And Speaking of Books......

Thanks to Andrew Wagenhoffer over at Civil War Books and Authors for posting an informative review of a new book dealing with Civil War naval history. While this book obviously has it's limitations, it sounds like a worthwhile read for folks who are truly interested in the subject matter.

Busy Week (and things aren't going to slow down)

A week ago yesterday the doctor told me to take the walking boot off and start wearing a regular shoe again. I have to say the first few hours of wearing a shoe, after three months of not wearing one, felt kind of weird. I still have to do some physical therapy, I still have some swelling and pain, but the doctor says I should be 100% within another month or so.

I tested things out right away, spending a weekend on the Battleship USS North Carolina in Wilmington. Our living history group did a Civil War living history there on Saturday and saw over 1,500 visitors come through. We also spent two nights aboard "The Showboat" which was really fun.

Fall semester classes at both colleges started this week, so I've been busy answering student emails, adding students who registered late, and doing all manner of administrative work that has to be done at the start of a semester. So far things seem to be going well and hopefully that will continue for the next three and a half months.

Things will really start picking up both at work and on the living history front over the next six weeks or so; be on the lookout for lots of posts from me in the next couple of months. Next weekend will kick it all off, as I'm headed to Cape Hatteras with the artillery crew from Fort Fisher to help commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Hatteras. We'll actually be doing artillery demonstrations on the ground of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which should make for some really cool photo ops!

A Few Thoughts on "Perilous Fight"

Earlier this week, I finished reading Perilous Fight: America's Intrepid War With Britain on the High Seas, 1812-1815. Without going into a lot of detail, here are a few random thoughts about the book.

For the most part, it is a quick and easy read. There were one or two spots that moved kind of slowly, but that was the exception. Budiansky does a pretty good job fleshing out the relationships among the various "characters" in the story (i.e. high ranking naval officers and politicians, mainly on the American side, but on the British as well). He gives the reader a lot of background information to start with, almost too much in my opinion, as the book seems a bit slow to get started. However, once you get past the first chapter or two the book really takes off. If there's one problem I had with this book it is that the author sometimes takes on a sarcastic tone, which in my opinion is a little less than professional. I appreciate humor and wit in a book, but I think in some instances (mainly early in the book) Budiansky goes a bit overboard with it. Otherwise, I think its a fine book and would recommend it to anyone interested in the War of 1812 or the history of the US Navy.

Plymouth Event Report

We have always said that the draw for us in attending this event each year is that it is the only event we go to that we are able to work on a boat. Once again this year we manned the replica 30-foot steam launch and took to the Roanoke River to do battle against the replica ironclad CSS Albemarle. The weather was beautiful this year and we had a blast! Al Mitchell and I manned the bow gun, while Myron Rolston and Connor Jeannerette served as riflemen. Chris Grimes was at the helm, with Allen Mordica as our Boatswain/Coxswain. We almost as much time on the water as on land, which is always a good day. I didn't stick around for Sunday's activities, but I heard that a good time was had by all. It appears that this was my last true reenactment for awhile, so I'm doubly glad that I attended!

Commemorating the Scuttling of an Ironclad

On Saturday, March 12 the CSS Neuse State Historic Site in Kinston commemorated the anniversary of the scuttling of the ship and honored the crew members who served on board. Our living history group was there portraying the crew of the ironclad. We had five displays for folks to look at and we were able to crew the 3-inch ordnance rifle, borrowed from Bentonville Battlefield for artillery demonstrations throughout the day.

The US Colored Troop Symposium was also in Kinston that weekend and they brought all their folks out to the site to commemorate and honor over 20 black men from Lenoir County who enlisted in USCT units during the war. It turned out to be a very nice day and a fairly well-attended program. The Kinston Free Press gave the event good coverage as well.

This was our only unit event scheduled for March, so we are taking a much needed breather. April will be moderately busy, but May and June will be absolutely crazy.

Onslow County African-Americans in the Union Navy

I received an email last week from Richard Phillips who authors a blog about African-American soldiers and sailors from Onslow County, which of course is my home county and where I currently live. He has found four brothers, the Everetts, who all joined the Union Navy. Follow this link to his blog, African American Soldiers and Sailors. There are a number of posts on the Everett brothers and a lot of great images, including numerous scanned documents. Excellent work, Mr. Phillips!

New Book by Dougherty

If you've noticed my current reading list on the right hand side of the page you'll see a book called Strangling the Confederacy by Kevin Dougherty. I didn't even know about this book until I stumbled upon it on the History Book Club web page. I was surprised to find that there was a new book dealing with the Civil War navies of which I was unaware. I'm usually pretty good about keeping up with the current scholarship. At any rate, I ordered the book from HBC and when I finished Stoker's excellent work I started reading Dougherty's book. I have to admit that I am more than a bit disappointed. I read the first few chapters (all of which are very brief) and decided it wasn't worth finishing. Don't get me wrong; there is plenty of very good information in the book. I found no grave factual errors in the little bit that I read, and all the information presented was fine. The problem is there's nothing new. The entire book is rehashed information from other secondary sources or well-known published primary sources. What kills me is that rather than basing his analysis on any primary sources, the author quotes other historians' works. In the brief amount that I read there were numerous quotes from Shelby Foote and Ivan Musicant. I've read works by both of these authors, so I really don't need Dougherty to rehash what they wrote. I suppose this book would be really good for someone who knows little or nothing about the Union Navy in the Civil War or combined operations (which is really what this book is about). It would provide them with the most basic of information and enough interpretation to get them started. For my purposes, it will only be slightly useful as a reference work.

Battleship Event a Success

We had an absolutely great time at the Battleship USS North Carolina last weekend. It was the largest group we've had together for quite some time (14 people) and we had every impression and display covered. It was nice to all be together and get to socialize and put on a quality program. We saw over 1,600 visitors on Saturday. Granted, not all stopped to see what we were up to, but they all had to walk right through the middle of our displays to get to the ship so I think we probably got at least a little bit of interest out of almost all of them. Some stood around and talked for a long time. We certainly hope to do this program again. Here are some photos from the event. Enjoy!
Quite possibly the largest weapons display we've ever had at an eventExcellent bosun's displayMr. Mosley talking about navigationMr. Oakley and his model steam engines

Civil War history at a World War II battleship

This weekend the shipmates and I are descending upon the Battleship USS North Carolina in Wilmington, NC. Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind is World War II and the exploits of the BB55 in the Pacific theater. However, this weekend we will be set up inside the exhibit area talking about the Civil War. You see, the mission at the Battleship museum is to tell the story of all the ship's named North Carolina throughout history. This includes a World War I dreadnought, a modern day nuclear submarine, and the two ships we will be talking about, both of which were used during the Civil War.

First, our Union contingent will be talking about the 1824 ship-of-the-line North Carolina, which was used as a receiving ship for new recruits in New York harbor during the war. Our Confederate cadre will be talking about the horribly decrepit Confederate ironclad CSS North Carolina built right there in Wilmington. It spent its entire service time (only about a year) in the Cape Fear River being used as a floating artillery platform. We are going to have a rather large crowd for us, about 16 guys, and we will have every display imaginable for the public to see including navigation, rope and knot work, small arms, heavy ordnance, ironclad ship construction, medicine, and steam engineering. We'll have US and CS Navy and Marines all represented. It is going to be our biggest program in quite some time and I think everyone is looking forward to it. We'll be at the Battleship from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Saturday. It will be the first Civil War program ever at the museum and the staff is really excited to have us there. We're probably going to see somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 visitors so we'll definitely be busy. I'll post photos next week.

Adding a New Blog to the Roll

I received an email today from the Conservation Project Manager at the Monitor Center/Mariner's Museum. They are looking to spread the word to interested folks about what is going on with the conservation of the remnants of the USS Monitor. I'm certainly happy to oblige since this blog started out primarily as a Civil War Navies blog. The link to the Monitor conservation blog can be found here, as well as on my blogroll. Check it out!

New Blog on the Blogroll

I just wanted to draw your attention to a new blog on my blogroll. It is dedicated to the Civil War Navy Sesquicentennial, and oddly enough is named that. There is also a Facebook page by the same name and the two are both run by Matthew Eng. Check out both when you get a chance!

Brief Book Review

I just finished reading Stephen Chapin Kinnaman's The Most Perfect Cruiser. I was asked to review this book for the Nautical Research Journal. This will be the third review I've written for that journal in the past 18 months (previously having reviewed biographies of John Paul Jones and Gustavas Vasa Fox).

I have to admit that I was very skeptical about this book from the outset. I had never heard of Dog Ear Publishing, so I did a little research. I assumed they were a vanity press, but found out that the company actually is just a self-publishing organization. They will publish any manuscript for anyone, and have varying packages depending on how much the author wishes to pay. This fed my skepticism even more. However, aside from some flaws that I attribute to the publishing process, this book isn't really all that bad. In fact, I was impressed with the author's focus, clarity, and research. Rather than simply relating the exploits of the CSS Alabama (I mean, do we really need another one of those books?), the author focuses on the construction of the vessel, and secondarily, other Confederate vessels in England. The book deals mainly with politics, logistics, and personalities. It really is a quite pleasant and engaging book to read.

The aforementioned flaws include a number of typos, an often too conversational style to the narrative, and other simple stuff like that, as well as a non-professional endnote style (but at least it has endnotes!). This book could have been published by any number of presses with a little reformatting and better editing. While not an academic jewel, it's still worth a read.

NC Maritime Museum

Ten days since my last post, but there really hasn't been anything too interesting going on in that time. I've been working on a book review, trying to keep up with my summer classes (which is always hectic), and lots of the routine stuff at work. However, things are about to get busy again over the next few weeks and it all began yesterday.My wife, Lori, tried on my flat hat, but it was a bit too big for her.

Me and some of my mates from the Carolina Living History Guild headed down to Beaufort to the NC Maritime Museum, which is where my wife works. We had been asked to do a Saturday living history program and it just so happened that the date we selected was also during the Beaufort Historical Association's annual historic homes tour. This worked out really well for us because lots of folks were already in town for the tour. We set up displays on uniforms, small arms, and steam engines, and portrayed both Union and Confederate navies, both of which had ties to the town at different points during the war. We had steady visitation all day and saw over 600 folks come through. One of the day's highlights was a visit from fellow historian, author, and US Army officer, Wade Sokolosky. Wade is a native of Beaufort and has just recently returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan; I was very glad that had the opportunity to come by the museum for a brief visit. All in all, it was a good day, and we even got a little silly towards the end, as you'll see in the photos.Al Mitchell talking to visitors about steam engines
Don Smith and Ken Sewell man the ever-popular small arms displayAnd then the silliness ensued!

Two Anniversaries Today

On this day in 1776, the first Continental Navy squadron was put to sea. And...

On this day in 1865, Gen. W.T. Sherman's army burned Columbia, SC to the ground.

For what it's worth.

Biography of Fox and Excellent Book

Yesterday I finished reading Gustavus Vasa Fox of the Union Navy: A Biography by Ari Hoogenboom. I was asked to review this book for the Nautical Research Journal. I am grateful to the editor for giving me the opportunity to read this book. Biographies can be a tricky business; some are exceedingly good, but I find many to be tedious, if not downright bad. This book is near the top of the exceedingly good list. It is extremely well written and lively, making it very easy to read. I managed to complete the 314 page volume in just over two days. As it should, the book does a solid job in telling Fox's life story, but the book is more than that. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the US Navy during the Civil War. Fox's life throughout the book is built around relationships, and it is those relationships that drive the story. I won't go into too much detail because I need to save that for the review. However, I will highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the topic.

Another Book to Look Forward To

Commanding Lincoln's Navy: Union Naval Leadership During the Civil War by Stephen Taafe (Naval Inst. Press, May 2009).

Sounds like a very interesting book indeed. Referenced by Mr. Wagenhoffer on Civil War Books and Authors. Thanks for the heads-up Drew!

Weekly Quote

I am going to take a break this week from the regular weekly quote for something that is monumentally more important:

On this day in 1861, just as the Civil War was heating up, the US Navy, in its infinite wisdom, abolished the daily rum ration for enlisted men. Yes, today is truly a sad day, and I think I may have to drink a Dark & Stormy for all those sailors for whom the rum ration was never part of the daily routine.

UPDATE: Check out Mike Williams' blog for a far better explanation of this than I just gave. Tip of the hat to my shipmate!

On This Day....

Today we also have an anniversary of some interest from the Mariner's Book of Days.

On June 30, 1956 the US Navy stopped roasting its own coffee beans and turned to commercial suppliers for its coffee.

This is certainly one of those bits of minutiae that one wouldn't normally think about, but an interesting tidbit nonetheless. Who would have thought that the Navy would have been roasting its own coffee beans as recently as this? An interesting piece of history and trivia.

Edenton, Here We Come!

Tomorrow will be our second annual living history at Historic Edenton. We had originally wanted to do an Age of Sail program there, but they wanted us to do Civil War. So we talk about the Battle of Albemarle Sound, the Union Navy's brief visit to the town, and the usual displays. If you are in Edenton tomorrow between the hours of 10 and 4 stop by the courthouse green and see us!

Fun at the 34th Annual Wooden Boat Show

We had a pretty good time yesterday in Beaufort, at the NC Maritime Museum's annual wooden boat show. Due to some last minute, unforeseen issues we had five guys in attendance instead of the eight we thought we would have. Still, we were able to do Civil War US Navy and War of 1812 impressions, complete with steam engineering, navigation, and small arms displays. I conducted numerous musket demonstrations throughout the day and we even fired our unit's swivel gun a few times. We saw about twice the number of spectators as last year, but could have stood a few more. Nonetheless, a good time was had by all. And we even came away with an invitation to serve on board the tall ship Royaliste at the upcoming 1812 Grand Tactical in Maryland. Photos follow.Sailing Master Jim Greathouse (L) and Quartermaster Chris Grimes (R) portray 1812 privateersGene Oakley demonstrates how a steam engine works