Lincoln and His Admirals
Craig L. Symonds. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 430 pp. Illus. Index. $27.95.
Reviewed by Noah Andre Trudeau
A veteran historian, biographer, and U.S. Naval Academy professor emeritus, Craig L. Symonds is tilling some important new ground in this pioneering study of President Abraham Lincoln's management of the Union's naval operations during the Civil War. Just about any narrative of Lincoln's performance in office charts a steep learning curve, and this one is no different. Beginning as a commander-in-chief who knew "little about ships," Lincoln presided over the most dramatic expansion of the U.S. Navy until that time, from 76 vessels in 1861 (many laid up) to more than 600 by 1865. This conflict also saw the rise to prominence of a number of memorable naval officers, marking the first war, Symonds tells us, "in which American naval leaders bore the rank of admiral."
Besides illuminating Lincoln, this study's spotlight shines on David Glasgow Farragut, David Dixon Porter, Samuel Francis Du Pont, Charles Wilkes, Samuel Phillips Lee, and John A. Dahlgren. Given their individual character quirks—and each had a boatload—Lincoln more than had his job cut out for him. Prominently featured, too, is the civilian who helped the President ride herd on these forces: Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles.
Symonds' book is organized chronologically and advances by means of topics. Some chapters focus on specific incidents (such as the Fort Sumter crisis, the Trent Affair, or the development of the Monitor), while others tackle broader fields: the blockade, contrabands, and the politics of promotion. In each of them, Symonds shows a full command of his sources, drawing on many manuscript collections as well as published works. The illustrations are mainly headshots of the central players, and the maps are large-scale, but always useful. One does wonder why they disappear after 1863; certainly his coverage of the Red River campaign and the assaults on Fort Fisher would have benefited from accompanying maps.
While the book's title suggests a kinship to the T. Harry Williams classic Lincoln and His Generals, I think a more apt comparison would be with Dudley Taylor Cornish's landmark study of black troops in the Civil War, The Sable Arm. Each is revelatory in its scope, vivid in its characterizations of the key figures, and thought-provoking in the way a fresh story emerges from an oft-covered subject. Each also touches on more areas than can be explored in any depth, so one is left at the end with more questions than answers but also with the excitement of discovery.
Readers looking for a grand scheme to emerge will be disappointed. Writing about events late in the war, Symonds offers a succinct summary of Lincoln's approach to managing naval affairs as making "pragmatic and ad-hoc decisions based less on policy, law, or even principle than on what the circumstances would support." Lincoln would on occasion blithely bypass those officially in charge when someone outside the chain of command came up with a winning idea, or what seemed to be one. While this made for sloppy management and occasionally irate managers, it's also the stuff of fascinating stories.
Symonds is a fine writer who juggles his sources effectively. If I may be allowed one small rant courtesy of the word police: crescendo is not a substitute for climax. It means to increase in intensity or loudness, most especially in music. Events rise to a climax, not a crescendo. That very minor venting aside, Symonds is to be commended for a strong and original contribution to our understanding of how the Civil War at sea and on America's rivers was handled and mishandled by commander-in-chief—and confirmed landlubber—Abraham Lincoln.
Fighting at Sea: Naval Battles from the Ages of Sail and Steam
Edited by Douglas M. McLean. Montreal: Robin Brass Studio, 2008. 337 pp. Maps. Illus. $34.95.
Reviewed by Jeremy Black
This collection is a first-rate presentation of a series of naval clashes, each of which provides insights into the challenge of commanding fighting ships. Indeed, the human element is present in these narratives as the enduring constant in naval warfare. The collection does not offer a systematic study, as Sam Willis does in his excellent Fighting at Sea in the Eighteenth Century: The Art of Sailing Warfare (Woodbridge, VA: Boydell, 2008). Nevertheless, the individual essays contribute much. Editor Douglas M. McLean presents six of them, three covering the period of 1943 through 1945, the others from 1759-1815; so the chronological selection is slanted, with nothing, for example, addressing the American Civil War.
But enough of criticisms, for these essays are really excellent, and the whole amounts to a worthwhile book. The first piece is pertinent today, with modern interest in amphibious warfare. Author Donald Graves considers British seapower and the 1759 siege of Quebec, a major achievement of such sea power. The Napoleonic Wars are then presented in terms of two clashes in the War of 1812, a conflict that specialized in ship-to-ship battles. Andrew Lambert examines that between HMS Endymion and the USS President, while William Dudley considers the USS Constitution versus HMS Cyane and Levant. Lambert argues that the action mattered because, after 1815, Canada was essentially undefended on land, with British strategy depending on naval mastery to deliver a superior army to Canada. Thus, it was important that Britain had ultimately won at sea. This victory was recalled in symbolic acts, notably the postwar treatment of the President, which entered the British fleet. In 1833, the Admiralty dispatched HMS President to carry the flag of Admiral Sir George Cockburn on the North American Station, a clear reminder of the War of 1812, not least as Cockburn had taken a key part in the Chesapeake campaign of 1814. As Lambert points out, names matter. Indeed, he and Dudley provide interesting accounts of the aftermath of the clashes they discuss. Their pieces represent important additions to the literature on the naval side of the War of 1812.
With respect to World War II, the volume's focus is on the conflict with Germany, not Japan, which would have merited attention. McLean discusses Gruppe Leuthen's attacks on convoys ON 202 and ONS 18, an instance of the renewed Wolf Pack attacks of September 1943. Michael Whitby takes destroyer night fighting and the battle of Île de Batz on 9 June 1944, a detailed study that provides guidance to the difficulty of fighting at night. The Allied victory dashed any German hopes of interceding against the western flank of the invasion in the major surface forces. Finally, Malcolm Llewellyn-Jones examines how German submarines tried to adapt to the growing power of Allied countermeasures, using the hunt for U-247 during June through September, 1944 as a valuable case-study to effectiveness on both sides.
A Blue Sea of Blood: Deciphering the Mysterious Fate of the USS Edsall
Donald M. Kehn Jr. Minneapolis, MN: Zenith Press, 2008. 286 pp. Illus. Notes. Bib. Index. $26.
Reviewed by Rear Admiral Joseph Callo, U.S. Navy (Retired)
A Blue Sea of Blood is actually three intertwined stories. The first is about the fate of the USS Edsall (DD-219). The second is about the fate of the small number of the Edsall's crew members who survived her sinking. In each of those stories, Donald Kehn addresses questions that have persisted since the early stages of World War II in the Pacific. The third story is the background narrative of the early years of World War II in Southeast Asia, particularly the former Dutch East Indies, an important subject area often neglected by military historians.
The four-stack, flush-deck DD-219 was commissioned in November 1920 and named for U.S. Navy Seaman Norman Edsall, who in 1899 was slain in fighting against native Samoans. Initially, the Edsall was deployed in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. There, the author says she occasionally was "a pawn in the service of interests that likely involved neither real national security nor humane concerns." In 1925, she was assigned to the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, this time according to the author with "the ongoing mission of protecting the Open Door Policy" and a "misguided ethos of Dollar Diplomacy."
The Edsall, like most Allied naval forces in the Pacific in 1941, was overmatched against her Japanese enemy. And as the Japanese military rampaged southward toward Australia, she was eventually trapped alone, approximately 360 nautical miles due south of Java in the Indian Ocean. Her retreat cut off by two Japanese battleships, the Edsall was attacked initially by the Imperial Japanese Navy heavy cruiser Chikuma and then by carrier aircraft from a major force commanded by Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo. Details of the Edsall's desperate and courageous fight before being sunk on 1 March 1942 are assembled, piece by piece, by the author.
Following the sinking, Japanese ships picked up a small number of survivors, and the accounts Kehn assembled indicate that they were initially treated well. The details of what followed once they were transferred to shore become murky—and profoundly shocking. The exact number of survivors and the precise circumstances of their captivity and death are not known with certainty. Two things are clear, however: The Edsall's men fought courageously against overwhelming odds, and the evidence that the ship's survivors were massacred by their captors is unequivocal.
At one point, Kehn cites a letter sent by the Navy to a crew member's sister: "Navy Department records show that after the USS Edsall sank, your brother and about 40 other members of the crew were picked up from the sea by the Japanese just off the coast of Tjilatjap, Java. They were taken by Japanese boat to Kendari, Celebes, and held one night at Japanese Military Headquarters, Kendari No. 1. The following day they were transferred to the headquarters at Kendari No. 2 and were executed." The details behind that chillingly blunt letter that were researched by Kehn are gruesome.
Each of the book's three story lines is dramatic and important. However, their coherence is compromised somewhat by the volume of the details that lead to the book's conclusions and by Kehn's gratuitous excursions into subjective commentary.
The description of the Edsall's deployment to the Mediterranean, purportedly for the purpose of expanding U.S. oil sources in the Middle East in the early 1920s, is an example. At one point the author writes: "The United States wanted desperately to introduce commercial operatives of the rail-steel-bank nexus into what was once the Ottoman Empire. The motive is not hard to apprehend: U.S. oil men wanted more oil." Elsewhere, General Douglas MacArthur is repeatedly denigrated. There are 13 references to the general in the book's index. Dominating those sections of the text, which run throughout the entire book, are such pejoratives as "self-aggrandizement," "duplicity," "egregious disregard of instructions," "messianic fervor and bombast," "overconfident platitudes," "unreasonable," and "almost irrational."
Toward the end of his book, however, Kehn pulls things together and points out that the USS Edsall "occupied a uniquely tragic position in the complex historical narrative of the twentieth century" as an "emblem of fidelity and fortitude." On that basis, the stories in A Blue Sea of Blood are well worth reading.
Voyages, Documents in American Maritime History, Volume I, The Age of Sail, 1492-1865 and Volume II, The Age of Engines, 1865-Present
Joshua M. Smith, ed. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2009. 416 pp. and 448 pp. Illus. $34.95 each.
Reviewed by Wade G. Dudley
Joshua Smith and the National Maritime Historical Society have teamed to create a two-volume collection of maritime documents relevant to American history. Designed for use in a classroom setting, complete with questions at the end of each document, the books are interesting reading in their own right. More than 140 primary sources, selected from many thousands of potential documents and supported by brief essays to introduce each section of three to four documents, offer a glimpse of the critical position maritime events hold in the development of the United States and of America's utter dependence on the world's waterways.
Volume I begins with the "Age of Reconnaissance" and a letter of 1493 by Christopher Columbus describing that admiral's interactions with the peoples of the New World. The volume ends with an excerpt from the logbook of famed Confederate raider CSS Shenandoah, engaged in 1864-65 in an entirely different type of interaction. Volume II continues the maritime story in the late 1860s with documents stressing the importance of inland navigation to the reunified nation. It concludes with the war on terrorism and a press briefing by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan in 2006 on the controversial Dubai Ports issue. All of the documents selected are interesting and historically relevant.
Four themes, stretching across both books, determined the editor's choice of documents. The criticality of maritime trade to the growth and prosperity of the United States and the protection of sea lanes, coasts, and other interests by the U.S. Navy shape the primary theme. The remaining themes embrace social history: racism, environment, and gender. The editor does use other words to describe these themes. For example, racism becomes "power and authority versus degradation, slavery, or powerlessness" while gender is covered by "acknowledging persistence or change in human society."
This is an ambitious project, and to some degree its reach may have exceeded its grasp. The problem is not with making primary sources more readily available to students and professors—that is always a good thing. Rather, the thematic structure attempts to meet two sometimes disparate agendas, one involving economic and military development and the other focusing on social issues. As a result, especially working with a limited amount of space for such an extensive pool of potential documents, the primary theme is not as strongly served as it might have been.
On the other hand, an undergraduate course in the maritime history of the United States could find these volumes beneficial, especially to supplement lectures oriented towards the political, economic, and military side of that history. That usefulness drops sharply for courses dedicated to sea power and naval history or taught from a global maritime perspective. Nevertheless, many of the documents will remain useful. For those of us who read and occasionally write maritime history, this collection is well worth placing on the reference shelf for the individual documents that it contains.