The Bloody Flag: Mutiny in the Age of Atlantic Revolution
Niklas Frykman. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2020. 285 pp. Notes. Biblio. Index. Maps. Illus. $32.95.
Reviewed by Frederick C. Leiner
The 1797 mutinies in the British Navy at Spithead and the Nore are well-trod subjects. In The Bloody Flag: Mutiny in the Age of Atlantic Revolution, Niklas Frykman, a University of Pittsburgh professor, brings forth the lesser-known stories of strikes and mutinies during that decade that roiled the British fleet—and the navies of France and Holland as well. His thesis, which is new and which he largely proves, is that there was a transnational movement of seamen radicalized by appalling “working conditions” and revolutionary politics (wrought by the French Revolution, the ideals of which affected other European navies) that nearly upset the existing imperial order during the late 18th century with a desire for “popular sovereignty” on board ship.
Frykman observes that sailors historically reacted to their grim lives by deserting, and they continued to do so during the Revolutionary era. Indeed, he cites Lord Nelson’s assertion that 42,000 British seamen took “French leave” between 1793 and 1802. Yet Frykman describes a perfect storm developing by the end of the 18th century: Navies grew larger and more bureaucratic; warships became more crammed; the earlier, paternalistic attitude of officers toward their men was breaking down; discipline was harsh, often capricious, and bloody; fewer seamen volunteered and more seamen were brought into every navy forcibly; pay was poor and often in arrears; the crews (except in France) grew more cosmopolitan (the Dutch relied heavily on foreign seamen, and radicalized Irishmen came pouring into the Royal Navy); and revolutionary ideas of liberté, égalité, and fraternité swept through Europe.
The result was uprisings on board ships and whole fleets. Frykman claims that there were 150 single-ship mutinies and a half-dozen fleetwide mutinies; he estimates that more than one-third, and perhaps as many as one-half, of all the sailors in the fleets of Britain, France, and Holland participated in at least one mutiny.
Frykman is an indefatigable researcher and a fine stylist who turns a colorful phrase. Impressively in this slender volume, he has brought to light the voices of the aggrieved sailors. The Bloody Flag contains the incisive stories of many of those uprisings, almost all of which ended badly for the mutineers.
Some of Frykman’s interpretations can be challenged, however, and some of his language is too affected by Marxist rhetoric. Seamen, for instance, are “proletarianized.” It seems oddly doctrinaire for him to call the Royal Navy “the seaborne battering ram of European counter-revolution.” Frykman sees a warship not as a “machine” of interlocking parts, as did some contemporary sailors, but as a “universal system of terror.” Although he decries the moderation of the Spithead mutineers, their platform of “workplace” demands succeeded where the more radical demands of other mutineers in all three navies failed.
For Frykman, the mutiny on the British frigate Hermione, where the crew rose and butchered ten officers before turning the ship over to the enemy, is the apogee of “maritime radicalism.” Most historians see in this bloodbath only tenuous ties to revolutionary ideas. Frykman acknowledges the specific causes of the mutiny—Captain Hugh Pigot was a sadistic tyrant—but ties the Hermione mutiny to the end of efforts to create a “floating republic.” Yet the mutineers sailed her into a Spanish colonial port not because of any fraternité with Spanish sailors or allegiance to the Spanish regime (a reactionary monarchy that still supported the Inquisition), but merely to find someplace to land so they could escape British vengeance.
The United States and its navy make a cameo appearance in The Bloody Flag, as a refuge for Hermione mutineers. Frykman is outraged that President John Adams approved the extradition of an Irishman named Thomas Nash, who belatedly claimed he was an impressed Connecticut seaman named Jonathan Robins. Although Frykman doubts Nash’s “Robins” alibi, and despite Nash’s brutality in murdering a Hermione officer, Frykman calls out Adams for being the same man who “defended Crispus Attucks’s killers [i.e., the Boston Massacre of 1770] in court.” That’s an odd criticism of a man who believed in the need to provide legal representation to despised defendants.
Today’s officers might ask what relevance 1790s mutinies in European fleets have to their world. The lesson for serving officers is in understanding the conditions that give rise to alienation and discord: low pay, lack of shore liberty, harsh and unfair discipline, and the failure to address social issues in the land-based society. Those problems are timeless.
Mr. Leiner, a lawyer, is a regular contributor to Naval History on the Age of Fighting Sail. He is the author of The End of Barbary Terror: America’s 1815 War Against the Pirates of North Africa (Oxford University Press, 2006) and Millions for Defense: The Subscription Warships of 1798 (Naval Institute Press, 2000).
Winds, Waves & Warriors: Battling the Surf at Normandy, Tarawa, and Inchon
Thomas M. Mitchell. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2019.
168 pp. Maps. Photos. $39.95.
Reviewed by Major Timothy Heck, U.S. Marine Corps
The success of amphibious operations often relies on the vagaries of the sea. While planners can account for tactics, logistics, and communications, meteorological phenomena such as the tides, winds, and ocean floor all affect operations from the beginning through their conclusion. Thomas Mitchell, an experienced oceanographer, traces the development of military oceanography during World War II and the Korean War in Winds, Waves & Warriors: Battling the Surf at Normandy, Tarawa, and Inchon. Well written and detailed, the book calls attention to the unsung oceanographers and meteorologists who provided accurate and timely weather data in support of major landing operations. His book is accessible to practitioners and historians alike.
Mitchell begins with a short history of U.S. amphibious operations and the oceanographic and meteorological planning therein. Early in World War II, the U.S. Army recognized the need for specialized ocean forecasting of wave heights, surf, tides, and fog on anticipated landing beaches. Additional training at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography was conducted, and its graduates fanned out across the U.S. military to provide forecasts. It is here that Mitchell’s history begins in earnest.
The Normandy invasion occupies the first half of the book and is its strength. Following the graduates of Scripps’ program and their British counterparts, Mitchell documents the competing theories, bureaucratic biases, and difficulties faced by the planners for Operation Overlord. This personal touch imbues the book with a human element. The scientific prowess and experimentation that went into the planning for Normandy are staggering, and using stories such as that of Lieutenant Bob Reid helps explain that effort.
The success of the landings was followed by months of over-the-beach logistics, because the seaports in northern France and Belgium were either still occupied or in need of significant repairs. The oceanographers continued to provide exceptional service, allowing the engineer beach commander at Normandy to keep offloading operations into early November, well past the late September date initially predicted. For their efforts, many were justifiably awarded, and commendations were issued.
Two subsequent chapters, on Tarawa and Inchon, respectively, pale in comparison to the work done on Normandy. Tarawa’s analysis is a relative consolidation of other materials. While still interesting, it is missing the detailed look at the planning and humanity that made Mitchell’s telling of the Overlord story so interesting. In contrast, the Inchon chapter is almost entirely a human interest story about Navy Lieutenant Eugene F. Clark’s special operations–type reconnaissance missions to determine tidal information. While engaging and well written, the focus on a small covert operation absents the role of a larger meteorological plan or capability that Mitchell spent much of the Normandy sections covering.
As the Navy and Marine Corps revert their focus to the Indo-Pacific region and amphibious operations are considered in the South China Sea, the appreciation for the impact of the tides on distant atolls and landing beaches will become increasingly important. Winds, Waves, & Warriors, especially the beginning, will go a long way to creating that understanding.
Maj Heck is a Marine field artillery officer by training. He is the coeditor of the recently released On Contested Shores: The Evolving Role of Amphibious Operations in the History of Warfare (Marine Corps University Press, 2020).
Widowmaker: Living and Dying with the Corsair
Tim Hillier-Graves. 202 pp. Oxford, UK, and Havertown, PA: Casemate Publishers, 2020. Photos. $34.95.
Reviewed by J. M. Caiella
Among the dozens of books and monographs published about Chance Vought’s superlative F4U Corsair naval fighter, few if any are dedicated to its service with Great Britain during World War II. This book, written by a Briton, is one of the few. This is surprising in that the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm (FAA) was the largest user of the aircraft outside the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, with 2,012 in service. More surprising is that the Brits flew the aircraft from carrier decks more than six months before the U.S. Navy deemed them safe enough for shipboard posting. Despite the “Bent-Wing Bird” earning its reputation in the Pacific, its first combat came in the North Sea on 2 April 1944 while flying from HMS Victorious. The mission during an attack on the German battleship Tirpitz in a Norwegian fjord was followed by further strikes in July and August. The first effective U.S. Corsair units assigned to a carrier were the Marine Corps’ Attack Squadrons (VMF) 124 and 213 on board the USS Essex (CV-9) that December.
The focus of Hillier-Graves’ book is the stories of the pilots who flew the fighter for the FAA. Nearly one-third of his narrative, however, relates the Corsair’s history, providing in some instances perhaps too much information. In one short paragraph, he names 18 people, only 4 of whom are significant to the book. These chapters, however, set the stage for British readers who may not be as familiar with the aircraft as Americans.
The aircraft’s service history within the FAA provides the structure that intertwines with the first-person stories to form a readable and engaging book. Hillier-Graves met and corresponded with nearly 100 veterans from Great Britain, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. Their voices make the book come alive with raw, at times contemporaneous, descriptions of their lives and the deaths of their comrades in the Corsair. In a number of senses, this book is the perfect companion to The British Pacific Fleet by David Hobbs (Naval Institute Press, 2011).
In keeping with the title, Widowmaker, the reader senses that this book is more about death than life. A problem with the title, however, is that few of the pilots at the time were old enough or inclined to be married, and fewer still were. While the book is an engaging read, especially with the large number of personal reminiscences, there are a number of distracting issues that detract from the work. The author makes several confusing references to the British pilots training in the United States around Mount Vernon. Only later do we discover this Mount Vernon is near Redfield, Maine, and get the sense that he assumed it was George Washington’s home.
The greatest distraction, however, is the book’s readability. The block quotes—those large sections of the narrative that are verbatim quotations from the subjects—are set in 8.5-point type. What this minutiae means is that the type is far too small to be easily read. These quotes, at times taking up to half a page, form perhaps 20 percent of the text. This is not the author’s failing, but it is the publisher’s. A basic tenet of editing is to do nothing to distract from the reader’s flow. The block quotes are a major and very significant stumbling point.
Also, the publisher notes there are more than 200 photographs in this book, but with as many as eight images on a 6-by 9-inch page, more than a few are virtually worthless. The paper, while good quality, is not the best for photographic reproduction and results in dark, muddy, soft images. But, in keeping with the title again, there are plenty of Corsair crashes depicted. Also included is a selection of American photographs that at best are only peripherally germane to the topic. Frankly, this book would have been better served with fewer—and larger—images that spoke to the narrative.
Widowmaker is definitely a break from the traditional aircraft fare, especially as it concerns a very significant airplane. Hillier-Graves provides a concise, comprehensive, and personal narrative of a significant and much neglected portion of the life of the F4U that should not be ignored. Despite the caveats, this is a very worthwhile addition to the Corsair lexicon.
Mr. Caiella has worked as lead editor of scholarly publications for the Naval History and Heritage Command, senior editor of Proceedings and Naval History magazines, and writer-editor for the U.S. Marine Corps’ History Division.
