front cover of The Civil War Diary of Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy
The Civil War Diary of Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy
The Original Manuscript Edition
Gideon Welles, Edited by William E. Gienapp and Erica L. Gienapp; Foreword by James M. McPherson
University of Illinois Press, 2014
Gideon Welles’s 1861 appointment as secretary of the navy placed him at the hub of Union planning for the Civil War and in the midst of the powerful personalities vying for influence in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet. Although Welles initially knew little of naval matters, he rebuilt a service depleted by Confederate defections, planned actions that gave the Union badly needed victories in the war’s early days, and oversaw a blockade that weakened the South’s economy.

Perhaps the hardest-working member of the cabinet, Welles still found time to keep a detailed diary that has become one of the key documents for understanding the inner workings of the Lincoln administration. In this new edition, William E. and Erica L. Gienapp have restored Welles’s original observations, gleaned from the manuscript diaries at the Library of Congress and freed from his many later revisions, so that the reader can experience what he wrote in the moment. With his vitriolic pen, Welles captures the bitter disputes over strategy and war aims, lacerates colleagues from Secretary of State William H. Seward to General-in-Chief Henry Halleck, and condemns the actions of the self-serving southern elite he sees as responsible for the war. He just as easily waxes eloquent about the Navy's wartime achievements, extols the virtues of Lincoln, and drops in a tidbit of Washington gossip.

Carefully edited and extensively annotated, this edition contains a wealth of supplementary material. The appendixes include short biographies of the members of Lincoln’s cabinet, the retrospective Welles wrote after leaving office covering the period missing from the diary proper, and important letters regarding naval matters and international law.

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Emergency Deep
Cold War Missions of a Submarine Commander
Alfred Scott McLaren
University of Alabama Press, 2021
Conveys in dramatic detail the high-risk, covert operations of a nuclear attack submarine during the zenith of the Cold War

Captain Alfred Scott McLaren served as commander of the USS Queenfish (SSN 651) from September 1969 to May 1973, the very height of the Cold War. As commander, McLaren led at least six major clandestine operations, including the first-ever exploration of the entire Siberian Continental Shelf: a perilous voyage detailed in his previous book Unknown Waters.

Emergency Deep: Cold War Missions of a Submarine Commander conveys the entire spectrum of Captain McLaren’s experiences commanding the USS Queenfish, mainly in the waters of the Russian Far East and also off Vietnam. McLaren offers a riveting and deeply human story that illuminates the intensity and pressures of commanding a nuclear attack submarine in some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

Relying on his own notes and records, as well as discussions with former officers and shipmates, McLaren focuses on operational matters both great and small. He recounts his unique perspectives on attack-submarine tactics and exploratory techniques in high-risk or uncharted areas, matters of leadership and team-building and the morale of his crews, and the innumerable and often unforeseen ways his philosophy of command played out on a day-to-day basis, with consequences that ran the gamut from the mundane to the dire and life-threatening.

Readers are also treated to significant new information and insight on submarine strategy, maneuvers, and culture. Such details illuminate and bring to life, with both great humor and gravitas, the intensity and pressures on those engaged in covert missions on nuclear attack submarines.
 
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JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE AROUND THE WORLD
A YEAR ON THE SHIP HELENA (1841-1842)
THOMAS WORTHINGTON KING
The Ohio State University Press, 2002

In 1841 Thomas Worthington King accepted a position as supercargo on the Helena, a ship some have called “the first American clipper,” as it was about to make its maiden voyage to China. Journal of a Voyage around the World recounts the travel of Thomas Worthington King on the Helena from 1841 to 1842.

In full and well-written entries, King recounts the routines and surprises of life at sea, where storms and calms could be equally threatening, and the next day might bring a stop at St. Helena to see Napoleon’s tomb or an encounter with pirates. King provides details often missing from histories that give a real sense of the period. In his description of Chile and Peru we learn about activities as diverse as cockfighting and courtship. We learn about produce and prisons, mints and monasteries, fruits and fashions. In his account of China, King vividly describes rivers so full of boats that one could “see no water—nothing but the large mat sales” and calm groves of “green lychee, or broad leaved & rustling plantain.”

Perhaps the most important subject of the diary is the diarist himself, whose talent and confidence develop on the pages of his record. Thomas Worthington King was born and raised in Chillicothe, Ohio, and was the grandson of two Ohio Senators: Rufus King and Thomas Worthington.

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Neptune’s Admiral
The Life of Sir Bertram Ramsay, Commander of Dunkirk and D-Day
Andrew Gordon
Harvard University Press, 2025
Admiral Bertram Ramsay orchestrated the evacuation at Dunkirk, planned the invasions of North Africa and Sicily, and worked closely with Eisenhower on the Allied landings at Normandy. In the most authoritative portrait we are ever likely to have, Andrew Gordon restores this great naval commander to his essential place in World War II history.
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To My Dearest Wife, Lide
Letters from George B. Gideon Jr. during Commodore Perry’s Expedition to Japan, 1853–1855
Edited by M. Patrick Sauer and David A. Ranzan
University of Alabama Press, 2019
A personal account of Commodore Perry’s landmark expedition to Japan and life in the antebellum navy
 
George B. Gideon Jr. served as second assistant engineer aboard the  USS Powhatan from 1852 to 1856. From his position on the steam  frigate, Gideon traveled to Singapore, Labuan, Borneo, Hong Kong, and many other Asian lands. During his time at sea, Gideon penned dozens of letters to his wife, Lide, back home in Philadelphia. Recently  discovered in the attic of his great-great-grandniece, were fifty-one letters penned by Gideon providing thorough and insightful commentary  throughout the voyage.

Through these correspondences, Gideon laboriously documents the details of his daily life on board, from the food they ate to the technical aspects of his work, as well as observations concerning the historical events unfolding around him, such as Chinese piracy, the Taiping Rebellion, the Crimean War, and the devastation of Shimoda.  To My Dearest Wife, Lide: Letters from George B. Gideon Jr. during  Commodore Perry’s Expedition to Japan, 1853–1855 is a rare first-person account of the landmark American naval expedition to Japan to establish commercial relations between the two countries. Gideon’s letters have been meticulously transcribed and annotated by the editors and are an invaluable primary historical source.

Gideon’s letters are candid and revealing, delving into the rampant dysfunction in the navy of the 1850s—sickness and disease, alcohol abuse, and poor leadership, among other challenges. Gideon also unabashedly shares his own cynical views of the navy’s role in supporting American economic interests in Japan. This firsthand account of the political mission of the Perry expedition is a unique contribution to naval and military history and gives readers a better view of life aboard a navy ship.
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