A Ship to Remember: The Maine and the Spanish-American War
Michael Blow. New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1992. 496 pp. Bib. Ind. Maps. Notes. Photos. $27.50 ($24.75).
Reviewed by Captain Brayton Harris, U.S. Navy (Retired)
In popular memory, the war of 1898 was planned by William Randolph (“You provide pictures. I’ll provide war”) Hearst, precipitated by Spanish treachery (blowing up the Maine), and won by the commanding officer of the Rough Riders (who led his troops in a cavalry charge up San Juan Hill).
Those memories verge on myth; even author Michael Blow’s interest began with a family myth that a grandfather had died with the Maine. After a career spent as an editor with Reader’s Digest and American Heritage, Blow turned his personal interest into a book which explores (and at times explodes) myths:
► W. R. Hearst exploited the movement for Cuban Independence with competitive zeal and zero journalistic integrity. He could editorially brag: HOW DO YOU LIKE THE JOURNAL’S WAR? and believed in the power of his press, but many other newspapers (before and after the loss of the Maine) contributed to the public ire.
Press coverage also played directly into the hands of some imperialist dreamers who long had been pushing toward a war with Spain. How long? Blow notes an 1895 letter that began Theodore Roosevelt’s increasingly frantic search for a military assignment: “In the very improbable event of a war with Spain ... I must have a commission in the force that goes to Cuba!”
► The Maine may have fallen victim to spontaneous combustion of coal stored alongside an ammunition magazine. Two on-site investigations (immediately, and in 1911 when the Maine was prepared for a ceremonial burial at sea) produced ambiguous results which were interpreted to indict the Spanish. In 1976 a study sponsored by Admiral Hyman Rickover reviewed the evidence and returned a finding for explosions that were internal, not external. (Blow votes for ambiguous, with the facts “unknowable.”)
► The commanding officer of the Rough Riders—Colonel Leonard Wood—wasn’t with his troops that glorious day at Kettle (not San Juan) Hill, and his executive officer (Roosevelt had finally found an assignment) didn’t lead a mounted troop into battle at any time in Cuba. Because of a shortage of transport, the Rough Riders had left most of their horses back in Florida. Roosevelt was, however, definitely in charge at Kettle Hill, displaying a characteristic mix of foolhardiness and true courage.
► And, happily, grandfather Lieutenant George Blow survived the explosion. He was one of the escorts who delivered the 1898 Official Report of Inquiry to Washington.
A Ship to Remember is a fresh look at a war that should have been over before it began: The Congress had whipped itself into such a frenzy that the declaration of war was made retroactive to avoid the otherwise troubling fact that the enemy had already surrendered. The only choice left to the hapless Spanish government was to defend the national honor and thereby suffer what must be the two most one-sided defeats in naval history—at Manila, by a U.S. flotilla under Commodore George Dewey, and at Santiago, under a force led by (either) Rear Admiral William T. Sampson or Commodore Winfield Scott Schley— take your pick. The nation could never agree.
The author brings in a wide range of contemporary narrative and comment. Even readers who are thoroughly familiar with the period should find something new among the many bits of telling detail: the tiny silk flag on a Navy Department scale model of the Maine carefully shifted to half-mast; a string band serenading the officer’s mess on board the New York, while topside a 4-inch battery harasses a troop of Spanish cavalry on a Cuban beach.
This is a welcome study of what Roosevelt crony John Hay called, without a touch of irony, “a splendid little war.”
Refighting the Last War: Command and Crisis in Korea 1950-1953
D. Clayton James with Anne Sharp Wells. New York: The Free Press, 1993. 282 pp. Gloss. Ind. Notes. Photos. $24.95 ($22.46).
Reviewed by Vice Admiral John T. Hayward, U.S. Navy (Retired)
D. Clayton James and Anne Sharp Wells have written a fine book explaining the modern entrance by the United States into the “limited war” business. They point out all of the policy decisions that military leaders faced in the operational area and cover all of the leading decision makers of the time: President Harry Truman, General Douglas MacArthur, and generals Matthew Ridgway, Mark Clark, James Van Fleet, as well as admirals Turner Joy, Arthur Struble, and James Doyle. The authors point out the differences between what these various leaders faced in Korea and what they had encountered in World War II. The title of the book is deceiving, however, for these leaders were really not “Re- fighting the Last War”: they were primarily using the equipment and weapons systems that were employed then, but the political and military operational environment was entirely different.
Mr. James’s previous books show that he was completely familiar with General MacArthur and his approach to life. He makes quite a point that the President didn’t go to Congress before he committed the U.S. force to fight the North Korean invasion. The authors make the point that Secretary of State Dean Acheson had become predominant in setting policy, as well as dictating military actions. Acheson was a strong-willed, opinionated individual, and Truman trusted him completely.
The failure of our intelligence on the Chinese decision to enter the war is completely covered, with its impact on MacArthur. His relief is discussed, revealing the weakness of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in their dealings with him. The problems MacArthur had getting the Joint Chiefs to agree on the Inchon landing strategy are well covered, as is the work of our negotiators, particularly that of Admiral Joy. Whereas the authors tell about the prisoner of war problem, they say little about how it was finally settled and what actually happened. (Two years elapsed before an agreement was signed.) It was a very strange business. Admiral Joy left as chief negotiator, frustrated and discouraged. The authors quote his final speech to the Communists at the negotiating table, and it is worth reading.
There are much better books on the actual military operations in this time period but none have covered the political and policy problems as well. Refighting the Last War should be read by all who want to study how such limited-war conflicts are waged. It is often necessary to limit one’s objectives, such as we did. And as the authors illustrate, our greatest difficulty comes when we change objectives midstream.
The Sultana Tragedy: America’s Greatest Maritime Disaster
Jerry O. Potter. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 1992. 312 pp. Append. Bib. Illus. Ind. Notes. Photos. $19.95 ($17.95).
Reviewed by Captain Michael T. Isenberg, U.S. Naval Reserve (Retired)
Maritime disasters embody a morbid fascination all their own. Human failure is almost always involved: the mistakes, stupid decisions, and even criminal conduct are usually multiple. Purposeful, after-the-fact analysis leaves the reader aghast. With his account of the Sultana’s woeful end, Memphis lawyer Jerry Potter adds yet another painful instance of waterborne horror.
At 0200 on 27 April 1865, near a series of islands called Paddy’s Hen and Chicks in the spring-flooded Mississippi River a few miles north of Memphis, the 260-foot wooden-hulled steamboat Sultana exploded. She was the fourth western riverboat to bear the jinxed name, the first three all having undergone tragedies. Incredibly, she probably was packed with more than 2,400 passengers (the Titanic carried 2,227, 1,522 of whom perished). Perhaps 1,800 of the Sultana’s load—she was legally rated at 376 passengers—perished in the greatest maritime disaster in the nation’s history.
The Sultana’s tragic demise was altogether exceptional in the nature of her passengers. Most of them were former Union prisoners of war, just released from the Confederate hellhole of Anderson- ville and from the lesser-known Cahaba in Alabama. Many were emaciated beyond belief, diseased and filthy scarecrows. They had been captured either by the cavalry raids of Nathan Bedford Forrest or in the Battle of Franklin in November 1864. The greatest number were heading home to Ohio (791), followed by Tennessee (514), Indiana (459), and Michigan (310).
The overcrowding was caused by an idiotic Union Army policy: the offer of five dollars per enlisted man and ten dollars per officer to transport the former prisoners upriver. There may have been kick- backs to the officers in charge of loading in Vicksburg, 15 to 20 cents per passenger. Part of the massive overcrowding may simply have been inadequate preparation of the muster rolls. Two other steamboats at Vicksburg headed north at about the same time, one with only 17 passengers and one with none, adding some credence to the kickback theory.
Potter has meticulously presented an almost obsessive labor of love (a huge appendix lists as many of the vessel’s passengers as can be reconstructed) and a lawyer’s brief filled with damning evidence. There is emotional purpose here; he calls the Sultana tragedy a “story which must not be forgotten .... our purpose was to acknowledge a group of Americans that history has forgotten.” The Sultana blew up at the end of the country’s bloodiest war, less than two weeks after Lincoln was assassinated, a day after John Wilkes Booth was run to ground. Her immolation occurred far from the Eastern urban press, and it involved anonymous Western farmboy-soldiers.
All this Potter correctly notes, but his brief, in the way of such things, emphasizes the prosecutorial. In the upshot, only one man. Union Captain Frederic Speed, an Assistant Adjutant General at Vicksburg, was ever tried for culpability in the catastrophe. Speed was found guilty on two charges—neglect of duty and assumption of unwarrantable authority— and sentenced only to dismissal from the service. The Army’s Judge Advocate General, however, cleared him of all charges.
After reading through Potter’s well-assembled catalog of evidence, one is convinced that any punishment for Speed, if upheld, would have been unjust. At the very least, singling him out from the crowd of rogues, cowards, and peculators that Potter presents would have been scapegoating. Potter is clearly frustrated; he wants a villain—or villains—but so much finger pointing and contradictory testimony took place at the inquiries and at Speed’s court-martial that, today, it is probably impossible to find the bad guys. The several candidates are all examples of the less-than-satisfactory Union officers left in the war’s backwater in early 1865. Potter names them and ruthlessly highlights their previous records, but Sultana's fate had many fathers and, un- satisfyingly, perhaps no villains.
This points to the single weakness in this engrossing examination of the steamboat’s end. The author is so tuned to his subject that he tends to forsake the wider scope of comparative analysis. Potter does not bother to compare the steamer’s construction, management, or modes of operation with other wartime Mississippi steamers, and in fact, she seems de- pressingly average in this regard.
Steamboat tragedies on Western rivers, usually due to a combination of faulty boilers, ill-trained crews, the constant menaces of sandbars and snags, and ramshackle construction, were a way of life in 19th-century America. Trading across the lines, as the Sultana probably did, was equally commonplace during the war in the West. Potter’s cast of shifty characters with Union commissions probably were, for the most part, bad apples, but this alone cannot indict them for the disaster. Both Union and Confederate forces had their full share of malingerers, deserters, and poor performers.
What made the Sultana special was her cargo. But even here. Potter does not consider what might have been the prima facie villain of them all: the constant American desire, after every war, to simply “get the boys home”—and never mind the cost.
Riverine: A Brown-Water Sailor in the Delta, 1967
Don Sheppard. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1992. 326 pp. Photos. $22.95 ($20.66).
Reviewed by Rear Admiral Norvell G. Ward, U.S. Navy (Retired)
This is a story of Lieutenant Commander Sheppard’s one-year duty on the Bassac River as Commander, River Division 51. Written as a memoir, it weaves several events into an exciting story of the fighting to combat Vietcong supremacy in South Vietnam’s Delta.
Sheppard portrays himself as an aggressive, hands-on leader. First, he raised the morale of his men by changing their patrol operations from mid-river to bank- to-bank patrolling and into canals. Having been promoted through and from enlisted ranks, Sheppard could—and did—communicate with his men in language they understood clearly and unequivocally. He learned his operating area by eyeball reconnaissance before leading brave men—sailor and officer alike— against defended positions. He tells of how he developed mutual trust and friendship with certain loyal Vietnamese in his area so he could receive tactical intelligence. He became a close friend of, and developed mutual trust with, his Vietnamese “ruff puff’ liaison man.
In 1965 the Vietnamese Navy was commanded by a weak man; its senior officers feuded among themselves; and it was almost non-operational. The Vietcong controlled the Rung Sat Special Zone and most of the Delta. They moved freely on the area waterways.
A Vietcong mining of a second Saigon-bound ship on the Long Tau River in late May prompted Commander, United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, to ask me, as Chief, Naval Advisory Group, about what the U.S. Navy could do to help regain control of waterways. In answer, I outlined the main essentials of Operation Game Warden. His approval, followed by the Secretary of Defense’s in July, led to the creation of Task Force (TF)-116. In March 1966, TF-116’s river patrol boats—supported by SEALs and Army Huey gunships—began Long Tau River operations in the Rung Sat. By June TF-116 was operating on the Mekong, Co Chien, and Bassac rivers. In January 1967 Game Warden became an all- Navy operation when Sea Wolves replaced Army Hueys.
Don Sheppard’s vivid story tells of a hard-hitting leader changing River Division 51’s tactics from passive to aggressive. He started penetrating known Vietcong areas in search of the enemy, and numerous firefights of varying intensity ensued. He tells of being encouraged and abetted in his aggressiveness by a new Commander TF-116, Captain Laske—the alias for my energetic ex-op- erations officer who, with my blessing, extended his tour one year to command the task force.
Sheppard also recounts leading his men ashore to destroy bunkers and huts, and to engage Vietcong in hand-to-hand combat. Many casualties—some described in gruesome detail—resulted from this questionable tactic. I made frequent trips to Army Hospital, Saigon, to award Purple Hearts to Navy wounded, many of them deployed in Operation Game Warden.
Sheppard came to know the loneliness and terrible responsibility of combat command. He agonized over the loss of brave and valiant comrades and friends. Nearing the end of his Vietnam tour, the once eager-to-take-command Don Sheppard was, like most combat veterans, looking forward to the arrival of his relief.
I did not meet Don Sheppard. Our short in-country overlap precluded visiting his area. I followed Captain Laske’s daily operational summary messages, however, and noted an extension of TF-116’s operations after he took command.
Books of Interest
By Lieutenant Commander Thomas J. Cutler, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Charting the Sea of Darkness: The Four Voyages of Henry Hudson
Donald S. Johnson. Camden, ME: International Marine, 1993. 255 pp. Append. Bib. Figs. Illus. Ind. Maps. Notes. $22.95 ($20.65).
Contending that Henry Hudson’s contributions far outweigh the minor record accorded him in history, Johnson gives the explorer his due in this entertaining account. Little is known about most of Hudson's life, but the years 1607-1610 are recorded in detail, revealing an explorer who sailed under rival flags and a captain who lost his ship and his life to a mutiny.
The First Frigates: Nine-Pounder and Twelve-Pounder Frigates, 1748-1815
Robert Gardiner. London, UK: Conway Maritime Press, 1992. 127 pp. Bib. Ulus. Ind. Notes. Photos. Tables. £25.
The first volume in a new series that will outline the development of specific ship types, this book focuses on the radical new ships that first appeared in the Royal Navy in the mid- 18th century. Featured are many of the plans that still reside in the British National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. Primarily a technical history, The First Frigates nonetheless contains a significant amount of information about the era in which these vessels served and about both the British and French navies of the period.
The Square Peg: A Tight Fit in a Tin Can
Jesse E. Pond, Jr. Sperryville, VA: The Pearl Harbor History Associates, 1992. 204 pp. Append. Notes. Photos. $19.95 paper.
The “glories and absurdities of Navy life before, during, and after World War II” are captured in this irreverent account of one man’s experiences. Pond was in Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 as a crew member of an ancient destroyer and served in her for the better part of the war.
The Tudor Navy: An Administrative, Political, and Military History
Davis Loades. Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 1992. 320 pp. Bib. Gloss. Ind. Notes. $69.95 ($62.96).
The history of the Royal Navy during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I is viewed in the context of the politics and economics of the times. This is the first serious look at the Tudor Navy since the turn of the century, and its freshness sheds new light on the subject, contradicting some heretofore accepted beliefs.
Uniforms and Equipment of the United States Forces in the War of 1812
Rend Chartrand. Youngstown, NY: Old Fort Niagara Association, 1992. 172 pp. Append. Bib. Figs. Illus. Notes. Photos. $14.95 ($13.45) paper.
A detailed narrative that describes the equipment used and the uniforms worn by American soldiers, sailors, Marines, and militiamen during the War of 1812 is enhanced by 217 drawings, paintings, and photographs. Muskets, pistols, swords, bayonets, flags, and helmets are among the many items presented.