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Books : History : United States : Civil War : Naval Operations
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The bloody and decisive two-day battle of Shiloh (April 6-7, 1862) changed the entire course of the American Civil War. The stunning Northern victory thrust Union commander Ulysses S. Grant into the national spotlight, claimed the life of Confederate commander Albert S. Johnston, and forever buried the notion that the Civil War would be a short conflict.
The conflagration at Shiloh had its roots in the strong Union advance during the winter of 1861-1862 that resulted in the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee. The offensive collapsed General Albert S. Johnston advanced line in Kentucky and forced him to withdraw all the way to northern Mississippi. Anxious to attack the enemy, Johnston began concentrating Southern forces at Corinth, a major railroad center just below the Tennessee border. His bold plan called for his Army of the Mississippi to march north and destroy General Grant's Army of the Tennessee before it could link up with another Union army on the way to join him.
On the morning of April 6, Johnston boasted to his subordinates, "Tonight we will water our horses in the Tennessee!" They nearly did so. Johnston's sweeping attack hit the unsuspecting Federal camps at Pittsburg Landing and routed the enemy from position after position as they fell back toward the Tennessee River. Johnston's sudden death in the Peach Orchard, however, coupled with stubborn Federal resistance, widespread confusion, and Grant's dogged determination to hold the field, saved the Union army from destruction. The arrival of General Don C. Buell's reinforcements that night turned the tide of battle. The next day, Grant seized the initiative and attacked the Confederates, driving them from the field. Shiloh was one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war, with nearly 24,000 men killed, wounded, and missing.
Edward Cunningham, a young Ph.D. candidate studying under the legendary T. Harry Williams at Louisiana State University, researched and wrote Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 in 1966. Although it remained unpublished, many Shiloh experts and park rangers consider it to be the best overall examination of the battle ever written. Indeed, Shiloh historiography is just now catching up with Cunningham, who was decades ahead of modern scholarship.
Western Civil War historians Gary D. Joiner and Timothy B. Smith have resurrected Cunningham's beautifully written and deeply researched manuscript from its undeserved obscurity. Fully edited and richly annotated with updated citations and observations, original maps, and a complete order of battle and table of losses, Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 will be welcomed by everyone who enjoys battle history at its finest.
Edward Cunningham, Ph.D., studied under T. Harry Williams at Louisiana State University. He was the author of The Port Hudson Campaign: 1862-1863 (LSU, 1963). Dr. Cunningham died in 1997.
Gary D. Joiner, Ph.D. is the author of One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End: The Red River Campaign of 1864, winner of the 2004 Albert Castel Award and the 2005 A. M. Pate, Jr., Award, and Through the Howling Wilderness: The 1864 Red River Campaign and Union Failure in the West. He lives in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Timothy B. Smith, Ph.D., is author of Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg (winner of the 2004 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Non-fiction Award), The Untold Story of Shiloh: The Battle and the Battlefield, and This Great Battlefield of Shiloh: History, Memory, and the Establishment of a Civil War National Military Park. A former ranger at Shiloh, Tim teaches history at the University of Tennessee.
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As the Confederacy felt itself slipping beneath the Union juggernaut in late 1864, the South launched a desperate counteroffensive to shatter the U.S. economy and force a standoff. Its secret weapon? A state-of-the-art raiding ship whose mission was to prowl the world’s oceans and sink the U.S. merchant fleet. The raider’s name was Shenandoah, and her executive officer was Conway Whittle, a twenty-four-year-old warrior who might have stepped from the pages of Arthurian legend. Whittle would share command with a dark and brooding veteran of the seas, Capt. James Waddell, and together with a crew of strays, misfits, and strangers, they would spend nearly a year sailing two-thirds of the way around the globe, destroying dozens of Union ships and taking more than a thousand prisoners, all while continually dodging the enemy.
Then, in August of 1865, a British ship revealed the shocking truth to the men of Shenandoah: The war had been over for months, and they were now being hunted as pirates.
What ensued was an incredible 15,000-mile journey to the one place the crew hoped to find sanctuary, only to discover that their fate would depend on how they answered a single question. Wondrously evocative and filled with drama and poignancy, Last Flag Down is a riveting story of courage, nobility, and rare comradeship forged in the quest to achieve the impossible.
From the Hardcover edition.
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On a brutally cold night in February 1864, all seemed calm off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. But beneath the placid surface of the sea, a Confederate submarine named the H. L. Hunley was about to attack the USS Housatonic, the Union Navy's largest warship. The sub plunged a 135-pound torpedo into the Houstonic's stern, sinking it within three minutes, and becoming the first submarine to sink a ship in battle. Lieutenant George Dixon and his crew signaled their victory to their Rebel compatriots on Sullivan's Island and steamed toward shore and a heroes' welcome. Sadly, their triumph was short-lived: For reasons that remain mysterious, the H. L. Hunley abruptly disappeared.
But not, it turns out, forever. Though treasure-hunters had searched for the sub since the Civil War, it remained undisturbed for 136 years. Aided with newly-developed technologies, a team of divers bankrolled by novelist Clive Cussler found the Hunley in 1995.
Two price-winning journalists, Brian Hicks and Schulyer Kropf, have chronicled this fascinating story of military daring, momentary victory, sudden death, buried secrets, persistence, and ultimate payoff. As described by the authors of The H. L. Hunley, its discovery and subsequent recovery have revealed a veritable treasure trove of human-interest anecdotes and solutions to decades-old mysteries.
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The sleek, 222-foot, black auxiliary steamer Sea King left London on October 8, 1864, ostensibly bound for Bombay. The subterfuge was ended off the shores of Madeira, where the ship was outfitted for war. The newly christened CSS Shenandoah then commenced the last, most quixotic sea story of the Civil War: the 58,000-mile, around-the-world cruise of the Confederacy’s second most successful commerce raider. Before its voyage was over, thirty-two Union merchant and whaling ships and their cargoes would be destroyed. But it was only after ship and crew embarked on the last leg of their journey that the excursion took its most fearful turn.
Four months after the Civil War was over, the Shenandoah’s Captain Waddell finally learned he was, and had been, fighting without cause or state. In the eyes of the world, he had gone from being an enemy combatant to being a pirate—a hangable offense. Now fearing capture and mutiny, with supplies quickly dwindling, Waddell elected to camouflage the ship, circumnavigate the globe, and attempt to surrender on English soil.
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In July 1862, Confederate Captain Raphael Semmes took command of a secret new warship. At the helm of the Alabama, he became the most hated and feared man along the Union coast, as well as a Confederate legend. Now, with unparalleled authority, depth, and a vivid sense of the excitement and danger of the time, Stephen Fox describes Captain Semmes's remarkable wartime exploits. While burning one Union ship after another--newspaper headlines screaming for his head--he eluded capture time and again, ravaging Union commerce. But when the tide turned in favor of the Union, foreign ports were less willing to take in the Alabama, forcing Semmes to wander the oceans on a deteriorating ship, his ability to outwit the Union captains diminishing rapidly. Finally, in June 1864, a Union gunship sunk the Alabama--though not her captain--in a battle that was reported around the world.
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The opening volume in a gripping new fictional series of the Civil War at sea, from the sailor and novelist who "knows what he is writing about when it comes to anything on, above, or below the water" (The New York Times Book Review).
The year is 1861, and America shudders on the brink of disunion. Elisha Eaker, scion of a wealthy Manhattan banking family, joins the Navy against his father's wishes. He does it as much to avoid an arranged marriage to his cousin, Araminta Van Velsor, as to defend the flag. As war looms, Eli boards the sloop of war U.S.S. Owanee. There he meets Lieutenant Ker Claiborne at his own moment of decision.
Claiborne, Owanee's executive officer, is an Annapolis graduate who's seen action in the West Indies and the Africa Station on the Navy's Anti-Slavery Patrol. Cool and competent in storm and battle, he now faces an agonizing choice between the Navy he loves and his native Virginia. Whichever road he takes, he'll be called a traitor.
Within days, Owanee is ordered on a desperate mission to relieve Fort Sumter, the last outpost of Union authority in the newly declared Confederacy. And in Manhattan, Araminta makes her own move for independence.
So begins Fire on the Waters, a tale of honor, loyalty, and the hunger for freedom. With authentic nautical and historical detail, veteran storyteller David Poyer follows Eli, Araminta, Ker, and their loved ones and shipmates into a maelstrom of divided loyalties, bitter partings, stormy seas, governmental panic, political blundering, and finally the test of battle as the bloodiest and most divisive war in American history begins.
Poyer's deep, complex characters and vivid evocation of the heroic twilight of the Age of Sail will earn Fire on the Waters a place beside the work of Patrick O'Brian, Nicholas Monsarrat, and C. S. Forester.
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Confederate Ironclad 1861-65
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At the start of the American Civil War, neither side had warships on the Mississippi River, which was a vital strategic artery. In what would prove the vital naval campaign of the war, both sides fought for control of the river. While the Confederates relied on field fortifications and small gunboats, the Union built a series of revolutionary river ironclads. First commissioned in January 1862, these ironclads spent the next two years battling for control of the Mississippi, fighting in a string of decisive engagements that altered the entire course of the war. This book explains how these vessels worked, how they were constructed, how they were manned and how they were fought.
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Conf Sub & Torpedo Vessels 1861
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Union Monitor 1861-65
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Having survived the bloody Battle of New Orleans and the loss of their ironclad Yazoo River, captain Samuel Bowater, engineer Hieronymus Taylor, and the survivors of their crew are given new orders -- take command of an ironclad warship being built in Memphis, Tennessee.
Bowater and his men take passage upriver from "Mississippi" Mike Sullivan, one of the wild, undisciplined captains of the River Defense Squadron, only to find, on their arrival, that their ship is not even half built and the enemy is closing fast.
Against their better judgment, Bowater and crew join forces with the mercurial Sullivan on board his ad hoc river gunship the General Page. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Confederates once again fling themselves bravely at the overwhelming power of the Yankee invaders. The deadly back-and-forth fight along the Mississippi ends at last in the massive naval battle of Memphis, and the near-suicidal attempt by the Confederates to hold back the Northern flood.
Filled with wild characters and heart-pounding action, and set against the bold backdrop of the Civil War, Thieves of Mercy is a worthy successor to the W. Y. Boyd Award-winning novel Glory in the Name, the book Bernard Cornwell lauded as "by far, the best Civil War novel I've read."
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Many people have heard of the Hunley, the experimental Confederate submarine that sank the USS Housatonic in a daring nighttime operation. Less well known, however, is that the Hunley was not alone under the waters of America during the Civil War. Both the Union and Confederacy built a wide and incredible array of vessels that could maneuver underwater, and many were put to use patrolling enemy waters. In Submarine Warfare in the Civil War, Mark Ragan, who spent years mining factory records and log books, brings this little-known history to the surface.The hardcover edition, Union and Confederate Submarine Warfare in the Civil War, was published to wide acclaim in 1999. For this new paperback edition, Ragan has revised and updated the text to include the full story of the Hunley's recovery and restoration.
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A novel about naval warfare in Florida during the Civil War.The year is 1863. The Civil War is leaving its bloody trail across the nation as Peter Wake, born and bred in the snowy North, joins the U.S. Navy as a volunteer officer and arrives in steamy Florida for duty with the East Gulf Blockading Squadron. The idealistic Wake has handled boats before, but he's new to the politics and illicit liaisons that war creates among men. Assigned to the Rosalie, a tiny, armed sloop, Captain Wake commands a group of seasoned seamen on a series of voyages to seek and arrest Confederate blockade-runners and sympathizers, first in Florida's
Wake risks his reputation as a tough officer and smart decision-maker when he falls in love with Linda Donahue, whose father is a Confederate zealot, and steals away to spend precious hours with her at her Key West home. Their love is tested as Wake must make the ugly decisions of war in a beautiful, tropical paradise--decisions that will take Peter Wake right up to the edge of honor.
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Drawing on historical documents and riveting eyewitness reports of the Hunley exploits and illustrated with more than 120 photographs. This book uncovers the fascinating drama and pioneering impact surrounding the Confederate submarine.
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A shipyard apprentice finds high adventure aboard the S.S. Alabama, a Confederate ship which sails the Atlantic destroying Union vessels.
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April 12, 1861. With one jerk of a lanyard, one shell arching into the sky, years of tension exploded into civil war. And for those men who did not know in which direction their loyalty called them, it was a time for decisions. Such a one was Lieutenant Samuel Bowater, an officer of the United States Navy, a native of Charleston, South Carolina.
Hard pressed to abandon the oath he swore to the United States, but unable to fight against his home state, Bowater accepts a commission in the nascent Confederate navy, where captains who once strode the quarterdecks of the world's most powerful ships are now assuming command of paddle wheelers and towboats. Taking charge of the armed tugboatCape Fear, and then the ironclad Yazoo River, Bowater and his men go toe to toe with the powerful Union navy, standing up boldly in the face of the overwhelming force and resources of the North.
From Norfolk to Hampton Roads, from Roanoke Island to the wild nighttime battle on the river below New Orleans, Glory in the Name tells the dramatic story of the Confederate States Navy, and the brave men who carried forward against overwhelming odds the waterborne fight for Southern independence.
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In At the Edge of Honor, the first of a series of novels on the life and times of Peter Wake U.S.N., the former merchant marine officer arrived at the East Gulf Blockading Squadron at Key West in 1863 as a new volunteer officer commanding the tiny armed sloop Rosalie. With her he chased blockade runners on the coasts of Florida and delved into the murky world of Confederate sympathizers in Spanish Havana and the British Bahamas.Now the year is 1864, and Wake, assisted by his indomitable Irish bosun, Sean Rork, commands a larger ship, the naval schooner St. James. Wake’s remarkable ability to make things happen continues as he searches for army deserters in the Dry Tortugas, discovers an old nemesis during a standoff with the French Navy on the coast of Mexico, starts a drunken tavern riot in Key West, and confronts incompetent Federal army officers during an invasion of upper Florida. It all adds to his growing reputation in the fleet as a man who engenders loyalty among the sailors of the lower deck and grudging respect from his superiors.
Along the way, Wake’s personal life takes a new tack when he risks reputation for love by returning to the arms of his forbidden sweetheart, the daughter of a Confederate zealot. Key West provides a unique setting for them to prove that their love is strong enough to overcome the insanity of the war.
And through it all, even when surrounded by the swirling confusion of danger and political intrigue, Peter Wake maintains his dedication to balance on the point of honor.
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Though the land war dominates the Civil War historic literature and imagination, the war at sea was equally dramatic and a vital contributor to the Union victory.Drawing on recent scholarship, official records, and the memoirs of participants, Spencer Tucker looks at the important roles played by the Union and Confederate navies during the Civil War. Tucker opens with an overview of the U.S. Navy’s history to 1861 and then closely examines the two navies at the beginning of the war, including the senior leadership, officers and personnel, organization, recruitment practices, training, facilities, and manufacturing resources. He discusses the acquisition of ships and the design and construction of new types, as well as their armament and the development of naval ordnance, and Northern and Southern naval strategies.
Tucker then takes a close look at the war itself, including the Union blockade of the Confederate Atlantic and Gulf coasts, riverine warfare in the Western theater, Confederate blockade running and commerce raiders on the high seas, and the Union campaigns against New Orleans, Charleston, Vicksburg, and on the Red River. Tucker covers the major battles and technological innovations, and he evaluates the significance of the Union blockade.