BiblioVault - Books about 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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Commissioners and Commodores

The East India Squadron and American Diplomacy in China

Curtis T. Henson

University of Alabama Press, 1982

The American East India Squadron was created in 1835 by the Navy Department to extend a measure of authority to a remote corner of the globe. Americans in distant areas frequently had to cope without a naval presence, and the establishment of a permanent naval station abroad usually reflected the government’s assumption that American commercial or strategic interests were sufficiently vital to justify more than occasional visits. The appearance of a regular squadron did not necessarily imply that it would actually do anything, but rather that it would be available if the need arose.

In the 19th century the American naval presence on the China coast served three constituencies: merchants, missionaries, and diplomats. The merchants had been on the China coast for half a century, but the missionaries had arrived only a few years before the establishment of the East India Squadron. The diplomats did not arrive until a decade after the squadron’s formation.

Americans in the China trade showed minimal interest when the unsolicited warships appeared in 1819. The merchants were traditionally independent, and the Chinese system of trade at Canton made no allowance for foreign warships. Even after China had been forced into a treat relationship with the west, the navy made few positive contributions to the mercantile endeavor. The navy also had very little to offer the missionaries, who were few in number and whose movements were limited to areas that were open to merchants.

The relationship of the squadron to the diplomatic corps was much more significant. U.S. policy expressly linked the squadron and the diplomat, not always in clear and specific terms, but certainly in a manner distinct from that of the navy’s other constituents. Diplomatic relations between China and the west legalized the navy’s presence, opening the way for warships to move freely along the coast and within the open ports. Without warships at their disposal, the commissioners and ministers found themselves immobile or subject to uncertain private transportation. Navy vessels probably rendered their greatest service as floating legations.

Dr. Henson’s book traces the navy’s evolving position in China, and it stresses the relationship between the navy and the other American groups in China. He has paid particular emphasis to the commercial element, not only because the merchants were the first Americans on the China coast, but also because they continued to be the dominant American interest.

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Confederate Navy Chief

Stephen R. Mallory

Joseph T. Durkin

University of Alabama Press, 2005

The book tells of Stephen R. Mallory's support of naval inventions, strategy, and ideas. It also sheds light on the the successes and failures of Jefferson Davis. Durkin gives a well-balanced biography of Mallory and his life in the Confederate navy.

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Deep Freeze

The United States, the International Geophysical Year, and the Origins of Antarctica's Age of Science

Dian Olson Belanger

University Press of Colorado, 2006

In Deep Freeze, Dian Olson Belanger tells the story of the pioneers who built viable communities, made vital scientific discoveries, and established Antarctica as a continent dedicated to peace and the pursuit of science, decades after the first explorers planted flags in the ice.

In the tense 1950s, even as the world was locked in the Cold War, U.S. scientists, maintained by the Navy's Operation Deep Freeze, came together in Antarctica with counterparts from eleven other countries to participate in the International Geophysical Year (IGY). On July 1, 1957, they began systematic, simultaneous scientific observations of the south-polar ice and atmosphere. Their collaborative success over eighteen months inspired the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, which formalized their peaceful pursuit of scientific knowledge. Still building on the achievements of the individuals and distrustful nations thrown together by the IGY from mutually wary military, scientific, and political cultures, science prospers today and peace endures.

The year 2007 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the IGY and the commencement of a new International Polar Year - a compelling moment to review what a singular enterprise accomplished in a troubled time. Belanger draws from interviews, diaries, memoirs, and official records to weave together the first thorough study of the dawn of Antarctica's scientific age. Deep Freeze offers absorbing reading for those who have ventured onto Antarctic ice and those who dream of it, as well as historians, scientists, and policy makers.

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From Torpedoes to Aviation

Washington Irving Chambers & Technological Innovation in the New Navy 1876 to 1913

Stephen K. Stein

University of Alabama Press, 2007

The central figure in the modernization of the U.S. Navy.

The career of Washington Irving Chambers spans a formative period in the development of the United States Navy: He entered the Naval Academy in the doldrum years of obsolete, often rotting ships, and left after he had helped like-minded officers convince Congress and the public of the need to adopt a new naval strategy built around a fleet of technologically advanced battleships. He also laid the groundwork for naval aviation and the important role it would play in the modern navy.

This work covers Chambers’s early naval career, his work at the new Office of Naval Intelligence, his participation in the Greeley Relief Expedition, and a survey for the projected isthmian canal through Nicaragua, before becoming the key advocate for naval modernization. As such, Chambers worked as a pioneering torpedo designer, supervised construction of the Maine, modernized the New York Navy Yard, and became a member of the first permanent faculty at the Naval War College.

During his long career, Chambers not only designed torpedoes, but also several warships, including a prototype Dreadnought-style battleship and a host of small devices that ranged from torpedo guidance systems to the first catapult for launching airplanes from ships. At the close of his career, Chambers purchased the navy’s first aircraft and founded its air arm. Working with Glenn Curtiss, Chambers guided a coalition of aviation enthusiasts and pioneers who popularized naval aviation and demonstrated its capabilities. Chambers arranged the first take-off and landing of an airplane from a ship and other demonstrations of naval aviation. Combined with his tireless advocacy for modernization, these contributions secured a place in naval and aviation history for the innovator.

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The Operations of the Navy in the Dutch East Indies and the Bay of Bengal

Edited by Willem Remmelink

Leiden University Press, 2018

Between 1966 and 1980, the War History Office of the National Defense College of Japan (now the Center for Military History of the National Institute for Defense Studies) published the 102-volume Senshi Sōsho (War History Series). These volumes give a detailed account of the operations of the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy during the Second World War.
The present volume, The Operations of the Navy in the Dutch East Indies and the Bay of Bengal, volume 26 of the series, describes the Japanese Navy’s role in the campaign to gain control over the Indonesian archipelago—at that time the largest transoceanic landing operation in the military history of the world. It includes, among others, the first complete Japanese analysis of the Battle of the Java Sea, a much-debated battle that ended disastrously for the Allies and opened the way to Java for the Japanese.

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