COURTESY OF HENRY BALLONE

On Our Scope

By Fred L. Schultz, Editor-in-Chief
August 2004
Navies finally may be attracting long-overdue attention from the Civil War history community. In this issue, we present some cases in point in an expanded section made possible through a ...
"The Monitor and Merrimac: The First Fight Between Ironclads" by J. O. Davidson

A Duel of Iron

By Lieutenant Commander Thomas J. Cutler, U.S. Navy (Retired)
August 2004
Sealed in an armored turret, unable to see out with the gunports closed, men in the Monitor seem frozen, waiting for the battle to begin.

The Monitor’s Lucky Sister

By Edward Stokes Miller
August 2004
On the night of 30 December 1862, the world’s first turreted iron warship foundered off North Carolina’s stormy Cape Hatteras. The ship that accompanied her—the USS Passaic—nearly identical in design ...

A West Coast Battle that Almost Was

By Lieutenant Commander Wayne Padgett, U.S. Coast Guard Reserve (Retired)
August 2004
Had HMCS Rainbow met her German adversary on the California coast in the late summer of 1914, it might have been a rude awakening for the young Royal Canadian Navy.

R-14 Under Way, Under Sail

By Lieutenant Commander Robert G. Douglas, U.S. Navy (Retired)
August 2004
While at sea off Hawaii in search of a lost vessel in 1921, a U.S. submarine was nearly lost herself when she ran out of fuel. The sub’s innovative captain ...

A Summer in Newport

By Paul Stillwell
August 2004
The years roll by awfully quickly after a while. The calendar provides a stark reminder that 40 years ago this summer I began training at the Navy’s Officer Candidate School ...

In Contact

August 2004
“‘To Tell Great Stories’” (See F. Schultz, pp. 32-35, June 2004 Naval History) I. V. de Chellis I was surprised at the interview you had with Douglas Brinkley ...

Historic Fleets

By A. D. Baker III
August 2004
The 11,540-ton “seagoing coastline battleship” Kearsarge (BB-5) was the only U.S. Navy battleship not named for a state and remained in service far longer than any other battleship, although for ...

The Flying Boxcar

By Norman Polmar, Author, Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet
August 2004
The Fairchild R4Q Packet was an unusual and useful transport air- craft flown for more than two decades by the U.S. Marine Corps. Generally known as the “flying boxcar,” the ...

Naval History News

August 2004
Submariner Gets Support to Make Admiral Submarine veterans have begun a nationwide campaign to persuade Congress to confer the rank of rear admiral on retired Navy Captain Slade Cutter. The ...

Book Reviews

Reviewed by Daniel Masterson & James Delgado
August 2004
Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe Laurence Bergreen. New York: William Morrow, 2003. 414 pp. Maps. Illustrations. $27.95. Reviewed by Daniel Masterson It ...