affection for Lide or offering commentary on a particular shipmate or officer.  All in all, the information included in To My Dearest Wife, Lide is a wealth of knowledge on a variety of topics.

The scholarship and methodology employed by Sauer and Ranzan is appropriate and logically sound. The authors endeavored to transcribe as much of Gideon’s original wording and phrasing as possible and only editorializing where necessary. Many of their changes do little to alter the original text such as changing Gideon’s quotation marks for ship names to italics or providing a correct date in brackets where Gideon errs. In addition, the authors dutifully include a multitude of endnote citations that provide convenient and welcome clarifications on events, individuals, ships, and occurrences that Gideon mentions in his letters. However, the authors notably omit an unknown number of passages which the editors deem “…do not contribute to the overall story.” While space concerns are important, especially with a writer as prolific as Gideon, the voice of Gideon is somewhat muted by the necessary editing of his letters. To be fair, this is no fault of the editors and is merely a product of the realities of print scholarship. For the vast majority of readers, the text included in To My Dearest Wife, Lide is more than an adequate portrait of Gideon’s voyage.

Overall, To My Dearest Wife, Lide is an excellent primary source relating to Perry’s Expedition. Sauer and Ranzan provide a window into a Victorian Era world of discovery, intrigue, violence, innovation, and romance. Scholars and anyone interested in a primary source relating to Perry’s Expedition, Victorian era social dynamics, naval engineering, gender, and the Antebellum Navy will find To My Dearest Wife, Lide a stimulating, useful, and fascinating read. Sauer and Ranzan should be credited as exemplars of editing and publishing a primary source account for their astute methodology and attention to capturing the original voice of the author.

Recent Reads: Despite Festivities, Dark Clouds Remain over Normandy

Beyond the Beach: The Allied War Against France

By Stephen Alan Bourque (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2018)
   
Reviewed by M.C. Farrington
Hampton Roads Naval Museum

June 6, 2019, marks the 75th anniversary of the launch of Operation Overlord.  Upon its success hung the future of a continent dominated by a power facing certain defeat, Hitler's Germany, at the hands of another power equally hostile to Western democratic values, Stalin's Soviet Union.  The only hope of postwar freedom and self-determination in Europe hinged upon victory for the 150,000 Soldiers and Sailors pouring over the beachheads of Normandy that day in 1944, hoping to link up with paratroopers dropped inland the evening before.

Led for the most part by President Emmanuel Macron of France, the commemorations that took place today demonstrated the "infinite gratitude" of the French people to their Allied liberators, some of the last of whom were presented the Legion d'honneur, France's highest award.  From Royal Air Force jets drawing the Tricolore over visiting world leaders to deliberately disheveled reenactors intermingling with tourists, to the nonagenarians walking the same beaches as they did approximately 27,375 days ago, it was an event of remembrance not to be forgotten.

Most of the books about D-Day that have come out within the past year consequently echo the awe still felt for the Allied servicemen who fought their way onto those beaches.  They also reinvigorate the "good war" paradigm that distinguishes World War II from almost every other sustained military campaign the Unites States has embarked upon ever since.

But how good of a war was it?  So good that the majority of its veterans did not speak of or write about their part in it for decades, if ever?  While most rank-and-file Soldiers and Sailors did not record their activities and thoughts about D-Day while memories were still fresh, many of those who held senior positions in the Allied Expeditionary Force certainly did. Foremost among them was Gen. Dwight David Eisenhower, whose Crusade in Europe (1948) has been one of the first stops for journalists and public historians writing new books about Overlord ever since.  The early works of other victorious leaders have also dominated the narrative for three-quarters of a century.

During the first decades after D-Day gifted storytellers such as Cornelius Ryan excelled at burnishing notions already held as sacrosanct, using the recollections of those who led Operation Overlord to underscore the fact that they were heroes who carried the fate of the Western World upon their shoulders.  While this fact is not in dispute, the aftermath of certain decisions they made slipped the surly bonds of scrutiny.

In his latest book about D-Day, prolific author Alex Kershaw wrote of Eisenhower:

Dismissed by some British officers as merely a “coordinator, a good mixer,” the blue‐eyed Eisenhower, celebrated for his broad grin and easy charm, had nevertheless imposed his will, working eighteen‐hour days, reviewing and tweaking plans to launch some seven thousand vessels, twelve thousand planes, and 160,000 troops to hostile shores.

A legion of public historians and nonfiction authors have hitched their narrative wagons to Eisenhower in much the same way as authors for generations have done with George Washington.

Just as with Washington, however, new generations of scholars have looked upon the man and his decisions with new eyes, synthesizing new material to assemble a new picture, warts and all.

More than ever before, scholars are looking at D-Day in new ways and making new discoveries that deconstruct the standard narrative of Overlord, leaving something new and  less familiar in its place.  Beyond the Beach is one of these works, but this is not just contrarian scholarship from just any historian.  Its author, professor emeritus at the US Army Command and General Staff College, has drawn together highly disparate sources, from USAAF and RAF records generated during and shortly after the war to local histories compiled in the decades since from French researchers and historians to assemble a meticulously drawn picture of preventable carnage on a grand scale; one that has eluded most Anglophone readers until now. 

The roughly 20,000 French civilians (in some cases, entire families) who were not just killed but pulverized and even atomized by the ferocious bombing raids orchestrated by Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) during Operation Flashlamp, the ferocious initial aerial assault of Overlord, as well as the rest of the campaign that summer is a major focus of this book.  "By the time the war was over," wrote Bourque, "the liberating air forces had killed as many French civilians as the Germans had killed British civilians during the 'blitz' and vengeance weapon assaults." 

Bourque puts the blame directly upon the supreme commander, Gen. Eisenhower, for a majority of the unnecessary deaths after he demanded complete operational authority over high-altitude strategic bombers that had theretofore been striking the German industrial heartland.  Redirecting them to lend tactical support to the Allied troops invading France produced lackluster results against the Germans and devastating results for French civilians. 

During the prelude to D-Day, France wasn't technically an enemy nation.  As a result of an armistice reached with Germany in June 1940, the French State declared itself neutral, yet the nation was by 1944 completely under the jackboot of the Wehrmacht. Naturally, something had to be done about it, and airpower was one of the most powerful tools at the Allies' disposal.  But power does not mean effectiveness.  Bourque makes the case that, before the bombs began falling upon France, both the senior British and American bomber commanders knew that their heavy bombers would do more harm than good and did their best to prevent them from being used for a purpose they were not designed for.

The heavy bombers were not designed with operational flexibility in mind, and neither were their governing directives produced by the Army Air Force's War Plans Division in 1941.  "Although the Nazis had occupied France more than a year earlier," Bourque pointed out, "it says nothing about the problem of attacking targets in friendly, occupied nations."  Therefore, no distinction was made between the approach made to attack targets in Germany, France, or any other occupied country.  In effect, there really was an Allied war against France. 

A key part of this book revolves around the resistance to Gen. Eisenhower from Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris of RAF Bomber Command and Lieutenant General Carl A. Spaatz of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, knowing that their plodding high-altitude bombers could no more protect the troops hitting the beaches than they could deal decisive blows against those resisting them. After quashing the "bomber barons'" dissent, Eisenhower's deputy, Chief Air Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder and his air component commander, Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory (who had led RAF Fighter Command and had limited experience with bombers), assigned missions that the bombers were simply incapable of successfully carrying out.

Not only were Harris and Spaatz resistant to this new use of their planes, but members of the British government up to and including Winston Churchill himself were also reluctant to unleash the kind of destruction against the French that theretofore had been reserved for the Germans.

In his book Ike: An American Hero (2007), author Michael Korda detailed how both Spaatz and Harris warned Churchill that there might be as many as 80,000 French civilian casualties if their bombers were to directly support Overlord.  Churchill in turn sent a message to President Franklin Roosevelt concerning the use of strategic bombers and the possibility of a "slaughter" against "a friendly people who have committed no crimes against us."

Roosevelt replied, "However regrettable the loss of civilian life is, I am not prepared to impose from this distance any restriction on military action by the responsible commanders that in their opinion might militate against the success of ‘Overlord’ or cause additional loss of life to the Allied forces of invasion."

Captain Harry Butcher, Eisenhower's naval aide during the war, also reported the opposition of Britain's War Cabinet towards the bombing.

On April 20, 1944, he wrote in his diary:

The War Cabinet felt such bombings would involve a heavy loss of French life, although it has been arranged to notify, by pamphlet and other means, the French people in areas to be bombed, so they can scurry to safety. Yet Ike has insisted and demanded that the ground forces have the benefit of the curtailment of movement of the enemy, which is inevitable by the destruction of the French transportation centers. The coming battleground must be isolated as much as possible. [Chief Air Marshal] Tedder is a perfect master of the art. Ike wants him to supervise and direct. Fortunately, the question has been settled and as General Ike wants it and everyone seems happy with the logic of the arrangement.

At the time, radar-guided bombing had recently been adopted by American strategic bombers but even with this technological leap forward, the Eighth Air Force Operations Analysis Section estimated that in the last quarter of 1944, only one in 70 bombs dropped over cloud-covered targets landed within a half-mile of them. And as is well known, June 1944 found Normandy continually beset with bad weather.  

Compounding things were the orders ultimately given to strategic bomber crews carrying out D-Day's preparatory air assault flying between 6,000 and 12,000 feet above the thick cloud cover. "The official US Army Air Force account notes that everyone was concerned with inaccurate bombing and hitting friendly troops," wrote Bourque," so, 'with Eisenhower's approval the pathfinder bombardiers were ordered to delay up to thirty seconds after the release point showed on their scopes before dropping.'" "Unfortunately, except in the Ninth Air Force sector," Bourque concluded, "the inaccurate air attack had done little other than alert German troops to the invasion force's arrival." 

In the final tally, Harris and Spaatz's prognostications turned out to be only slightly overstated. "The total French toll caused by Allied bombs," Bourque wrote, "was between 60,000 and 70,000 out of 150,000 French civilian deaths during the war." 

The shortcomings of the bombing campaign also contributed to the staggering casualty rate of the Allied troops storming ashore, particularly at Omaha.  In many first-person accounts of D-Day I have read there is a common refrain of a false hope held by those landing that morning, best summed up in an official after-action report by Lieutenant Alfred A. Schiller, a medical officer assigned to the 7th Beach Battalion (established at Camp Bradford, Virginia, in September 1943), who landed at Omaha Beach on the morning of June 6:

In the briefing sessions, we were told again and again that the beachheads would be thoroughly softened up by aerial and naval bombardment, yet when the fortifications of the beachhead and cliffs were examined later, there was no evidence of a single bomb having been dropped on the beach installations in this area (Omaha) by aircraft. Only a few of the most- superficially placed and unprotected enemy gun emplacements had been destroyed by our naval gun fire - and as far as I could discover, this destruction might have come from [sic]car tanks instead. Had the softening-up taken place as planned, I'm certain we would easily have overcome the opposition without nearly such stupendous losses, and the evacuation schedule could have been carried out as planned.

"It is probable that the adjustment to the bombing times had the opposite effect of what planners intended and caused more Allied and French casualties than it prevented," wrote Bourque. "no wonder few air enthusiasts have wanted to realistically discuss the details of this assault, since the largest single air attack in history failed to accomplish its mission."

During the Normandy invasion, a U.S. Army medical corpsman gives candy to a French girl injured during the invasion. Photograph released June 17, 1944. (80-G-59435, Naval History and Heritage Command image)

The throngs of French citizens attending the festivities in Normandy today and in decades past were no doubt genuinely grateful to their liberators, yet that gratitude must surely be tempered with the knowledge of the great cost that came with that liberation.  After three-quarters of a century, it is high time that those outside France become just as acquainted with those unpalatable details. Bourque has done a masterful job of laying out that cost in great detail, and I doubt that after reading Beyond the Beach anyone could ever look upon Eisenhower's "crusade" with the same eyes again.

Recent Reads: "Our Little Monitor" is a Big Deal

A slightly enhanced view of the front and back of a copper token in the Hampton Roads Naval Museum collection commemorating "OUR LITTLE MONITOR," with one-inch rule included for size reference. (M.C. Farrington)

"Our Little Monitor":The Greatest Invention of the Civil War

By Anna Gibson Holloway and Jonathan W. White (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2018)
   
Reviewed by Joseph Miechle
Hampton Roads Naval Museum Educator

The most recent addition to the long historiography of the USS Monitor comes from two authors with a history in Hampton Roads. Dr. Anna Gibson Holloway was curator of the USS Monitor Center at the Mariners Museum in Newport News, Virginia. She has also served as the maritime historian for the National Parks Service Maritime Heritage Program in Washington D.C. Dr. Jonathan White is an associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, and he has eight successful books on the American Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln under his belt. He has published more than one hundred articles, essays and reviews, and is the winner of the Abraham Lincoln Institute’s 2015 book prize. A better duo to collaborate about a book on one of the most famous ships to ever serve in the US Navy would be difficult to conceive. 


The 283-page book is itself structured with two main parts. Part one, The Monitor in History and Memory, lays out the history of the ship from conception to sinking and even includes a brief section on her most well-known enemy, CSS Virginia. The building of Monitor and the prejudices John Erickson had to overcome to have the Navy accept his ship are well presented. From launching in New York, to the turbulent voyage south to Hampton Roads, to the monumental battle with Virginia, numerous primary sources coupled with the two authors own expertise on the subject present an amazingly compelling narrative. It is not often one is able to describe a work of historical non-fiction as a page turner, but in this instance the shoe certainly fits. The story of one of Americas favorite ships winds down as the authors describe the vessel post Battle of Hampton Roads, and the strenuous conditions on which the crew worked, fought, and lived until the tragic sinking in December, 1862. The authors weave the story using the accounts of crew members as well as those from people “outside looking in.” The reader really walks away with a sense of how the public felt about the Monitor, and why she became so endearing to them, despite a short service life. The last chapter of Part one concludes with the recovery of Monitor’s turret, conservation efforts at The Monitor Center, new findings, and interment of the remains of crewmen who perished when the vessel foundered off the coast of North Carolina.

A bird's eye view illustration of the fight between USS Monitor and CSS Virginia looking south roughly from Fort Monroe based upon an eyewitness to the Battle of Hampton Roads printed in Harper's Weekly a month after the battle. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum collection)

Part two, A Documentary Record of the USS Monitor, provides us with a substantial number of germane primary resources yet manages not to overwhelm the reader. Of particular interest is a section on letters sent to President Lincoln by citizens who desired to improve Monitor with often absurd modifications, so that the ship might be better equipped to sink her foe, CSS Virginia. Many of the ideas sent to Lincoln also contained diagrams or drawings. Some ideas are very detailed, some could possibly have worked, other are quite comical, many of them are reproduced in this book in full color. Partial deck logs from USS Currituck and letters from Monitor, First Engineer Isaac Newton Jr. round out the less often seen primary sources from Part two. 

“Our Little Monitor” would look just as at home with lavishly illustrated coffee table books as it would with other important scholarly volumes. It contains well over a hundred full color, detailed photographs that help really solidify how contemporary observers viewed Ericsson’s Monitor. Nestled amongst the images are lesser known primary accounts of the Battle of Hampton Roads, songs and poems written about the ship and her crew, as well as drawings and paintings that celebrated the “Greatest Invention of the Civil War.” This book will undoubtedly set a standard for Monitor research in the future and should be included in any serious historiography. It ought to be considered a “must” for any serious student of the American Civil War and would be an entertaining read to even those with just a casual interest.