Lone Star Navy: Texas, the Fight for the Gulf of Mexico, and the Shaping of the American West
Jonathan W. Jordan. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, Inc., 2006. 380 pp. Bib. Index. Maps. Illus. $35.
Reviewed by Paul V. Walsh
Was the 19th century the golden age of scoundrels? It is difficult not to reach such a conclusion judging from the characters one meets within the pages of Lone Star Navy, Jonathan W. Jordan’s history of the Texian Navy. (The early Anglo inhabitants of the Mexican State and later the independent Republic of Texas referred to themselves, not as Texans, but as Texians.)
The first presented is the hard drinking Englishman Thomas “Mexico” Thompson, who saw his orders to pacify the rebellious Texians as an opportunity to restore his personal finances. Following an inconvenient trial for piracy in New Orleans (a fate that befell quite a few of the commanders in Jordan’s book), Thompson was commissioned by those same rebellious Texians to organize their naval yard in Galveston, only to meet his end in a bar brawl in Tampico.
Then there was Robert M. Potter, the first secretary of the Texian Navy who, earlier in life, had beaten unconscious and mutilated two men he suspected of having affairs with his wife. As a result, Potter had the dubious honor of having a crime named after him by the North Carolina legislature.
The second secretary of the navy, Samuel Rhoads Fisher, took a furlough for “health reasons” in order to defy the president of the republic by leading the Texian fleet on an unauthorized expedition against Mexico. Acting Secretary of the Navy John Grant Tod sought to shrink the size of the fleet to almost nothing so that, as “a bigger fish in a smaller pond,” he would improve his chances of obtaining command of a ship. Unfortunately for Tod, the cuts he initiated resulted in his own termination. And then there was Lieutenant James O’Shaunessy who, as the commander of the Texian schooner San Bernard, deserted his own ship in order to obtain money by selling his vessel’s small arms to the locals.
The tale of the short-lived Republic of Texas’ navy that Jordan presents is indeed fascinating and often humorous, but it is also a work of exceptional scholarship. The author, an attorney living in Atlanta who has had articles published in Military History magazine and MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, conducted an exhaustive search of contemporary records in some 20 archives, along with relying on numerous other primary and secondary sources. The results are reflected in the remarkable detail of his account. It is a credit to the author’s skills as a writer that such detail serves to enhance his work rather than weigh it down. Indeed, the text is enlivened with quotations that evoke immediacy and vivid images of weathering storms at sea and experiencing battle in the age of sail.
As Jordan explains, deserts and swamps impeded the overland movement of goods and people between Texas and her neighbors, Mexico and Louisiana. Therefore the Gulf’s coastal waters offered the simplest avenue of travel. Fortunately for the Texian rebels, Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna neglected both the dangers and opportunities presented by the coast during the War of Independence (1835-36). In fact, the author argues that the survival of the Republic of Texas and, in turn, the westward expansion of the United States, was preserved when Texian ships prevented supplies from reaching the bulk of the Mexican Army under General Vicente Filisola. Following Santa Anna’s capture at San Jacinto, General Filisola was reluctant to continue the fight, and Jordan contends that the failure of supplies to arrive tipped the balance in favor of retreat.
Mexico did not accept the loss of Texas, and the ten years of the republic’s existence was marked by frequent conflict on both land and sea. But the author makes clear that the greatest threat to the survival of the Texian Navy was not its Mexican counterpart, however powerful it may have been at various times, but rather one of the republic’s chief founders and its two-term president, Sam Houston.
By contrast, President Mirabeau B. Lamar, who served between Houston’s terms, sought not only to preserve independence but also to create a Texian empire at Mexico’s expense. It is no surprise, therefore, that the navy reached its apogee under his administration. During President Lamar’s expansion the Texian Navy accomplished the only feat for which, in a sense, it is still remembered. By purchasing 180 revolvers of a revolutionary new design, it kept Samuel Colt’s business afloat, while the firearm in question went on to become the famous “Navy Model.”
Although the star of the republic that the Texian Navy served under was often an unlucky one, at least it has been fortunate in finding in Jonathan W. Jordan a worthy chronicler of its history. Simply put, Lone Star Navy is the definitive study of the Texian Navy for both scholars and the general reader.
Benedict Arnold’s Navy: The Ragtag Fleet that Lost the Battle of Lake Champlain but Won the American Revolution
James Nelson. Camden, ME: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press (McGraw- Hill), 2006. 416 pp. Bib. Notes. Illus. Maps. $24.95.
Reviewed by William M. Fowler Jr.
Fame was Benedict Arnold’s goal, and when he could no longer achieve it on the American side he went over to the British. Arnold was devoid of ideals, and as such he was always available to the highest bidder. This is ironic, as author James Nelson proves Arnold’s lack did not impair him on the battlefield. He was the best combat commander to serve on both sides in the American Revolution. Indeed, Arnold’s victory at Valcour Island on Lake Champlain saved the Revolution that he later attempted to sell out.
Arnold, a successful New Haven, Connecticut, merchant, had been elected captain by the local company of militia. After Lexington and Concord, he marched with his men to Boston, where he proposed to the Massachusetts Committee of Safety that he lead a force to capture Ticonderoga, a weakly defended British fort at the southern end of Lake Champlain. The fort’s cannon could be brought to Boston to bombard the British. The Connecticut captain was promptly named a colonel in the forces of Massachusetts and sent off. Unfortunately, others had the same idea and, in the end, Colonel Ethan Allen and his “Green Mountain Boys” got credit for capturing the fort, leaving Arnold to sputter.
By the time Arnold returned to Massachusetts, General George Washington had taken command of the army. Arnold proposed a two-pronged attack against Canada, with him leading a northern approach against Quebec City while General Philip Schuyler, commander of the army in New York, moved from the south to capture Montreal and then assist Arnold.
“Arnold’s March to Quebec” is the stuff of which legends are made. Starting in late September the force soon encountered cold, wet weather. Men froze and provisions ran short. Arnold never wavered, but some of his officers did and nearly a third of his men turned about and headed home. It took Arnold six weeks to reach Point Levis opposite Quebec in a demonstration of extraordinary courage and leadership. What he did not demonstrate was good tactical sense. Not even General James Wolfe entertained the notion of scaling the walls of Quebec. On the last night of December 1775, in bitter cold and swirling snow, the Americans under Arnold and General Richard Montgomery, commander of the force that had arrived from Montreal, made a forlorn attempt to take the city. Montgomery was killed, Arnold wounded, and the Americans put into retreat.
This left the path open for a British invasion aimed at the Hudson Valley. As a brigadier general, Arnold took command of American forces on Lake Champlain to thwart the British advance. In Skenesborough, at the southern tip of the lake, Arnold set to work building a fleet, while at the northern end the British halted their advance to build their own ships.
After an entire summer of preparation, on 4 October 1776 the British squadron headed south. In the face of a superior I enemy, Arnold withdrew to a position on the west side of Valcour Island. It was a splendid choice. He arranged his vessels in a half- moon formation facing south knowing that the prevailing northerly winds would force the British to sail to windward in order to approach him. A week later, the British squadron rounded the tip of the island and beat toward the Americans.
Nelson’s description of the battle is superb. The Americans lost, to be sure, but under cover of darkness Arnold managed to escape with the remnants of his squadron. The British pursued, and eventually most of Arnold’s vessels were either destroyed by the enemy or scuttled. Rather than risk a winter in the Champlain valley, however, the British withdrew north to more comfortable quarters.
In the aftermath of defeat Arnold had to fend off a variety of charges from his subordinates, none of which was proved. He grew increasingly resentful of his treatment by the Continental congress and fellow officers. In February 1777, after being passed over for promotion, he threatened to resign and was only prevented from doing so by Washington, who urged him to remain. Deeply unhappy, Arnold reluctantly agreed to continue his service, and in July he was ordered to join the northern army under the command of General Horatio Gates.
By spring 1777 the British were beginning their second advance south towards the Hudson, under the command of General John Burgoyne. Arnold had bought the Americans time at Valcour Island, and they used it wisely in the ensuing months. Gates had gathered a considerable army and was waiting with Arnold for the British near Saratoga. The two men had very different views of the coming battle. Arnold argued for an attack, while Gates preferred to wait out Burgoyne. They quarreled, and Gates dismissed Arnold, telling him that he had “no business here.” Arnold sulked but did not leave. In the second battle of Freeman’s Farm, without orders, he led a charge and was seriously wounded.
Because his injuries prevented him from serving in combat, Arnold requested posting to Philadelphia, which had been recently evacuated by the British. It was here that he met Peggy Shippen, who had earlier been often seen in the company of a young British major, John Andre. Arnold married Peggy and shortly thereafter began a conversation with the enemy.
Nelson’s finely written narrative is a winner. By delving deeply into original sources, taking particular advantage of the indispensable Naval Documents of the American Revolution, he presents a compelling picture of operations in the northern theater of the Revolution and Benedict Arnold’s critical role.
Bitter Ocean: The Battle of the Atlantic, 1939-1945
David Fairbank White. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. 350 pp. Illus. Appends. Notes. Bib. $26.
Reviewed by Captain Timothy J. Lockhart, U.S. Navy Reserve
Novelists sometimes write wonderful histories, bringing the past alive through their sense of story, understanding of character, and use of imagery. Shelby Foote accomplished that difficult feat in his influential trilogy The Civil War: A Narrative. In Bitter Ocean, David Fairbank White, author of the novel True Bearing, looks at the Battle of the Atlantic through a novelist’s eye, and his view of the crucial World War II conflict is often impressive.
Germany’s submarine campaign to cripple the United Kingdom by cutting her lifeline of merchant shipping produced grim statistics. Almost 63,000 Allied servicemen (about 2,600 of them Americans) and 36,000 merchant seamen lost their lives. The Kriegsmarine sank 2,259 merchant ships but lost 660 of its 1,171 U-boats. The most somber number is the casualty rate for German submariners: 40,000 officers and enlisted men went to war in U-boats, but only 7,000 returned.
For a while, Germany thought she could win the Battle of the Atlantic and the Allies were afraid she might. In May and June 1942, Germany sank 244 merchant ships, a total of 1,199,895 tons. During the next three months she sank another 289 ships. The Allies could not long sustain such losses (especially before U.S. industry began building ships in record time and numbers), and had they continued, Germany might well have won the battle and perhaps the war.
But that loss rate did not continue, thanks at first to the convoy system and later to a combination of increased air cover and improved antisubmarine warfare techniques and technology— most notably the introduction of radar and the cracking of Germany’s naval code. White is understandably critical of the United States’ delay in adopting the convoy system, which World War 1 had proven effective. He largely blames Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, commander-in chief of the U.S. Fleet and initially a skeptic of convoys, for the dramatic success in 1942 of Operation Paukenschlag (Drumbeat), the German campaign to sink merchant ships traveling along the U.S. East Coast.
White correctly describes the Allied side of the Battle of the Atlantic as primarily a British and Canadian effort, under the command of Admiral Sir Percy L. H. Noble, Royal Navy, with limited, but nevertheless vital, assistance from the United States. He is particularly careful to credit the Canadians, who put to sea the war’s third-largest navy in terms of hulls.
The author excels at illustrating what the Battle of the Atlantic was like for the men who fought it. He details the damp, noisy, and cramped quarters of the destroyers that escorted equally uncomfortable merchant ships, many aging and poorly maintained. Conditions were even worse aboard U- boats, with their cluttered, confined spaces, reeking of unwashed bodies and diesel fumes, in which terrified sailors sometimes waited near crush depth to be blasted into oblivion. The Germans would have appreciated the irony of U.S. Navy Sailors referring to the long and low Type VII U-boat as a hearse.
White also stresses the fact that surface ships had two enemies: U-boats— especially when submarine fleet commander Admiral Karl Donitz and his staff could assemble them into highly effective wolfpacks— and the rough weather of the North Atlantic, which in winter was sometimes life threatening.
The author’s lack of a naval background shows. Beyond improper use of simple terms, he fails to make clear that World War II submarines generally cruised on the surface at slow speeds to conserve fuel, diving only to attack or hide from attack. Bitter Ocean has helpful appendices, detailed notes (although no note numbers appear in the text), and a few maps; however, the absence of photographs and an index are frustrating.
The book’s biggest faults are its inclusion of trivial detail, for example, where certain merchant ships were built and what radio call signs they used, and occasional digressions, such as the descriptions of activities at a Canadian POW camp that held German submariners. The author also overuses the novelist’s technique of employing verbs serially to achieve dramatic emphasis: one U-boat is described in a single sentence as “hurtl[ing],” “shooting,” and “transferring fast” in its movement toward a target.
Bitter Ocean is nevertheless a lively, interesting, and worthwhile introduction to the Battle of the Atlantic. Readers familiar with the battle who want to study it in detail will probably want to consult a more advanced work, such as Clay Blair’s two-volume history, Hitler’s U-Boat War.
Down to the Sea for Science: 75 Years of Ocean Research, Education and Exploration at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Vicky Cullen. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA: 2005. 184 pp. 111. Append. Bib. Index. $25 (hardback) or $20 (paperback).
Reviewed by Commander Don Walsh, U.S. Navy (Retired)
When an organization self-publishes a book celebrating an anniversary of its existence, it is usually for the benefit of employees, retirees, and a handful of associated friends. Understandably, self- congratulatory tomes of this genre rarely appeal to readers beyond a small circle.
Vicky Cullen’s book is a rare exception. A long-time employee of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), she retired in 2005 as its executive editor. In her last year she was also director of WHOI’s 75th anniversary activities.
Founded in 1930, WHOI is one of the world’s great oceanographic institutions. Its 75-year history from the Depression years through World War 11 to 2005 also parallels concurrent growth in U.S. ocean sciences. During this time, the institution contributed much to that national advancement.
This beautifully written and designed book is Cullen’s retirement gift to the place where she worked for a third of a century. She used the institution’s extensive archives to select more than 200 excellent photographs and 30 illustrations for the volume. The result is one of the better sea books published in 2005. And while 184 pages might seem a bit slim for 75 years of history, its large format gets the job done. It is a book more for the coffee table than the bookshelf.
The first of the book’s five chapters covers the period 1863-1929 when marine science first came to the Woods Hole area of Cape Cod. The book’s final chapter of historical development brings the reader to 2005, the institution’s 75th year.
In addition to the chronological arrangement of the chapters, author Cullen provides a sampling of WHOI’s scientific contributions through six science story lines. Imbedded in the chapters as short histories, they cover:
· The Atlantic’s Might meandering River (Gulf Stream research)
· Probing the Seafloor (marine geology and geophysics)
· Pioneering Chemical Oceanography
· Considering Marine Bacteria (microbiology)
· Earth’s Greatest Interface (air-sea interactions)
· Fragile—but Robust—Denizens of the Deep (jellyfish).
Sixty-six fascinating sidebars are sprinkled throughout the pages about WHOI people, places, and events. Some of the characters seem larger than life, as if they had come from a central casting for this seagoing story. The sidebars add important color and flavor to the historical development, making for a very reader-friendly book with many literary nooks and crannies. This means the book can be picked up for a few minutes or a few hours with equal enjoyment, and if not interested in reading, there are always the wonderfully reproduced images to hold your attention.
This richly illustrated history is a rare bargain for a book of this quality. If you love the sea, then you must have this book.