This book describes the early exploits around the globe of a young naval officer who would become a World War II hero.After touring the U. S. S. Pittsburgh in 1926, James Thurber described it as the "Playship of the World," where the daily lives of officers were akin to "living in the sort of Utopia in which old romantic plays used to drop their curtain and old romantic books close their final page." Indicative of this adventurous, carefree, and relatively risk-free period between the world wars was the early career of a young naval officer, Dan Gallery, who would eventually achieve the rank...

This book tells the dramatic story of how an earthen fort defended a southern city against ironclad monitors.The southern anchor in the coastal defenses of Savannah, Georgia, Fort McAllister was constructed of sand and mud in April 1863 on the Great Ogeechee River, twelve miles south of the Savannah River. Durham offers a comprehensive history of the fort's construction, strategic importance during the Civil War, and postwar neglect and restoration in this vivid account of how an earthen defense withstood not only devastating naval assaults but also the effects of time. In re-creating the...

Captain James Carlin is a biography of a shadowy nineteenth-century British Confederate, James Carlin (1833 1921), who was among the most successful captains running the U.S. Navy s blockade of Southern ports during the Civil War. Written by his descendent Colin Carlin, Captain James Carlin ventures behind the scenes of this perilous trade that transported vital supplies to the Confederate forces.
An Englishman trained in the British merchant marine, Carlin was recruited into the U.S. Coastal and Geodetic Survey Department in 1856, spending four years charting the U.S. Atlantic seaboard....

An exploration of the impact of ethnically diverse enslaved watermen on the maritime history of the New World

Greek-owned shipping has been at the top of the world fleet for the last twenty years. Winner of the 1997 Runciman Award, this richly sourced study traces the development of the Greek tramp fleet from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Gelina Harlaftis argues that the success of Greek-owned shipping in recent years has been a result not of a number of entrepreneurs using flags of convenience in the 1940s, but of networks and organisational structures which date back to the nineteenth century.
This study provides the most comprehensive history of development of modern Greek...