The Unknown Battle of Midway
Alvin Kernan. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. 175 pp. Illus. Bib. $26.00.
Reviewed by Colonel Gordon W. Keiser, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
The author, an 18-year-old aviation ordnanceman on the Enterprise (CV-6) in June 1942, presents the U.S. victory at Midway as the greatest battle ever fought by the Navy. Even so, he believes the good news of the defeat of Japan’s naval forces a few hundred miles from that lonely Pacific outpost has obscured a distinctly narrow margin of victory and very costly Navy blunders. The most tragic was sending four squadrons of unprepared pilots in poorly armed, obsolete torpedo planes against the enemy.
The early chapters focus on historical background, which varies from detailed to sketchy. Topics include fighter- and torpedo-plane deficiencies, mechanical and bureaucratic difficulties in torpedo development, and the plight of mostly inexperienced aircrews.
In Chapter Five, “Indians and ‘Ringknockers,’” Kernan opines that in the early days of World War II, almost all enlisted men were from America’s lower middle class and below. “There was always a lot of tension between the enlisted man and the officers, largely based on the enlisted men’s real fear of officers, who looked down on them, and the officers’ reciprocal fear that their orders would not be obeyed by men they never quite trusted. Naval caste squared with social class.” Having served with a cruiser’s Marine detachment in the early 1960s, I can sympathize with this view of Navy officer-enlisted relationships but cannot fathom its connection to the disastrous losses suffered by the torpedo squadrons.
Kernan describes the attack on Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo’s task force with a storyteller’s skill. It requires rereading to fully grasp how 44 of 51 aircraft and 98 of 127 pilots and crewmen were lost in just 90 minutes. Official after-action accounts reported that the Navy’s torpedo squadron runs on Japanese ships drew Zero fighters down to lower altitudes, thus clearing the way for its dive bombers to inflict devastating losses on the enemy.
The author points out that Navy command failures and tactical misjudgments contributed greatly to the Navy’s high losses at Midway, not least the absence of fighter coverage for the torpedo squadrons. This is not exactly hot news. Beyond those bungles—because “Lifetime navy careers were at stake”—he charges that a cover-up campaign began soon after the battle. The ringknocker theme re-emerges as Admiral Marc Mitscher, Commander Stanhope Ring, and Ensign George Gay are highlighted as members of the Navy’s “good ole boy” network. Other officers, such as Lieutenant Commander John Waldron, are identified as the true heroes.
Many of Kernan’s allegations of poor leadership and incompetence appear to be based on his interviews with Midway veterans more than 50 years after the battle and an excellent Web site (www.midway42.org) that includes fairly recent recollections by some of the battle’s veterans. Without disputing anyone’s claims, there is little doubt that recollections and memories fade as time passes. Although the stories are vivid, the author does not attempt to subject them to historical rigor.
A number of the book’s references are sloppy, which is surprising given Kernan’s long academic career. For example, an endnote referring to George Gay’s reputation as a “Texas loudmouth” merely cites an appendix listing all of the officers and enlisted men who flew in torpedo planes at Midway. Are they all sources regarding an ensign in one of the squadrons? And a less-than-laudatory paragraph about Admiral Mitscher, describing him as “not a thoughtful man,” has an endnote without reference to any person or text. It simply states that Mitscher’s entrance to the Naval Academy was achieved through “political pull" and, after six years, he graduated third from the bottom of his class. Says who?
Such research errors indicate the author either has an ax to grind, or his editor was asleep at the switch.
The Battle of Midway was a turning point in World War II. Untold stories of heroism and sacrifice, not to mention excellent intelligence and incredible luck, made the Navy’s victory possible. Alvin Kernan has added to the lore of that critical struggle by providing general readers an entertaining mix of facts and opinions.
At the same time, The Unknown Battle of Midway could hardly be considered serious naval history or a studious overview by an eyewitness privy to tactical decisions. In short, this is not the book for readers in search of a substantive account of action at Midway.
Lost Gold of the Republic: The Remarkable Quest for the Greatest Shipwreck Treasure of the Civil War Era
Priit J. Vesilind. Las Vegas , NV: Shipwreck Heritage Press, 2005. 276 pp. Illus. Appen. Index. $24.50.
Reviewed by Don Walsh
Finding and recovering seafloor treasure is more the stuff of fiction than reality. For every success there are legions of failed projects. This book is about one of those rare successes: how a remarkable company, Odyssey Marine Exploration, recovered a fortune from the Civil War- era steamship SS Republic.
The author brilliantly tells this story; his skills honed over three decades’ work with National Geographic. He vividly portrays the main characters in the story from those who survived Republic’s sinking to Odyssey’s founders John Morris and Greg Stemm.
SS Republic had a colorful history. Built in 1853 as the SS Tennessee, she was seized and served a year in the Confederate Navy. Captured at New Orleans by the Union Navy, she became the USS Tennessee and later the USS Mobile. Sold off at the end of the war and renamed the Republic, she traded from New York to the U.S. southeast and Gulf coasts.
In October 1865 she was bound for New Orleans, a trip she had made several times before. In addition to a cargo of badly needed goods, she carried something even more important: a privately owned shipment of gold and silver coins worth $400,000. The city was cash poor. Confederate money was worthless, locally issued paper notes were suspect, and even U.S. greenbacks were significantly discounted in trade. Only gold and silver coins were honored at full face value. There was very little of such coinage in the city and almost every arriving ship brought supplies of this money.
The Republic never completed the voyage; she foundered in a hurricane 100 miles off the coast of Georgia. Remarkably, all but 12 of the people on board were saved as ship and cargo sank 1,700 feet to the seafloor.
Odyssey Marine Exploration was organized 130 years later. The company’s founding principle was that they would not be treasure hunters in the sense of the usual destroy-and-grab wreck-site hunters. Instead, Odyssey would use a lengthy, deliberate process to research, locate, and map a site before recovery work began. Each site would have bonafide marine archeologists involved to ensure that historical artifacts were properly conserved and studied. Sale of selected artifacts would be through a marketing system that would carefully control how and when they were offered to museums and the public.
Morris and Stemm had known about the Republic for several years. Finding it was another matter. She went down in the fast-moving Gulf Stream, and it did not happen quickly. Her final location on the seafloor could be in an area of tens of square miles. Careful analysis and research of the known information from scarce surviving records helped narrow the uncertainties. Ultimately the search took nearly a year and a half, stretching Odyssey’s finances to the limit. Just as they were about to abandon the effort, their persistence paid off. On 2 August 2003, a side-scan sonar image showed the faint wreck pattern of a paddlewheel steamer. It was the SS Republic.
The company then needed to establish legal rights to salvage the wreck. A bottle was recovered and taken to federal court to make the salvage claim and demonstrate ability to do the work. Also, the original insurer of the ship made a claim to it. Odyssey was able to work out a settlement, and in March 2004 they were awarded full ownership of the wreck.
Salvage operations began in November 2003, and by the end of 2004 some 13,000 artifacts and 50,000 coins worth an estimated $75 million had been recovered. Some of the coins were extremely rare. The real value of the treasure now depends on how quickly the market can absorb such a large find.
Lost Gold of the Republic is a story of the search, location, and recovery, but there is much more. Vesilund surrounds the core tale with a rich historical tapestry of details about the ship’s many adventures, the final voyage, and life in post-Civil War New Orleans. A brief natural history element provides details on the ocean region where the Republic foundered. There is also considerable detail on the technologies and techniques needed for shipwreck salvage operations in the deep sea.
If you are interested in coins, the 16-page appendix, “Coins of the SS Republic,” by Q. David Bowers gives considerable interesting detail on the various coins recovered from the wreck site.
Even if you are not interested in treasure tales, or coins, this easy-to-read book is an exciting sea story that is full of drama. It would make a good movie.
A Call to the Sea: Captain Charles Stewart of the USS Constitution
Claude Berube and John Rodgaard. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, Inc, 2005. 261 pp. Notes. Bib. Index. Illus. $35.00.
Reviewed by Frederick C. Leiner
Charles Stewart (1778-1869) was a leading figure of the Old Navy. Commissioned as a lieutenant by President John Adams in 1798 while the nation was responding to the XYZ Affair with France, he lived to see the advent of steam power and iron ships and died when Ulysses S. Grant was president. He fought in three wars, commanding the frigate Constitution in her simultaneous battle against the 34-gun Cyane and the 21-gun Levant in February 1815 and later led each of the Navy’s major squadrons (Home, Mediterranean, and Pacific); served on the Board of Navy Commissioners; and superintended the Philadelphia Navy Yard. He was a brilliant ship-handler and battle tactician, a staunch Union man, and a self-taught expert of international law; his supporters even tried to make him the Democratic candidate for president in 1840. Although his life and career are certainly ripe for a full biography, until A Call to the Sea, none had ever been written, perhaps because there are no known collections of his papers.
Despite the vast possibilities in writing about Stewart’s life and times, A Call to the Sea is disappointing in all respects. It is thin on major aspects of Stewart’s career, poorly written and edited, and oblivious to basic sources of naval history.
The authors give short shrift to central moments of Stewart’s career. They label his first cruise as an officer, aboard the frigate United States, “unremarkable,” but as the beginning of a half-century naval career, it merits more attention than the passing reference it receives. In the wake of Captain John Barry’s comment that Stewart needed to be “more active,” Berube and Rodgaard do not explain why the Navy promoted Stewart to his first command, the schooner Experiment. The authors note Stewart’s business acumen, based on the money he made as a master on trading voyages to the Adriatic, East Indies, and Mediterranean between 1807 and 1812. During those years, when Stewart was in his prime (between 29 and 34 years old), he took a furlough from the Navy, while others, like his friend Stephen Decatur, stayed in the service. The authors deal with the period in one paragraph, without considering what the decision suggests about Stewart and his feelings about the Navy or opportunities in it and without mentioning any of the merchant ships he commanded, his mercantile partners, or the specific voyages he undertook.
Stewart’s decision in 1806 to change the periauger rig designed for the gunboats being built at New York for a more conventional rig could have led the authors to a discussion of the Jeffersonian gunboat system and Stewart’s thoughts on the design and utility of gunboats, but there is no analysis. Nor do the authors mention that Stewart and Captain William Bainbridge implored President James Madison at the beginning of the War of 1812, to let the Navy’s ships go to sea and fight the British Navy, an approach that may have been decisive for the U.S. Navy’s role in the war.
Although the authors are much better at dealing with Stewart’s dismal marriage to Delia Tudor and his home life, they hardly attempt to analyze Stewart’s character. There is no attempt to provide a synthesis of what kind of man he really was. Even the account of the Constitution’s battle against the Cyane and the Levant seems muddled (a chart showing wind direction and the relative position of the ships would have helped enormously), and the authors insist on tired cliches piled on top of each other instead of descriptive writing.
Writing is not one of the book’s strengths. It seemingly contains passive voice on every page. Some sentences are begging to be rewritten, such as “The gunboats, of which type more were built, were used for harbor defense.” There are non sequiturs, including describing Philadelphia in 1789 as the “center of shipbuilding of . . . colonial America.” The authors repeatedly use phrases that demonstrate speculation, not what the facts support. There is occasional jargon, errors in terminology, and minor but annoying errors of fact.
The authors seem unaware of critical works in the field. For instance, A Call to the Sea does not cite or use Dudley Knox’s multi-volume collections of documents from the Quasi-War and the Barbary Wars, and modern biographies of Stewart’s contemporaries. Yet the authors use dubious sources to support their account, including an unpublished paper they found in the Bordentown, New Jersey, library, the Naval Historical Center’s Web site, and an interview with a naval historian. This does not pass for real research. And in several instances, in lieu of quoting a major figure directly, the authors quote a historian characterizing what the figure said, which makes those parts of A Call to the Sea a cut-and-paste job.
The editors did the authors no favors. The crowning blow may be an editorial direction that was not made but stands unaltered in a footnote: “Reference the orders sent by Navy Secretary Jones to Stewart.”
Charles Stewart’s extraordinary career undoubtedly will be the subject of a first- rate biography. A Call to the Sea is not it.
Band Of Brothers
Alexander Kent. Ithaca, NY: McBooks Press, Inc., 2005. 144 pp. $19.95.
Reviewed by Commander Tyrone G. Martin, U. S. Navy (Retired)
The first two installments in what became the fictional Bolitho Saga appeared in the 1970s and told of Midshipman Richard Bolitho’s earliest experiences in the Royal Navy. In them, he quickly developed a close friendship with another mid, Martyn Dancer. When volume three appeared, in the early 1980s—and in each of those to follow to the number of 25—nothing was written about Mr. Dancer. To the aficionados of the series, it was a persistent question: What happened to Martyn Dancer?
Now, in his 26th outing, author Alexander Kent provides that answer, going back to Bolitho’s early years in this novella. It is 1774. Bolitho and Dancer are serving in HMS Gorgon, in port at Plymouth, and both undergo their examinations for promotion to lieutenant. Both pass, of course. Shortly thereafter, the Gorgon is tagged by her flag officer to provide a transit crew for HMS Hotspur, a new-built topsail schooner, and deliver her to the Channel Islands. That crew consists of carefully selected seamen and a rather top-heavy complement of officers: the Gorgon’s first lieutenant as skipper, her junior lieutenant, and the two newly passed midshipmen—this, for what likely will be a two-day trip.
All goes routinely until the afternoon of their first day at sea when gunfire is heard in the distance. Eventually, they come upon the wreckage of a cutter, which evidently had been surprised and sunk by party or parties unknown. The first lieutenant/skipper is familiar with the islands and concludes that a smuggler or pirate did the deed, and one likely to have come from one of the islands. Deciding to strike while the iron is hot, even though the Hotspur has only a couple of swivels for armament and he could just as well settle for reporting the incident to local authorities on the morrow, the skipper heads for one of the islands and anchors on the side opposite from a likely smugglers’ cove. Bolitho and the junior lieutenant are sent ashore at nightfall to cross over and reconnoiter, and, sure enough, there are two craft at anchor, apparently transferring cargo. The new lieutenant decides it would be best for him to return to the Hotspur and give the skipper an eyewitness report, leaving our hero free to act as he sees fit. Naturally, he does, and with the dawn and the rounding of the point by the Hotspur, the two vessels are taken after a brief skirmish. Bolitho returns to the schooner to find Dancer on the verge of death.
Overall, one is left with the feeling that the author created this little opus solely to rid himself of the persistent query. Its events, so briefly told when compared to other segments of the series, are unimaginative and wholly predictable. Martyn Dancer’s fate is anticlimactic after so many years of anticipation.