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OUR FIGHTING SHIPS. The Navy Today from the Mighty Battleship to Torpedo Boat. By Mitchell D. Katz, Jr., Herbert C. Lee, and Edwin L. Levy, Jr. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1942. 101 pages. $2.00.
Reviewed by Captain H. A.
Baldridge, U. S. Navy (Retired)
This is the latest and most ambitious of the handbook class of books appearing of late and follows the style of Jane's Fighting Ships. The vessels of the Coast Guard now operating with the Navy are included. In it is included every bit of information concerning every vessel afloat and appropriated for as released by the Office of Public Relations of the Navy Department.
Inside the front and back covers are convenient charts of the world showing easily read and located names of places: navy yards, operating bases, naval stations and destroyer bases, training stations, air stations, naval reserve aviation bases, air stations under construction, Atlantic and Pacific bases, bases acquired from Great Britain, and foreign bases.
There is a fine index showing opposite the name of the ship by symbol its type and number in the type; an explanation of all symbols (same as used by the Navy Department) makes it easy for any reader to understand.
Other important data are: history of the ironclad from the Monitor and Mcrrimac (condensed, of course) to the present, the uniform insignia, flags of our Navy, text of the new naval operating policy covering the two-ocean Navy, ship nomenclature, and a bibliography.
Where it appears desirable the reader is given a short description of the employment of the various types of vessels in the organization of the fleet and in the several naval districts: battleships, aircraft carriers of various classes, all classes of cruisers and destroyers, submarines, minelaying submarines, surface mine layers and sweepers of all kinds (regular and converted), trawlers, gunboats, seaplane tenders, and all and sundry types of naval district craft.
The book contains nothing about aircraft (heavier than air or lighter than air).
The book should be particularly valuable to the younger officers of the Navy, to all reserve officers, to all families of these officers, and to all newspaper offices.
SHIP’S COOK AND BAKER. By Otto Krey. New York: Cornell Maritime Press. 1942. 312 pages. $2.50.
Reviewed by Commander F. L. Gaffney (S.C.),
U. S. Navy
This publication is a handbook and guide primarily for the new stewards, cooks, and bakers in the rapidly expanding Merchant Marine Fleet.
The author has served in the commissary branch in the Merchant Marine service of six different nations for more than 30 years and is qualified to write the details on how to prepare the various ration components that are now a part of the improved living standards of the mariner of the United States.
The proportions used for each recipe presume that the ship’s complement is the standard 35- to 40-man crew. The proportions are ample and the instructions for the preparation and cooking of the ingredients are very explicit.
While there are no suggested day-today menus in the book the newly appointed steward should experience little difficulty in arranging a properly balanced menu, without waste, by following the well-written instructions contained in the introduction of the book.
For the assistance of the butcher there is provided diagrammatic charts of all standard carcasses of meats, with a complete set of illustrations showing the best method of preparing the commercial cuts.
The ninety pages devoted to the bakers’ department covers the wide range of breads, rolls, pastries and puddings in the entirety. A check-off list of the common faults in baking, their causes and corrective measures is a part of the discussion for bakers.
It can be said with assurance that, in the absence of a school to train stewards, cooks, and bakers, the men of the merchant service can be served appetizing meals of wide variety if the inexperienced cooks and bakers will study and use Ship’s Cook and Baker as their guide.
ADMIRAL OF THE OCEAN SEA. A life of Christopher Columbus. By Samuel Eliot Morison. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1942. 938 pages, 2 Vols, with charts and illustrations. $10.00.1
Reviewed by Captain John B.
Heffernan, U. S. Navy
A “best-seller” in 1493 was Columbus’s “Letter on the First Voyage,” a pamphlet of eight pages, printed in Rome, in May of that year. It ran through three Roman editions in 1493, and six different editions were printed in Paris, Basle, and Antwerp in 1493-94. A Spanish edition had appeared in Barcelona in April, 1493, and a version in Tuscan verse was printed in Rome and in Florence before the end of the year. Interest in Columbus and in the discovery of America has always been keen and in the intervening four and a half centuries the literature on Columbus has become enormous. In this work, however, Professor Morison has made a truly notable addition to the long list of biographies of Columbus, and the scholarly merit of the book will bring it recognition as the definitive life of the greatest sailor of all times.
The author is now a lieutenant commander in the U. S. Naval Reserve and has been designated by the Secretary of the Navy to prepare a history of the U. S. Navy’s operations in the present war. He has been interested in the subject of Columbus and has gathered data for this great work throughout the past 25 years during which he has been professor of American History at Harvard and a specialist in colonial history. In 1939 and 1940 he headed the Harvard Columbus Ex-
1 (Reviewer’s Note: There ib also a one-volume edition of this work, selling at $3.50. The single volume contains most of the charts and illustrations, but omits all notes, the chapter on the origin of syphilis, and much of the data on navigation.) pedition and was navigator of the larger of the two sailing vessels which retraced the route of Columbus and visited the places connected with the life of the Discoverer in Spain, Portugal, the Azores, the Canary Islands, and the Caribbean area. He is a proficient seaman in sail himself, and his book is unique in that he “goes to sea” with Columbus and studies the life of Columbus the seaman and navigator from the seagoing point of view, with the method of the trained historian.
Throughout the past century there have been numerous attempts to prove that Columbus was a Jew, or a Spaniard, or a Portuguese, or a Catalan, or a Corsican, or even a Frenchman, but this work is an objective study of Columbus without any effort to establish any particular preconceived idea about him. It is based on a thorough, scholarly study and review of the source documents, a study of his navigation and seamanship, and a careful examination of the localities which Columbus visited on his voyages of discovery. For example, the author studied and agreed with the conclusions arrived at by the late Admiral J. B. Murdock, U. S. Navy, on the landfall of Columbus, published in the Proceedings, Chapter X, (1884) 449-86, under the title “The Cruise of Columbus in the Bahamas,” but he likewise visited San Salvador and the other islands, took soundings, examined the anchorages and landings, followed the courses recorded by Columbus and identified the landmarks and physical features described by the Discoverer.
Dr. Morison himself has said that he attempted in this book to emphasize what Columbus did, where he went, and what sort of seaman he was. In these objectives he has succeeded brilliantly, but he has done much more. He begins the book with a lucid and comprehensive explanation of seafaring in 1492—the design and rig of vessels, how they sailed, methods of navigation, and the routine and ritual of the sea. The landsman as well as the seaman will find these chapters clear and simple and will be able to understand the conditions of navigation in those days and appreciate the excellent seamanship of Columbus. Naval officers of today will gain a new appreciation of what is possible with dead reckoning by reading the author’s analysis of Columbus’s navigation. The Admiral of the Ocean Sea sailed before the days of astronomical navigation; he relied on dead reckoning, and he demonstrated that a seaman with a sense of the sea and the feel of his ship can obtain results which surprise us by their accuracy.
Almost all of the earlier books about Columbus could be described quite aptly as “Columbus to the Water’s Edge.” Earlier writers have been almost totally ignorant of seafaring conditions and they have passed rapidly and superficially over Columbus’s magnificent display of seamanship on his four voyages to America, or else they have exhibited their own ignorance of the subject by emphasizing that Columbus was very inaccurate in his attempts to establish the latitude and longitude of the places he had discovered. Columbus had rashly promised the Spanish Sovereigns that he would supply a chart of his discoveries showing the latitude and longitude of places mentioned, but he was not able to keep this promise, as the King was quick to point out to him. In spite of this inability to determine the correct latitude and longitude of the islands he had discovered, Columbus was able to return to Hispaniola with relative precision from the east, from the south, and from the west, on his second, third, and fourth voyages even though his erroneous ideas of the size of the earth caused him to believe that Santo Domingo City was much farther west than it is.
The author’s style is simple and effective. He brings to the mind’s eye a realistic picture of Columbus—an untactful courtier, a poor politician, a poor administrator, but a navigator with shrewd and unusual powers of close observation, a tireless, thorough, and meticulous seaman who managed to explore hundreds of miles of uncharted coasts with poorly- equipped ships and remarkably few accidents. He shows us the stubbornness and the singleness of purpose of Columbus which enabled him to persist in his great idea in the face of discouragement and poverty. The author is especially clear and lucid in demolishing the popular schoolbook myths concerning Columbus, such as the absurd story that Columbus tried to convince a committee of bishops and monks at the University of Salamanca that the earth was round and failed in his attempt. From ancient times all educated men knew that the earth was round, and, of course, every sailor knew it. Every man who had ever been out of sight of land and had seen a ship hull down on the horizon knew of the curvature of the earth. The committee of savants which heard Columbus at Salamanca considered two basic questions: (a) The length of a degree of longitude on the equator and the size of the earth; (b) whether or not the ships of their day could carry sufficient provisions for a trip to Japan or China across the sea.
Columbus had been a chartmaker and he had studied geography, but he had much in common with some navigators of today, that is, he discarded anything which did not tend to confirm his preconceived idea. At Salamanca Columbus contended that the length of a degree of longitude on the equator was about 45 nautical miles; and that Japan and the Spice Islands lay well to the eastward of the Chinese coast. He proposed to sail westward in latitude 28° N., where he assumed a degree of longitude to equal about 40 nautical miles, and he expected to find Japan after sailing a distance which would have carried him to the meridian of the Anegada Passage in the Virgin Islands.
The royal committee at Salamanca differed with him on the size of the earth. The committee was unable to convince Columbus that a degree of longitude on the equator was nearly a third greater than he calculated or that the actual distance to China was three or four times his estimate. The fact is, however, that the committee was substantially right and Columbus was very wrong. But, as Mori- son says, the dignity, sincerity, and confidence of Columbus won him the backing of the Queen rather than his arguments.
It would be difficult to praise this distinguished biography more than it deserves. It will appeal to a wide variety of readers, and especially to all those who are interested in the men who go down to the sea in ships.
WAR MEDICINE—A Symposium. Winfield S. Pugh, M.D., Editor, Edward Podolsky, M.D., Associate Editor, and D. D. Runes, Ph.D., Technical Editor. New York: The Philosophical Library, Inc. 1942. 565 pages. $7.50.
Reviewed by Captain J. B. Pollard (M.C.), U. S. Navy
War Medicine is a compiled treatise written by a group of 63 individuals serving the armed forces of the United Nations. It covers practically the entire field of Combat Medicine and gives in detail the latest methods of treatment for all types of wounds and also recommendations for the prevention of certain disabling diseases encountered by combat troops.
The articles on blast and concussion injuries and compression injuries of the abdomen are particularly timely.
Among the 63 contributors are many well-known writers who have had exceptional experience in their subjects and most of the articles are notably good.
The photographic and manual illustrations are very good and the binding and printing excellent.
The reviewer finds this book well worth while and feels that it would be quite an addition to any medical library.
BRASSEY’S NAVAL ANNUAL, 1942. Edited by Rear Admiral H. G. Thurs- field. London: William Clowes. 30s.
Reviewed by Commander W. P.
McCarty, U. S. Navy
This British Annual, in its fifty-third year of publication, includes a variety of naval information, recent history and comment, of interest to all students of naval warfare. The “Chronicle of 1941” is more than a mere chronological statement of action, as it is a running commentary on the conduct of the war with considerable detail of the major engagements of the year, and is supplemented by a “Reference” section containing general information and silhouettes of ships of the navies of the world.
Other sections deal with world naval building programs, problems of government control of merchant shipping, air operations and war at sea, aircraft versus ships, sea power in the East, the Battle of the River Plate (Rio de la Plata). The section on “The United States Navy” contains excerpts from Secretary Knox’s report to the President on Pearl Harbor and from the report of the Roberts’ commission.
Perhaps of most interest are the comments on lessons learned from the operations of aircraft with ships and land forces, and the necessity for air support when ships operate within range of shore-based aircraft. A chapter on “Combined Operations,” prepared by an anonymous “Flag Officer,” critically discusses in some detail the British separate air force system, and the necessity for complete co-operation between the various branches of the armed services.
JANE’S ALL THE WORLD’S AIRCRAFT, 1941. Compiled and edited by Leonard Bridgman. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1942. $19.00.
Reviewed by Vice Admiral F. J. Horne, U. S. Navy
This air-minded world is indeed fortunate in having available for many uses this new 1941 edition of Jane's All the World's Aircraft. The editors of the book are to be commended for their farsightedness in publishing at a time when aviation is of such paramount importance a book which chronicles the progress of aviation in such a detailed and comprehensive manner.
The thoroughness of this work which is published in a world where information as to aircraft is highly guarded by all countries is evidence of the remarkable perseverance of the editors. Jane's All the World’s Aircraft of 1941 is a valuable contribution to available information on all phases of aviation. This late edition contains much new material and it will certainly find its place among the most authentic books published on aircraft during this world struggle.