Looking Back

From Annapolis to the Pros

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in late June, a previously obscure golfer named Billy Hurley III won the Quicken Loans National PGA Tournament at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda ...

The Making of a Best Seller

This fall marks the 30th anniversary of the Naval Institute Press’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy.

The Caine Mutiny

In brief, Ensign Willie Keith, a fictional alter ego for author Herman Wouk, was commissioned as a 90-day wonder reserve officer. He traveled to Pearl Harbor in 1943 to join ...

Thresher and the CNO

Just as spring was spreading its renewing warmth to the nation, the stunning news in 1963 was chilling. Nuclear submarines had been in service since only the mid-1950s, yet in ...

The End of a Nation

Although it doesn’t appear in statute books, one particular law has wide application nonetheless: the law of unintended consequences. Forty years ago this summer, the phenomenon known as “Watergate” was ...

Born in 1912

This year there will be a great deal of hoopla over the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the British liner Titanic on her first voyage (see story, p. 48) ...

The First SPAR

For about four decades, the top ship commands for Coast Guard captains were “the big white ones,” the high-endurance cutter Hamilton (WHEC-715) and her 11 sisters. Ships of the class ...

Airborne in Annapolis

Honoring a Man of Honor

In the first week of June 1951, Ensign Bill Lawrence graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. During his time as a midshipman, he was bothered about a then-typical practice known ...

Surrounded by a Sea of Books

Several years ago I wrote a column titled “Confessions of a Bookaholic” (Naval History, October 1997). The thrust of it was that I have a serious addiction, and ...