Author: Thomas R. Neblett
Publisher: Tate Publishing
ISBN: 1604627182
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 425
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Book Description
From the race of the 100 Guinea Cup 1851, to a personal yacht, to an espionage boat for the Confederacy, to a blockader for the Union Navy, the trodden decks of this black schooner carries many stories. The yacht America transports the reader from a shipyard in New York City across the Atlantic to the famous race of the Royal Yacht Squadron Queens Cup of 1851, now known as the Americas Cup Race.. She became known as the Yankee schooner, raced with European yachts for several years, and in 1861 mysteriously sailed into Savannah, Georgia, carrying British colors and the Royal Victoria Yacht Clubs burgee. The Civil war had just begun. As the fifth yachts owner, Henry Decie, an Irish sagacious, gentry-man becomes acquainted with the Jefferson Davis Administration. The yacht was prostituted to transport two Confederate officers to England. One officer was to serve as a secret emissary for President Davis, while the other officer was to purchase/build abroad iron-clad warships. Henry Decie and his yacht, re-named Camilla, are captained across the Atlantic, to react with the Confederate urgent fares. However, he took time to race at the Isle of Wight. Decie left the Confederate officers unceremoniously and sailed to Dixie - stopping at the Cape de Verdes, maybe to avoid Mason and Slidell. The yacht disappeared between late1861 and early1862. She had been scuttled by the Confederates in a creek hideaway. She was found and rescued by the Union Navy vessels far upriver beyond Jacksonville, Florida. Americas celebrated life doesnt terminate in England, soon she was flying the colors of the USN as a naval blockader. For a little schooner her activities are full of intrigue. She is a proven winner of the waves, and holds an extremely important place in American yachting hist
Author: Kevin M. Levin
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469653273
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a rising backlash against African Americans' gains in civil rights and other realms. Levin also investigates the roles that African Americans actually performed in the Confederate army, including personal body servants and forced laborers. He demonstrates that regardless of the dangers these men faced in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield, their legal status remained unchanged. Even long after the guns fell silent, Confederate veterans and other writers remembered these men as former slaves and not as soldiers, an important reminder that how the war is remembered often runs counter to history.
Author: Hans Goebeler
Publisher: Savas Beatie
ISBN: 1611210070
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
The story of the German submarine U-505 and its dramatic capture by the US Navy during WWII—told by one of its crewmen. Hans Goebeler is known as the man who “pulled the plug” on U-505 in 1944 to keep his beloved U-boat out of Allied hands. Steel Boat, Iron Hearts is his no-holds-barred account of service aboard a combat U-boat. It is the only full-length memoir of its kind, and Goebeler was aboard for every one of U-505’s war patrols. Using his own experiences, log books, and correspondence with other U-boat crewmen, Goebeler offers rich and very personal details about what life was like in the German Navy under Hitler. Because his first and last posting was to U-505, Goebeler’s perspective of the crew, commanders, and war patrols paints a vivid and complete portrait unlike any other to come out of the Kriegsmarine. He witnessed it all: from deadly sabotage efforts that almost sunk the boat to the tragic suicide of the only U-boat commander who took his life during WWII; from the terror and exhilaration of hunting the enemy to the seedy brothels of France. The vivid, honest, and smooth-flowing prose calls it like it was and pulls no punches. U-505 was captured by Captain Dan Gallery’s Guadalcanal Task Group 22.3 on June 4, 1944. Trapped by this “Hunter-Killer” group, U-505 was depth-charged to the surface, strafed by machine gun fire, and boarded. It was the first enemy ship captured at sea since the War of 1812. Today, hundreds of thousands of visitors tour U-505 each year at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Includes photos and a special Introduction by Keith Gill, Curator of U-505, Museum of Science and Industry
Author: Angus Konstam
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472800613
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 129
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Book Description
At the start of the American Civil War, neither side had warships on the Mississippi River and in the first few months both sides scrambled to gather a flotilla, converting existing riverboats for naval use. These ships were transformed into powerful naval weapons despite a lack of resources, trained manpower and suitable vessels. The creation of a river fleet was a miracle of ingenuity, improvisation and logistics, particularly for the South. This title describes their design, development and operation throughout the American Civil War.
Author: James A. Morgan (III.)
Publisher: Ironclad Publishing
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
To the victorious Confederates, it was the Battle of Leesburg. The badly beaten Federals named it for the imposing fortress-like rocky precipice on the northern side of the Potomac near Washington DC - Ball's Bluff. Fought three months to the day after First Manassas (Bull Run) and another in a long line of Federal defeats during the first year of the war - the battle was, as author James Morgan puts it, "a reconnaissance mission gone bad." Federal commander Gen. Charles P. Stone had planned a raid on a suspected Rebel camp, precipitating a skirmish between elements of his troops and those of Confederate Gen. Nathan "Shanks" Evans. As a series of skirmishes developed into a full-scale brawl involving some 1700 soldiers on each side, careless and costly decisions by one of Stone's commanders, Col. Edward D. Baker, led to Baker's death and a catastrophic finish, as hundreds of Union soldiers fell or threw themselves off the cliff. In the ensuing political uproar in the North, Stone became the convenient Federal scapegoat and his career was destroyed. A charter member of the volunteer Ball's Bluff guide group, Morgan, a former Marine, began to realize that the conventional battle narrative he and others were telling to visitors "just did not feel right." Further reading and more intensive study of the battlefield led him to delve deeply into primary materials to correct misconceptions and find the factual interpretation of events of this little and relatively unstudied battlefield. With the requisite keen understanding of the battlefield's terrain, Morgan has woven together a site-driven narrative in graceful style that is appropriately highlighted with participant's quotes. Featuring previously unused primary manuscript sources and a variety of first-hand accounts, this second volume in Ironclad's landmark Discovering Civil War America Series is highlighted by fine maps and numerous contemporary illustrations. A signature element of the series is the driving/walking tour of the sites, including the Ball's Bluff National Cemetery. This book is a must for all Civil War buffs, especially those interested in early clashes of the war and lesser-known battlefields.
Author: Steve Norder
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1611214580
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414
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Book Description
A detailed history of one week during the Civil War in which the American president assumed control of the nation’s military. One rainy evening in May, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln boarded the revenue cutter Miami and sailed to Fort Monroe in Hampton Roads, Virginia. There, for the first and only time in our country’s history, a sitting president assumed direct control of armed forces to launch a military campaign. In Lincoln Takes Command, author Steve Norderdetails this exciting, little-known week in Civil War history. Lincoln recognized the strategic possibilities offered by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s ongoing Peninsula Campaign and the importance of seizing Norfolk, Portsmouth, and the Gosport Navy Yard. For five days, the president spent time on sea and land, studied maps, spoke with military leaders, suggested actions, and issued direct orders to subordinate commanders. He helped set in motion many events, including the naval bombardment of a Confederate fort, the sailing of Union ships up the James River toward the enemy capital, an amphibious landing of Union soldiers followed by an overland march that expedited the capture of Norfolk, Portsmouth, and the navy yard, and the destruction of the Rebel ironclad CSS Virginia. The president returned to Washington in triumph, with some urging him to assume direct command of the nation’s field armies. The week discussed in Lincoln Takes Command has never been as heavily researched or told in such fine detail. The successes that crowned Lincoln’s short time in Hampton Roads offered him a better understanding of, and more confidence in, his ability to see what needed to be accomplished. This insight helped sustain him through the rest of the war.
Author: Louis C. Hunter
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486157784
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 721
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Book Description
Richly detailed definitive account covers every aspect of steamboat's development — from construction, equipment, and operation to races, collisions, rise of competition, and ultimate decline of steamboat transportation.
Author: Craig L. Symonds
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199931682
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
Continuing in the vein of the Lincoln-prize winning Lincoln and His Admirals, acclaimed naval historian Craig L. Symonds presents an operational history of the Civil War navies - both Union and Confederate - in this concise volume. Illuminating how various aspects of the naval engagement influenced the trajectory of the war as a whole, The Civil War at Sea adds to our understanding of America's great national conflict. Both the North and the South developed and deployed hundreds of warships between 1861 and 1865. Because the Civil War coincided with a revolution in naval techonology, the development and character of warfare at sea from 1861-1865 was dramatic and unprecedented. Rather than a simple chronology of the war at sea, Symonds addresses the story of the naval war topically, from the dramatic transformation wrought by changes in technology to the establishment, management, and impact of blockade. He also offers critical assessments of principal figures in the naval war, from the opposing secretaries of the navy to leading operational commanders such as David Glasgow Farragut and Raphael Semmes. Symonds brings his expertise and knowledge of military and technological history to bear in this essential exploration of American naval engagement throughout the Civil War.
Author: Meg Groeling
Publisher: Savas Beatie
ISBN: 1611211905
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
The stories of what happened after the shooting stopped and the process of burying bodies in the wake of Civil War carnage and chaos. The clash of armies in the American Civil War left hundreds of thousands of men dead, wounded, or permanently damaged. Skirmishes and battles could result in casualty numbers as low as one or two and as high as tens of thousands. The carnage of the battlefield left a lasting impression on those who experienced or viewed it, but in most cases the armies quickly moved on to meet again at another time and place. When the dust settled and the living armies moved on, what happened to the dead left behind? Unlike battle narratives, The Aftermath of Battle picks up the story as the battle ends. The burial of the dead was an overwhelming experience for the armies or communities forced to clean up after the destruction of battle. In the short-term action, bodies were hastily buried to avoid the stench and the horrific health concerns of massive death; in the long-term, families struggled to reclaim loved ones and properly reinter them in established cemeteries. Visitors to a battlefield often wonder what happened to the dead once the battle was over. This compelling, easy-to-read overview, enhanced with extensive photos and illustrations, provides a look at the aftermath of battle and the process of burying the Civil War dead.
Author: Nancy Rust
Publisher: Pelican Publishing Company
ISBN: 9781455625277
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Andrew Higgins built boats that could "crunch through driftwood, bounce over logs, climb a beach," and "wham up on a sloping concrete sea wall." In World War II, that was exactly what was needed to get soldiers and Jeeps from the ocean to land. This biography for young readers traces the invention of the legendary Higgins boat--and the adventurous childhood of the remarkable man behind it.
