| SHIP'S LIBRARY
CONFEDERATE CORSAIR: The Life of Lt. Charles W. "Savez" Read, by Robert
A. Jones. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2000. 240 pp. $24.95.
[Internet: www.stackpolebooks.com] Jones tells the end of this fascinating
biography in the first chapter, an entertaining although not completely
unique approach that hooks the reader from the beginning. Jones's style
and tone are both informative and concise; his text has just the right
amount of detail and flows at a good clip. Confederate Corsair looks
into an oft-neglected aspect of the Civil War--the efforts of Southern
raiders to disrupt Northern shipping and thereby bleed the North's superior
physical and industrial resources. The previously underpublicized privateering
exploits of Confederate Navy Lt. Charles W. "Savez" Read were not limited
to his forays up and down the Atlantic Coast; he also was at the center
of the struggle for the Mississippi, participating in every major naval
battle along the river. Read was very good at what he did--so good that
Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles dispatched more than 30 ships to
capture him, and he eluded them all.
Through his thorough research, which included tracking down a number
of unpublished documents from Read's grandchildren, Jones shows that
Read and the other Southern raiders did much more than capture and sink
Union ships--they also changed the shape and future of the American merchant
marine. The epilogue summarizes the case Jones expertly builds throughout
the book: "By relentlessly hunting Yankee merchant ships, the Confederate
raiders crippled Northern maritime trade. At the start of the war, American
ships carried more than twice the dollar value in foreign trade ... [as]
the rest of the world's ships combined. By the end of the war, with the
loss of ships through sinking and the transfer of American ships to foreign
ownership, Great Britain ruled the seas. The U.S. merchant marine did
not recover until World War I."
Confederate Corsair is a swashbuckling adventure and an important look
at how the Civil War affected American shipping for almost half a century
after. It is well written and deserves a read. Jones, who has been employed
by the Navy Department for 33 years, provided historical background research
for a 1970 proposal to the Smithsonian Institution for the salvage of
the USS Tecumseh and recently published an article on the salvage of
the CSS Virginia. With notes, bibliography, index, three appendixes,
five maps, and 16 pages of black-and-white photos.
THE GREENHILL DICTIONARY OF MILITARY QUOTATIONS, edited by Peter G.
Tsouras. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Greenhill Books, 2000. 600 pp. $49.95. [Internet:
www.stackpolebooks.com] This much-needed dictionary includes almost 6,000
apt quotations, arranged alphabetically by more than 480 subjects and
categories, and supplemented by a selected bibliography and four helpful
indexes: biographical index; index of battles and campaigns; an index
of the first several words of some of the best-known naval/military quotations;
and an index of "generals, soldiers, and war leaders"--which also includes
the names of a few (too few) admirals and other naval leaders. It is
perhaps not surprising that Tsouras, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAR)
and a senior analyst at the U.S. Army's National Ground Intelligence
Center, focuses more on ground wars and land campaigns than on sea battles--after
all, most of the battles in most of the wars of the last four millennia
have been fought on land. And he does include numerous quotes from the
great naval leaders and thinkers of the last 4,000 years. But his indexer
has done him wrong.
The relatively short two-page index of generals, soldiers, and war leaders
includes the names, for example, of such legendary--and war-winning--U.S.
Army four- and five-star generals as Bradley, Eisenhower, Grant, MacArthur,
Marshall, Patton, Pershing, and Schwarzkopf, but omits such equally famed--and
equally war-winning--four- and five-star Navy admirals as Burke, King,
Leahy, Nimitz, and Spruance. (Halsey is included, though, as are Yamamoto,
Odysseus, and Nelson, so it's not an anti-Navy bias per se.) That quibble
(an important one) aside, Tsouras's Dictionary is, except for a few typographical
errors that also detract from an otherwise sterling effort, an eminently
well-done, well-researched reference work that will be valuable to scholars
and entertaining to the general reader as well. Tsouras's other books
include Disaster at D-Day; Gettysburg: An Alternate History; and The
Great Patriotic War. JDH
THE SAILING NAVY 17751854, by Paul H. Silverstone. Annapolis, Md.:
Naval Institute Press, 2001. 128 pp. $38.95. [Phone: (800) 2338764;
Internet: www.usni.org] Volume one of the U.S. Navy Warship Series. This
well-researched reference work is a compilation of data on American ships
from the War of the American Revolution to U.S. actions through the Barbary
Wars, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War. The ships of the Revenue
Cutter Service and the Texas Navy, as well as the first steam vessels
acquired by the U.S. Navy, also are included. Each easy-to-use entry
includes information on the ship's size, dates and location of construction,
commissioning date, and length of service. With appendix, bibliography,
index, and 78 illustrations.*
Note: All phone numbers and Internet addresses are believed to be current
as of 1 April 2001. If no number is given, the information was not available
at the time of publication.
Unless otherwise noted, the preceding book reviews were written by Contributing
Editor Jennifer M. Price.
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