This is a vivid, minute-by-minute account of one of the worst shipwrecks in naval history. Edward Beach's father commanded the Memphis, one of the largest battle cruisers built by the U.S. Navy up to that time—bigger and faster than a battleship. The Memphis (originally Tennessee) was demolished by monstrous tsunami waves in Santo Domingo Harbor in August 1916 ...
Here is a compelling portrait of the other side of war—hose who must wait at home, uncertain what the Fates will decide—and Elizabeth Shaw knows this side of war all too well. She waited first for one husband, VanOstrand Perkins, who was killed in battle in the Pacific, and then another, James Shaw, who ultimately survived. This is a story ...
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 ...
