Seize, Burn or Sink: The Thoughts and Words of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson
Steven E. Mafifeo. Lanham, MD; Toronto; and Plymouth, U.K.: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2007. 629 pp. lllus. Maps. Index. $89.95
Reviewed by Colonel Thomas DiSilverio, U.S. Air Force Reserve
While countless military historians and biographers have written endlessly on the phenomenon that was Lord Nelson, Steven Maffeo has done all Nelson aficionados a great service in enabling the Royal Navy’s greatest fighting admiral to speak for himself.
In Seize, Bum or Sink Captain Maffeo has compiled a fascinating compendium of Nelson’s wide-ranging correspondence and systematically organized it in a formidable yet compact volume. The result of years of research—much of it accomplished while writing his first book, Most Secret and Confidential: Intelligence in the Age of Nelson (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000)—Maffeo has effectively whittled thousands of pages of letters down to a readable and representative collection of Admiral Lord Nelson’s huge body of thought and contemporary observation.
With more than 540 pages of quotations (arranged alphabetically by subject—from “On General Sir Ralph Abercrombie" to “On Zeal”) the reader is invited to browse the most trenchant daily musings, opinions, and reminiscences of arguably the greatest sea-going commander of all time. What emerges is a compelling self-portrait of a gifted, deep-thinking man driven by the singular demands of a historic era, a deeply felt calling, and the mixed nature of his own remarkable personality.
The reader is immediately struck by just how much time Nelson must have spent with quill in hand. A midshipman at age 12, a ship’s captain at 20, a beloved national hero before his 40th birthday, and an iconic British martyr just weeks after turning 47, Horatio Nelson was nothing if not prolific. It hardly seems possible he found the time to write as much—or as well—as he did. His writings are surprising not only in their scope, but remarkable in their depth. For a man never formally educated, Horatio Nelson possessed an extraordinary grasp of his profession, his times, and the cast of characters who shared “his deck.”
Readily apparent in the quotations are Nelson’s supreme confidence, audacity, ruthlessness, and courage. Also obvious are a devotion to king and country; a keen understanding of war, peace, and politics; a warm and passionate heart; and a surprising soft spot for the “sailor of the line.” While Maffeo’s work adds little original scholarship (the quotations are all drawn from standard collections of Nelson’s writings) his savvy editing and selection of the included passages seem to unerringly capture the very essence of Horatio Nelson. Maffeo’s Nelson is not only the heroic naval commander, but also a fascinating human being whom the reader cannot help but admire.
The quotations are the soul of the book, but Maffeo has also included a number of brief reference sections sure to delight any student of Nelson. These include a detailed but concise chronology of the great admiral’s life, a map section, and a special chapter dedicated to Nelson’s most famous passages. Almost as revealing as the quotations is a section devoted to the observations of both Lord Nelson’s contemporaries and scholars on his character and abilities. In the book’s final chapter Maffeo provides fascinating biographical sketches of Nelson’s principal correspondents. Well indexed, the book will allow even the. casual admirer of the hero of the Nile and Trafalgar to quickly locate his or her favorite quotations.
Many of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson’s observations seem as applicable today as they did more than 200 years ago when he first put pen to paper. Captain Maffeo has adroitly captured these thoughts, and in so doing has crafted an essential reference for both scholars of the age of sail and for all those interested in the essential nature of Britain’s most revered naval warrior.
Nisei Linguists: Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service during World War II
James C. McNaughton. Washington, DC; Department of the Army, 2006. 514 pp. Notes. Bib. Maps. Index. $29.
Reviewed by Colonel Jonathan M. House, U.S. Army (Retired)
The painful story of the United States’ treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II is well known. Without any evidence of disloyalty, 120,000 American citizens and legal aliens found themselves forcibly removed from the western United States and detained without trial in ten War Relocation Centers. Despite this deplorable treatment, thousands of these people volunteered for and served bravely in the U.S. armed forces, most famously in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Italy.
By contrast, the role of Japanese Americans as translators, interrogators, and interpreters in the Pacific war is relatively unheralded. The Army recruited, trained, and depended on these men and women, usually referred to as Nisei, the term for a second-generation immigrant from Japan. Yet for most of the conflict, the War Department embargoed any press coverage of the Nisei intelligence role for fear that publicity would lead to Japanese reprisals against the Soldiers or their families. Meanwhile, these intelligence specialists served at every level of the U.S. and Allied military structure, risking not only torture if captured but also frequent instances of friendly fire from jittery American troops.
As the former command historian for the Defense Language Institute’s Foreign Language Center—the legendary school that grew out of the Nisei training effort—James McNaughton is the ideal person to recount the full story of this neglected intelligence effort. Rather than simply producing an institutional history of the training process or a condemnation of the unjust treatment of the Nisei, the author has provided a broad study that places these unusual Soldiers in their military and cultural context.
Some of his conclusions are so surprising as to be counterintuitive. Most notable is the fact that, although the Army recruited these men specifically for their supposed language abilities, most Nisei recruits were so consciously American that they had made little effort to learn the language of their parents and therefore had to study for years to master Japanese. Another easily misunderstood point is that the resulting language teams sent to the Pacific consisted of highly educated but low-ranking enlisted Nisei supervised by Caucasian officers who were often less skillful with the language. The obvious conclusion is that this policy was a clear case of racial discrimination, yet McNaughton is at pains to show that such officers were essential to vouch for and protect their Asian-American subordinates from the suspicions of other American Soldiers and Marines, not to mention Filipino guerrillas and other Allied soldiers. Moreover, the author notes that Army officers who did at least part of their language studies alongside the Nisei were often more effective in the field than were their naval counterparts who studied the language in isolation at various civilian colleges. The commissioned supervisors fought hard to obtain warrant officer rank and officer candidate school opportunities for the Nisei, but not until August 1945 did the Army belatedly commission and promote hundreds of these vital specialists.
The author takes great care to describe the conflicting emotions and frustrations of the Nisei linguists without turning the book into a case study in discrimination. Instead, Nisei Linguists is the best type of monograph: one that shows the implications of a single, specialized program for all aspects of World War II intelligence. The book alternates between the efforts of the Military Intelligence Service to train its students and the field activities of the graduates. Of necessity, therefore, McNaughton describes the Japanese language programs in other services and Allied armed forces, as well as the role of human intelligence and document exploitation in all campaigns of the Pacific war.
This book should not be judged by its unusual title and lackluster cover. Quite the contrary, Nisei Linguists is an entertaining, highly readable account that treats the instructors and students as real individuals caught up in a global conflict. Given the current public interest in cross-cultural understanding, this work is a timely example of how skilled U.S. military forces were able to overcome a language barrier to first defeat then govern a very distinctive, non-Western society.
Come Hell and High Water: Extraordinary Stories of Wreck, Terror and Triumph on the Sea
Jean Hood. Springfield, NJ: Burford Books, 2007. 416 pp. Illus. Maps. $30.
Reviewed by Captain Timothy J. Lockhart, U.S. Navy Reserve
Everyone who has gone down to the sea in ships and done business in great waters has surely wondered, “What will I do if this sleek, beautiful vessel sinks beneath me?” If you want to know the answers—and there are several—read this book.
Jean Hood surveys 17 well-known shipwrecks, from the French merchant ship Prince in 1752 to the Russian submarines Kursk in 2000 and Priz AS- 28 in 2005. Along the way she quotes Jane Austen and Walt Whitman; cites Homer, Shakespeare, and other writers; and describes the hunger and thirst, murder, cannibalism, and suicide of the shipwrecked. She also records the immortal courage of a British admiral whose last order directed a midshipman to leave the bridge of a sinking ship and find himself a place in the lifeboats—an option the admiral himself rejected.
Hood shows us how most shipwrecks result from simple human error, whether that of running aground, ignoring bad weather, or ordering a confusing maneuver. Chance and mechanical failure also play a significant and sometimes fatal part. But Hood claims, convincingly, that leadership—or rather, the lack of it—is the primary reason why ships are lost.
Although she touches on stories involving U.S. vessels—including the submarine USS Squalus (SS-192)—or ships bound for the New World, Hood’s history is essentially Eurocentric. Perhaps for that reason she notes that whereas French, Italian, Spanish, and German each have a precise word for shipwreck victims, English has only the more general “castaway,” which, as she says, “has other connotations.” well, although she does include a few speculative passages, such as the one in which she imagines a Royal Marine of the 18th century pausing to “flick a hand across his shoulders and brush away any last traces of hair powder from a coat that looked smart but suddenly felt awkward.” Hood writes well, relating lifechanging and -challenging events with prose that is descriptive but avoids cliche. She portrays the sailors of the English merchant ship Albion in the winter of 1810 as “wrapped up and muffled against the cold, fighting against frostbite, breathing air as sharp as glass.” The author deals realistically with enlisted men—they were all men in the incidents she describes—as well as with officers. She does note, however, that when the French frigate Méduse wrecked in 1816 “it was a capital offense for a captain not to be the last man off an abandoned ship.” Also, she does a commendable job of citing the numerous paintings, songs, and poems (by Walt Whitman and John Greenleaf Whittier, among other poets) inspired by the shipwrecks she describes. The most notable such example might be that of Theodore Gericault, who, according to Hood, died prematurely because of the “physical, mental, and emotional demands” of creating the famous painting “Le Radeau de La Méduse" (1819).
Hood observes—but without placing undue emphasis on—the effect that money, gender, and social status have during shipwrecks. In her heart- wrenching chapter on the women being transported to Australia aboard the penal ship Rothsay Castle, the author comments, in a statement powerful for its simplicity, that swimming was “a skill not taught to women at that time.” And in her very fine (and original, despite all odds) chapter on the sinking of Titanic, Hood proves that the myth of rich men escaping while women and children drowned is largely untrue.
One of the best chapters is the last, which contrasts the sinkings of the Kursk and Priz AS-28. Whereas the Russians accepted international help too late to save the Kursk, they invited such assistance almost immediately for the midget submarine AS-28. The author sees the multinational force that raised the AS-28 with all hands still alive as an example of how future shipwrecks should be handled.
Hood, a former International Officer at Lloyd’s Registry of Shipping, is also the author of Marked for Misfortune, which traces the fate of survivors of a 1792 shipwreck.
Drift Station: Arctic Outposts of Superpower Science
William F. Althoff. Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2007. 264 pp. Illus. Tables. Appen. Bib. $39.95.
Reviewed by Commander Don Walsh, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Drift stations are research bases set up on ice islands in the Arctic Ocean. Beginning in the 1930s, such bases permitted oceanographic work in places where conventional ships could not go because of ice or seasonal weather. Because the ice pack is continuously moving on the ocean, their locations are not fixed. Selecting base sites is an arcane art involving trial and error and knowledge of ice’s mechanical properties and that ultimately it will deteriorate. The trick is to use the station as long as possible and still be able to safely evacuate before aircraft can no longer operate from the site.
In the late 1930s the Soviet Union established its first long-term station in the arctic. From 1937 to 2003, it had three dozen occupied ice stations, although rarely were more than two operational at the same time. Called Sevemyy Polus—North Poles—many of these stations operated year-round so that seasonal variability could be studied.
Much of Russia borders the Arctic Ocean, and the country has been a leader in mapping and assessing the unknowns of the northernmost sea. As the author notes, while the Russians learned to work there continuously, Americans only occupied sites briefly. The Soviets/Russians learned to “own” the arctic. Cold War tensions aside, their research programs added immeasurably to the world’s knowledge of the polar region.
Because of USSR/U.S. Cold War competition, the Russians published very little of their polar research in the West. But since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, a huge trove of their arctic study results is being shared. Because of rapid changes in the area spawned by global climate change, it is time to put the Russian archives to work.
By comparison, the United States created its first drift stations in the early 1950s, with a total of 14 put into service over the years. Canada, a third arctic nation, added six stations. With rare exception, the U.S. and Canadian stations had tenures of less than a year. One American station, T-3, operated from 1952 to 1974.
Author Althoff could have written a perfectly satisfactory history of on- ice research. The 15 years he invested in this project would have produced a solid book for a limited clientele of polar specialists, academicians, and the few hundred people who were involved in this research. He, however, recognized the much wider appeal, so he expanded the text into a hybrid treatment of the subject by adding historical and scientific narratives. He leads off with a history of Arctic Ocean exploration. Then throughout the remainder he gives the reader an easy to understand tutorial of why polar research is important.
The history gets a bit uneven in some places where the author inserts tables and lists containing information that could only appeal to academics. Yet this is a book that can be read by the curious, the casual reader, or the serious academician.
Drift Station is an excellent and unique contribution to arctic literature. A “well done” to Althoff for undertaking this difficult task and doing it in a way that is very readable.
