eBooks Review: American Fighting Sail

     

C S Forester, The Age of Fighting Sail

Product Details

• File Size: 856 KB 
• Print Length: 234 pages 
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited 
• Publisher: eNet Press Inc. (May 28, 2012) 
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0087455GA 
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
• X-Ray: Not Enabled 
• Lending: Enabled 
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars (26 customer reviews) 
• Price: $6.99 

1. Short review:    (Amazon rating: 5 out of 5 stars -- I love it.)

2. Long review:

2.1. What I liked: The fact that the narrative was easily readable vice the impenetrable prose of the academics who write on the subject. The surprising favorable view of the young American Navy from an Englishman.

2.2. What I did not like: Does not apply.

2.3. Who I think is the audience: American naval history buffs.

2.4. Is the book appropriate for children to read?  Yes. No worries.

2.5. On the basis of reading this book, will I buy the author's next book? Yes.

2.6. Summary:

     It is odd, but the title of the book is incorrect. If it were correct, it would be 'A History of the Naval War of 1812.' The age of fighting sail would cover the period from 1588 to 1865.
     Once you get past that bit of bait-and-switch, you have a readable account of acts and actions of the American captains and naval ships in the War of 1812.
     I have read the history of the early US Navy for more years than I care to count. I am always delighted when I discover something I have not read before. Forester delighted me more times than any writer I recall, excepting Toll whose book I read after this one.
     For example, John Rodgers commanded an American squadron at anchor off New York City. When he received news that the US had declared war against the UK, he took his squadron to sea without waiting for orders. His cruise yielded no actions against the Royal Navy and little in the way of prizes, but Rodgers's cruise tied the Royal Navy in knots. Vice-Admiral Herbert Sawyer, commanding His Majesty's ships in Halifax, Bermuda, and soon in the Bahamas and across the Caribbean, found his numerically superior fleet tasked to 1) convoy British merchantmen to the UK, 2) engage and destroy the American navy, 3) destroy American privateers, 4) blockade American ports, and 5) carry the war to the American homeland. His forces were sufficient for any one of these tasks, but they were woefully inadequate to accomplish them all.
     By the time Sawyer learned that Rodgers had put to sea, it was apparent that the American squadron could be anywhere in the Atlantic. It could fall on almost any point with superior force. Sawyer faced the impossible tasks of protecting British merchant shipping against this threat while he sought for Rodgers's squadron to bring it to battle. These tasks occupied the whole of his naval assets. He had no ships left to blockade American ports. The entire American navy and hundreds of privateers were able to put to sea to multiply Sawyer's problems. And they did.
     I finally got a timeline for the American naval victories at sea: 1812 and 1815. None in 1813 and 1814. In those years, the US Navy got whipped or found its ships blockaded.
     When John Warren replaced Sawyer, the Royal Navy got serious about blockading American ports. He sent a sizable squadron to blockade Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay. This blockade effectively cut off Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania from the sea. American maritime commerce from these states ceased. And after Napoleon surrendered the first time (in 1814) a brigade of Wellington's troops joined the Royal Marines and raided cities in Virginia and Maryland and burned Washington, DC. (Jefferson's beloved militia ran at the sight of the British. (Many historians consider Jefferson to be the smartest man to ever hold the office of President of the United States. In my opinion, Jefferson was an idiot, because he valued his theories more than the experience of better men.) The only force to acquit itself honorably in battle against the British was an artillery battery manned by sailors and supported by a Marine company and commanded by Joshua Barney. an American hero who is too little known and too little celebrated. This force fought until the men were physically captured after hand-to-hand fighting. Congress voted Barney a sword for his valor. (FYI the Wikipedia piece on Barney does not do justice to the man. It is hard to find his history, but it is worth ever minute of the time it takes. The man was phenomenal.))
     The British wanted to keep the blockade in place and wanted to continue to raid the American mainland. But Ross, their general, was killed by an American sniper on a raid, so the raiding stopped for lack of an energetic commanding officer. The blockade could not be kept because the strength of the fleet was wasting away. Sailors who had been impressed into service -- and that was most of 'em -- deserted, some when ashore to get water and victuals for their ships, others slipping over the sides in the night and swimming away. The Royal Navy suffered attrition during the blockade as if they were in combat. In the autumn of 1814, the Royal Navy quit Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay.
     The war ended with the Treaty of Ghent in which the US and the UK merely agreed to stop fighting. On its face, the American causus belli was the British impressment of American seamen. The British had stopped the practice by an Order in Council in 1812, but the news did not reach the US before the declaration of war. Impressment was not mentioned in the Treaty of Ghent, so the British retained the 'right' of impressment. However, orders went out to the British navy captains to leave the Americans alone. The British had got their fill of fighting Americans and did not want to repeat the experience.
     Jim Dunnigan once said that a nation wins a war only if its position after the war is better than its position before the war. In this light, the US won the War of 1812, but the UK did not lose because its position was not materially lessened.
     Forester applauds the American privateers for their depredations on British shipping and cites the increases in British shipping insurance and captures of merchant vessels as evidence of the privateers' effectiveness. I think it would be interesting to study American privateering against the British in the War of 1812 in some detail (I'm strange that way; different strokes), but I am not convinced that American privateers materially affected the outcome of the war. The British merchant marine had survived French privateers through four wars in the 18th century and finished each war with more sails and more shipping tonnage than at the beginning.
     A delightful fact that Forester brought up was that throughout the war American merchantmen supplied Wellington's army in Spain. Wellington himself said that his army lived on American grain. Wellington supplied all American merchantmen who brought him supplies written passes to excuse them from capture or impressment should they be boarded by His Majesty's Navy.
     All this is presented in an easy-to-read narrative. A most enjoyable book if you are interested in American naval history.

YMMV.

2.7. Links:

C S Forester 

2.8. Buy the book:
The Age of Fighting Sail 



Ian W Toll, Six Frigates

Product Details

• File Size: 1785 KB 
• Print Length: 592 pages 
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (March 17, 2008) 
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000W5MINK 
• Text-to-Speech: Not Enabled 
• X-Ray: Enabled 
• Lending: Not Enabled 
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars (313 customer reviews) 
• Price: $9.99 

1. Short review:    (Amazon rating: 5 out of 5 stars -- I love it.)

2. Long review:

2.1. What I liked: Impressive sources: diaries and letters of captains, officers, midshipmen, and ordinary sailors.

2.2. What I did not like: The lack of textual coverage of the incident of the USS Baltimore under the command of Isaac Philips. Toll covered it in a footnote. Twenty-eight years after the occurrence, Philips published his account of the incident. Philips was dismissed from service -- that is, cashiered -- by order of President John Adams for allowing British officers to employ force aboard the Baltimore while it was still under his command; that is, he had not surrendered. The dismissal set a precedent that remained unique until 1970 when Coast Guard Commander Ralph Eustis allowed Russian sailors to use force aboard the USCGC Vigilant to return Simas Kudirka to their Russian trawler. (Kudirka was seeking asylum.) Wikipedia says that Eustis was given a non-punitive letter of reprimand. This is false. Eustis was cashiered, and those above him in the chain of command were given the option to retire or be cashiered. One of my friends, Wes Miller, sat the Coast Guard investigation board on the Kudirka incident. The board recommended court martial for Eustis. but the President overrode their recommendation and cashiered Eustis and cited the Baltimore incident as precedent. Wes and I argued the propriety of the dismissal many times. I think an incident that occurred in 1798 that echoed in the 20th century deserves more than a footnote.

2.3. Who I think is the audience: American naval history buffs.

2.4. Is the book appropriate for children to read?  Yes. No worries.

2.5. On the basis of reading this book, will I buy the author's next book? Yes.

2.6. Summary:

     (I read Six Frigates immediately after The Age of Fighting Sail, and for that reason chose to review them together.)
     From the title, you would expect Six Frigates to be about the original six frigates of the United States Navy. It is that and more.
     At first I was displeased with the attention Mr Toll gave to the politics of the creation of the Navy, but that may be because I studied the creation of the Navy in depth years ago and can recall a great deal of it in excruciating detail. Ask anyone who has ever conversed with me on the subject.
     However, Toll soon rewarded my reading with details I did not know. Like the fact that Joshua Humphreys, the architect of the American big frigates, had to compromise the original six that he intended to be built as 44s to build only three 44s, two 38s, and one 36 (the runt of the litter Chesapeake). (The Chesapeake is often listed as a 38, and like all warships of the era, she carried more guns than she was rated for, but the truth is the Chesapeake was shorter than her sisters, and 36 describes her better than 38.)
      Toll covered the War of 1812 with more detail on the actions at sea than Forester gave, but his conclusions echoed Forester's.
      Toll covered the Quasi-War with France and Thomas Truxtun's command of the Constellation in action against L'Insurgente and La Vengeance. Something I did not know: the Constellation mounted 24-pounders when she fought L'Insurgente, but Truxtun found they made the Constellation top heavy and swapped them for 18-pounders. The Constellation fought La Vengeance with 18-pounders on her gun deck.
     Toll covered both the First Barbary War and the Second Barbary War. (There was not much to the Second Barbary War. The Navy sailed in and blew hell out of any ship the Algerines put in the water.)
     Toll covered William Bainbridge's loss of the USS Philadelphia and his and his officers' surprisingly luxurious captivity in Tripoli. Toll also covered the brutal conditions of the seamen in captivity. The Algerines put them to work like slaves on public works.
     Once Edward Preble sailed into the Mediterranean with an American squadron, things got hot for the Algerines. Preble put matters to rest in Tangiers and Tunis before he made his base in Syracuse. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was already at war with the Algerines and happily lent Preble six shallow-draft gunboats to use to bombard Tripoli. Preble sailed to Tripoli and proceeded to do just that. In time, a peace was concluded with the Dey of Algiers, and the Americans went away.
     Toll details the pig's breakfast President Jefferson made of the navy with his erroneous notions of naval militia manning unseaworthy gunboats. Those damned gunboats were useless. They could not sail and they could not fight.
     Toll covered the Chesapeake-Leopard affair and the Little Belt affair in extraordinary detail.
     If you have an interest in the early US Navy, this is a book you must have in your library.

YMMV.

2.7. Links:

Ian W Toll 

2.8. Buy the book:
Six Frigates