Ink, Dirt and Powder Smoke: The Civil War Letters of William F. Keeler, Paymaster on the USS Monitor
Charles W. McLandress, ed. Toronto, Canada: Seal River Publishing, 2023. 696 pp. Illus. Apps. Biblio. Notes. Index. $40.
Reviewed by Francis J. DuCoin
A classic work found on most Civil War naval historians’ bookshelves is the two-volume set of letters from Acting Paymaster William Frederick Keeler to his wife, edited by Professor Robert W. Daly and published by the U.S. Naval Institute in the 1960s. The first, Aboard the USS Monitor: 1862, records Keeler’s observations from seeing this novel ship for the first time to surviving her sinking on 30 December 1862. In the second, Aboard the USS Florida: 1863–1865, he writes of the extremely important, but usually boring, blockade duty that included moments of excitement and danger.
While many books were written after the Civil War by the participants in the naval operations—often with a prejudice—these letters to Keeler’s wife offer a comprehensive, contemporary, and honest personal view of life on board the Navy’s first ironclad, life in a blockade vessel at sea, the war in general, and political events. His detailed account of the battle with the CSS Virginia gives the reader a sense of being there, as does his account of the sinking of the Monitor. On blockade duty, he writes of the long days, of pleasant nights, of being wounded and recovering. In his letters home, as any husband away on deployment would do, he always asks about family, friends, home life, and business.
Professor Daly edited Keeler’s letters for both content and space, focusing on naval aspects and neglecting almost all the personal details of which Keeler wrote. This editing created great voids in Keeler’s story, resulting in incomplete letters that were often difficult to follow. Fortunately, these vacancies have now been filled by a new, unabridged edition of Keeler’s complete letters by his great-great-grandson, Charles W. McLandress, in Ink, Dirt and Powder Smoke: The Civil War Letters of William F. Keeler, Paymaster on the USS Monitor. McLandress estimates Daly omitted roughly 30 percent of the material in Keeler’s letters from the Monitor and 40 percent from the Florida.
Daly had contacted McLandress’ grandmother in 1962 seeking information on William Keeler, her grandfather. While she could not provide much information, their correspondence and photocopies of all of Keeler’s letters, fortunately, eventually passed down to McLandress. A few years ago, upon reading these copies, McLandress realized the complete letters told a much more eloquent story of Keeler’s experiences during the war and his life than did Daly’s edited works. McLandress understood that, with publication of these full letters, Keeler’s day-to-day observations would greatly add to Civil War history. Also, the fame of the Monitor gave Keeler access to, and he commented on, some of the highest-ranking Navy and Army officers and politicians of 1862, including two visits by President Abraham Lincoln to the ship.
Named for what is actually on the paper Keeler wrote to his wife just two hours after the battle with the Virginia, Ink, Dirt and Powder Smoke is much more than just a new compilation of his unabridged letters, it is his consummate story. McLandress’ exhaustively researched book is composed of three parts. Part One is an introduction to Keeler’s life up to the Civil War; Part Two, the heart of the book, are his letters written during his three years of Civil War service (12 January 1862 to 12 November 1865); and Part Three examines his life after the war, including his postwar correspondence, until his death. Each section is prefaced with a well-written explanation of the events leading up to that part of Keeler’s life, and the letters section is additionally divided into subsections. These subsections give further clarity by providing specific information that allows the reader to understand what Keeler was experiencing at these times and why.
This explanatory material provides a convenient refresher for those well familiar with the Civil War Navy and Keeler’s letters in particular. Those already aware of Keeler’s letters will be surprised at how greatly the unedited letters enrich his story. In addition, the letters and introductions are presented in such an understandable and straightforward manner that anyone will find this book to be an enjoyable read, while learning about the Civil War Navy and Keeler’s life.
The book includes reproductions of Keeler’s personal Civil War photographs, appendices, extensive biographical notes on 87 of the people mentioned in the book, a selective bibliography, a comprehensive index, and a key to the abbreviations used. The book is extensively, but conveniently, footnoted on each page with concise information making the letters easier to appreciate.
For 60 years Daly’s respected volumes have been a basis for Civil War research and insight. McLandress’ Ink, Dirt and Powder Smoke: The Civil War Letters of William F. Keeler, Paymaster on the USS Monitor does not just replace these two books, but also supersedes them in breadth, depth, and clarity. This book is bound to become a classic of Civil War naval literature. If you have previously read Keeler’s letters, you will both enjoy and benefit from this book. If you are unfamiliar with him, you will delight in what this book has to offer.
Dr. DuCoin volunteers at the USS Monitor Center and has extensively photographed and documented the Monitor’s turret during conservation. He frequently lectures on Civil War naval history and contributed a chapter to Craig Symonds’ book Union Combined Operations in the Civil War (Fordham University Press, 2010). He has written about the Monitor previously in Naval History and Civil War Times.
Intrepid’s Fighting Squadron 18: Flying High with Harris’ Hellcats
Mike Fink. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2025. 250 pp. Maps. Notes. Biblio. Index. $34.95.
Reviewed by Commander Graham Scarbro, U.S. Navy
Mike Fink’s story of Fighting Squadron (VF) 18, the World War II F6F Hellcat squadron that would set the standard for late-war effectiveness, is a fascinating tale of teamwork and camaraderie in the crucible of combat. The book, Fink says, grew out of an interest in the low-profile Cecil Harris, one of the squadron’s pilots. Harris was the Navy’s second-highest scoring ace of the war, with two dozen aerial victories. However, the man who his shipmates knew as “Speedball” (for his devastating pitches on the squadron’s baseball diamond) was quiet and unheralded. Fink set out to tell his story.
What Fink—who is manager of development content at the Intrepid Museum—discovered in his six years of research quickly spiraled into a much bigger undertaking. The resulting story grew beyond Harris to encompass not only the fighter ace himself, but also the exploits of the squadron with which he served. Fink begins with the frantic days of flight school, following a crop of aviation cadets who would populate the flight decks of the Navy’s big-deck and escort carriers. The nuggets join with experienced veterans, bouncing between training locations and changing squadron designations at a steady clip. The squadron slowly coalesces into Fighting Squadron 18 and is assigned to a carrier whose name is etched in U.S. Navy legend: the USS Intrepid (CV-11).
Sporting an impish devil on their squadron insignia, the pilots of “Two-a-Day 18” engaged imperial Japanese aircraft with devastating effect in the later stages of the Pacific war. The squadron’s nickname was a result of its constant stream of air-to-air victories, but Fink highlights that the squadron did not turn into a stable of combat veterans overnight. Weaving together a wide array of characters using logbooks, diaries, interviews, and official documents as his sources, Fink paints a more complete picture not only of the humble Speedball Harris, but also of the other personnel of Two-a-Day 18.
The squadron’s journey into the tense and frantic operations in late 1944 are like a pot boiling: Action builds slowly and then erupts all at once as the Intrepid, VF-18, and the other squadrons of Carrier Air Group 18 are thrown into heavy fighting against desperate kamikaze attacks and aerial battles raging around the Philippines.
From the Philippines to Formosa to Peleliu and back again, VF-18 engages Zeros in dogfights, protects the fleet from Val dive bombers, and attacks the captured Clark Air Field in the Philippines. As the Intrepid races between battles, Harris’ Hellcats fly combat air patrol, sweep missions, air-to-ground attacks, photo reconnaissance, and large force air wing strikes without a break. From August through November 1944 the pace hardly slackens for VF-18, and Fink ably chronicles the highs and lows of the squadron’s fast-tempo war.
Mixed with the thrill of Harris’ victories, and those of his comrades who helped earn the squadron’s honors, is the pain of losing shipmates in combat. Fink’s book highlights not only the facts, but also the feelings of those left behind. The book is more than just a by-the-numbers chronology of battles and dogfights; it includes glimpses of the day-to-day lives of the personnel fighting those battles. Fink’s focus on the individuals allows him to break the battles into the smaller engagements and personal experiences that form the wider war. When the Intrepid weathers kamikaze attacks, Fink’s research allows the reader to follow the action of the men who fought to save the ship and their comrades. Other members of the squadron find themselves ditching their stricken aircraft and facing the daunting task of evading Japanese forces and returning to U.S. lines.
The book includes discussion of the evolving tactics and technology that helped give the Hellcat and its flyers the edge in combat, and discussion of the wider campaigns helps place VF-18’s fight in the context of the frenetic combat of 1944 that drove the war toward its eventual conclusion. The Hellcats adopt Jimmy Thach’s “weave” maneuver to exploit their advantages over the Zero, and the air wing experiments with napalm weapons in support of Marine landings.
The book is a strong work of history that moves along at an enjoyable pace. The sprawling cast of characters that comes to inhabit VF-18 includes some names that history buffs will find familiar, and Fink does a commendable job keeping readers reminded of who is who. By highlighting VF-18’s role individually, Fink helps distill the global conflict of World War II into an understandable story of one unit’s combat effectiveness and tells the story of how one squadron and the people who make it can have an outsized impact in the midst of fierce combat.
Commander Scarbro is a career FA-18F weapons systems officer and a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins University.
