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In the opening days of the American Civil War, the U.S. Navy suffered the catastrophic loss of its most valuable navy yard at Gosport, Virginia, commonly known as the Norfolk Navy Yard. Its fate was sealed by Virginia’s vote for secession and the subsequent resignation of most of the yard’s Southern officers, leaving its commandant, Charles Stewart McCauley, virtually defenseless. Early in the morning of Sunday, 21 April, fleeing federal forces set fire to and abandoned the Gosport Navy Yard, burning ten warships and surrendering 1,200 naval guns to Virginia’s militia. A year later, the Confederate ironclad "Virginia", built on the charred hulk of the steam frigate "Merrimack", chose t...
Many stirring words have been written about the heroic deeds of the officers and men of the U.S. Navy before, during and after the Civil War. But very little has been published about the naval constructors who built the warships that made their exploits possible. Of all of the Navy’s constructors from this era, none had more impact than John Lenthall (1807-1882). A native of Washington D.C. and the son of ambitious English parents, young Lenthall’s stellar rise through the ranks of naval constructors soon led to his appointment as the chief of the Bureau of Construction, Equipment and Repairs. Now the U.S. government’s highest-ranking naval architect, John Lenthall was in charge of des...
In the opening days of the American Civil War, the U.S. Navy suffered the catastrophic loss of its most valuable navy yard at Gosport, Virginia, commonly known as the Norfolk Navy Yard. Its fate was sealed by Virginia's vote for secession and the subsequent resignation of most of the yard's Southern officers, leaving its commandant, Charles Stewart McCauley, virtually defenseless. Early in the morning of Sunday, 21 April, fleeing federal forces set fire to and abandoned the Gosport Navy Yard, burning ten warships and surrendering 1,200 naval guns to Virginia's militia. A year later, the Confederate ironclad "Virginia", built on the charred hulk of the steam frigate "Merrimack", chose the slo...
In the opening days of the American Civil War, the U.S. Navy suffered the catastrophic loss of its most valuable navy yard at Gosport, Virginia, commonly known as the Norfolk Navy Yard. Its fate was sealed by Virginia's vote for secession and the subsequent resignation of most of the yard's Southern officers, leaving its commandant, Charles Stewart McCauley, virtually defenseless. Early in the morning of Sunday, 21 April, fleeing federal forces set fire to and abandoned the Gosport Navy Yard, burning ten warships and surrendering 1,200 naval guns to Virginia's militia. A year later, the Confederate ironclad "Virginia", built on the charred hulk of the steam frigate "Merrimack", chose the slo...
Many stirring words have been written about the heroic deeds of the officers and men of the U.S. Navy before, during and after the Civil War. But very little has been published about the naval constructors who built the warships that made their exploits possible. Of all of the Navy's constructors from this era, none had more impact than John Lenthall (1807-1882). A native of Washington D.C. and the son of ambitious English parents, young Lenthall's stellar rise through the ranks of naval constructors soon led to his appointment as the chief of the Bureau of Construction, Equipment and Repairs. Now the U.S. government's highest-ranking naval architect, John Lenthall was in charge of designing...
Merrimack is the biography of a warship, the U.S. Steam Frigate Merrimack. Her name has long been linked to the first duel of ironclads, an epic Civil War battle fought at Hampton Roads between the Monitor and Merrimack. But over time the myth of the Merrimack—actually the C.S.S. Virginia—displaced the memory of a magnificent antebellum U.S. Navy warship. The steam frigate Merrimack lost her identity. Nearly forgotten is the story of the original Merrimack, the namesake of a class of six powerful war steamers. When built she was the largest vessel in the U.S. Navy, the nation’s first screw-propelled frigate and the earliest major warship to be armed entirely with shell-firing guns. Her...
The Most Perfect Cruiser is the story of how the Confederacy got to sea the most deadly of its raiders, the C.S.S. Alabama. It is both a complex and a human tale, one that occurred entirely outside of North America. We encounter the ambitions of the brilliant James Dunwoody Bulloch, the Confederate secret naval agent who brought Alabama into being thinking he would command her; and her resourceful captain, Raphael Semmes, whose previous success had already alarmed the North. As for the Alabama, she began her maiden voyage in the teeth of a rising gale, barely escaping the clutches of a Union warship and the belated efforts of British authorities to seize her. All of these threads culminated ...
James Dunwoody Bulloch's central place in history rests on his Civil War era achievements as a secret agent of the Confederate States Navy in Europe. Captain Bulloch presents the full story of the life and times of this most remarkable man.
‘Mersey Built’ chronicles the little-known commercial battle that raged between North and South during the American Civil War. The South relied on Europe for its military supplies, which the North tried to stop with a naval blockade of all Southern ports. The South retaliated by destroying Northern merchant ships on the high seas, using war ships, secretly procured from British shipyards and smuggled out of Britain by sympathetic British captains using British crews. The Charleston-based business empire headed by George Trenholm provided a conduit for Confederate finance with its Liverpool branch acting as bankers for the Confederacy’s procurement agents. Merseyside, with its extensive...
Built in Birkenhead, England, from 1862 to 1865, the "Laird rams" were two innovative armored warships intended for service with the Confederate Navy during the Civil War. The vessels represented a substantial threat to Union naval power, and offered the Confederacy a potential means to break the Union blockade of the Southern coastline. During 1863, the critical year of the Confederacy's last hope of recognition by the British and French, President Lincoln threatened war with Britain if the ships ever sailed under Confederate colors. Built in some secrecy, then launched on the River Mersey under intense international scrutiny, the ships were first seized, and then purchased by Britain to avoid a war with the United States. These armored warships were largely forgotten after the Admiralty acquired them. Historians rarely mention these sister warships--if referred at all, they are given short shrift. This book provides the first complete history of these once famous ironclads that never fired a shot in anger yet served at distant stations as defenders of the British Empire.