In 1844 the USS Yorktown sailed from New York, as part of the U.S. Navy's newly established African Squadron, to interdict slave ships leaving the African coast. Aboard the sloop of war, Master's Mate John C. Lawrence, an educated New Yorker in his early twenties, kept a private journal describing what happened during the extraordinary two-year voyage and his reactions ...
Heroism, tragedy, devotion to duty, and scandal are just a few of the ingredients that make up this dramatic first-time account of troopship losses in wartime. International in scope, it offers a compilation of stories about historic troopship disasters caused by torpedoes, aerial attacks, mines, surface fire, foul weather, friendly fire, and poor planning by military decision makers. Some are ...
This biography—the first in English—of the prominent pre-World War I German naval officer Otto von Diederichs examines the evolution of the Imperial German Navy and Diederichs's participation in the Navy's strategic and operational development. When he secured his naval appointment in 1867, the Prussian Navy was little more than a coastal-defense force, but during the course of his naval service ...