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An overdue reassessment of one of the US Navy’s most decorated—and divisive—early commanders, whose legacy remains teetering between heroism and scandalous.

A Double-Edged Sword: The Biography of Commodore Jesse Duncan Elliott, 1782–1845 is a comprehensive and long-overdue portrait of one of the most polarizing figures in early US naval history. Written over the course of a decade and completed shortly before the author’s death, this meticulously researched biography revisits the career of a man once hailed for his military exploits—and later condemned for a myriad of personal controversies—including his perceived missteps while in command.

David F. Long traces Elliott’s rise from promising young officer to commodore, chronicling his leadership during key moments such as the capture of the brig Caledonia, the defense of Fort Erie, and his central—but contested—role in the Battle of Lake Erie. Despite notable contributions to the Navy’s early successes, including his diplomatic work and restoration of the USS Constitution, Elliott’s legacy was clouded by scandal: accusations of cowardice, a notorious duel, a contentious command style, and a drawn-out court-martial that ended his career in disgrace.

Serving as both biography and reflective historical analysis, Long paints a vivid picture of the early US Navy—its rivalries, growing pains, and evolving institutional identity. His balanced account of Elliott’s life, neither excusing his faults nor downplaying his achievements, places the commodore’s story in direct conversation with the challenges and ambitions of a rapidly expanding American maritime power. This is a must read for scholars of naval and military history, early American politics, or anyone interested in the brazen albeit controversial legacy of a forgotten national hero.

A commanding firsthand account of the most successful antisubmarine campaign in U.S. Naval History.

The USS England was a 1200-ton, 306-foot, long-hull destroyer escort. Commissioned into service in late 1943 and dispatched to the Pacific the following February, the England and its crew, in one 12-day period in 1944, sank more submarines than any other ship in U.S. naval history: of the six targets attacked, all six were destroyed. For this distinction, legendary in the annals of antisubmarine warfare, the ship and her crew were honored with the Presidential Unit Citation.

After convoying in the Atlantic, John A. Williamson was assigned to the England—first as its executive officer, then as its commanding officer—from the time of her commissioning until she was dry-docked for battle damage repairs in the Philadelphia Naval Yard fifteen months later. Besides being a key participant in the remarkable antisubmarine actions, Williamson commanded the England in the battle of Okinawa, where she was attacked by kamikaze planes.

Williamson narrates his memoir with authority and authenticity, describes naval tactics and weaponry precisely, and provides information gleaned from translations of the orders from the Japanese high command to Submarine Squadron 7. The author details the challenges of communal life aboard ship and explains the intense loyalty that bonds crew members for life. Ultimately, Williamson offers a compelling portrait of himself, an inexperienced naval officer who, having come of age in Alabama during the Depression, rose to become the most successful World War II antisubmarine warfare officer in the Pacific.
 

A compelling naval memoir of Arctic submarine duty—operations, engineering realities, and split‑second leadership choices in Emergency Deep.

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.
 

Guardian of the Great Lakes is the saga of the USS Michigan, an archetype iron-hulled war steamer launched in 1843. Its mission was to patrol the ofttimes volatile Great Lakes region, quelling port town civil disturbances, while at the same time rescuing both Canadian and American ships in distress.

The Michigan found itself unavoidably attracted to calamity, leaving in its wake a collection of eyewitness accounts to these momentous yet largely forgotten occurences. Incidents such as the timber rebellion of the 1850s, which occurred in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan, are documented for the first time. Other episodes such as the assassination of "king" Strang on Beaver Island and the destruction of the community there are studied under the light of newly discovered sources. Still other chapters reveal the chaos created by the Civil War on the lakes, the destructive mining strikes of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and the tragic, bloody, Fenian invasion of Canada.

Between major calamities lay the vagaries of maritime life on the Great Lakes detailed in the records of the Michigan's crew. From their social and community life in Erie, Pennsylvania to storms, shipwrecks, and sickness, the records kept by the men and officers of the USS Michigan have helped to produce in this book an accurate and detailed narrative of naval and maritime life on the Great Lakes during this important period.

Bradley A. Rodgers is Assistant Professor, Program in Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology, East Carolina University.

Three intertwined stories that reveal the challenges faced by the US Navy in its evolution between the Civil War and the First World War

Hard Aground brings together three intertwined stories documenting the US Navy’s strategic and matériel evolution from the end of Civil War through the First World War. These incidents had lasting consequences for how the navy would modernize itself throughout the rest of the twentieth century.

The first story focuses on the reconstruction of the US Navy following the swift and near-total dismantling of the Union Navy infrastructure after the Civil War. This reconstruction began with barely enough time for the navy’s campaigns in the Spanish-American War, and for its role in the First World War. Jampoler argues that the federal government discovered that the fleet requested by the navy, and paid for by Congress, was the wrong fleet. Focus was on battleships and cruisers rather than destroyers and other small combat vessels needed to hunt submarines and serve as convoy escorts.

The second story relates the short, tragic life of the USS Tennessee (later renamed Memphis), one of the steel-hulled ships of the new Armored Cruiser Squadron that was a centerpiece of the navy’s modernization effort. The USS Tennessee was ordered on two unusual missions in the early months of the First World War, long before the United States formally entered the war. These little-known missions and the ship's shocking destruction in a storm surge in the Caribbean serve as the centerpiece of the story. Threaded through the narrative are biographical sketches of the principal players in the drama that unfolded following the ship’s demise, including two of Tennessee’s commanding officers: Vice Admiral Sims, who commanded the US Navy squadrons deployed to Europe in support of the Royal Navy; Rear Admiral William Caperton, who commanded the Caribbean squadron before the Memphis (formerly the Tennessee) was lost; Charles Pond, squadron commander during the wreck; and the American ambassador to the Ottoman court, President Wilson’s enthusiastic supporter, Henry Morgenthau.

Jampoler rounds out this fascinating account with the story of how the USS Tennessee’s destruction prompted fierce deliberations about the US Navy’s operations and chains of command for the remainder of the First World War and the high-level political wrangling inside the Department of the Navy immediately after the war, as civilian appointees and senior officers wrestled to reshape the department in their image.

A young officer’s insightful, detailed and steadfast devotion to the Union Navy—told in his own words. 

On May 18, 1862, Henry Willis Wells wrote a letter to his mother telling her in clear terms, “I am fighting for the Union.” Since August 1861, when he joined the US Navy as a master’s mate he never wavered in his loyalty. He wrote to his family frequently that he considered military service a necessary and patriotic duty, and the career that ensued was a dramatic one, astutely and articulately documented by Wells in more than 200 letters home, leaving an invaluable account of daily life in the Union Navy.

Wells joined the navy shortly after the war began, initially on board the Cambridge, attached to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, which patrolled the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. He witnessed the Battle of Hampton Roads and the fight between the ironclads CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor. Next, the Cambridge assisted in the blockade of Wilmington, North Carolina. In one instance, the warship chased the schooner J. W. Pindar ashore during her attempt to run the blockade, and Confederate forces captured Henry’s boarding party. After a short prison stay in the infamous Libby Prison in Richmond, his Confederate captors paroled Henry. He travelled back to Brookline, and soon thereafter the Navy Department assigned him to the gunboat Ceres, which operated on the sounds and rivers of North Carolina, protecting army positions ashore. Henry was on board during the Confederate attempt to capture Washington, North Carolina. During this April 1863 attack, Henry was instrumental in the town’s defense, commanding a naval battery ashore during the latter part of the fight.

His exceptional service gained him a transfer to a larger warship, the USS Montgomery, again on the blockade of Wilmington. Later the service assigned him to the Gem of the Sea, part of the East Gulf Blockading Squadron. Through his hard work and professionalism, he finally earned his first command. In September 1864, he became the commanding officer of the Rosalie, a sloop used as a tender to the local warships. Later he commanded the schooner Annie, also a tender. At the end of December 1864, however, the Annie suffered a massive explosion, killing all hands, including Wells. He was twenty-three years old when his life and career ended tragically. Wells’s letters document both his considerable achievements and his frustrations. His challenges, triumphs, and disappointments are rendered with candor. I Am Fighting for the Union is a vital and deeply personal account of a momentous chapter in the history of the Civil War and its navies.
 

The man regarded as “the Father of the American Navy” returns to the quarterdeck in John Barry: An American Hero in the Age of Sail, the first comprehensive biography of this legendary officer in generations. Son of a hardscrabble Irish farmer from County Wexford, Barry was sent to sea as a child, arriving in Philadelphia during the restless decade before the American Revolution. Brave and ambitious, he ascended the ratlines to become a successful merchant captain at a young age, commanding the most prestigious ship in the colonies and recording the fastest known day of sail in the century.

Volunteering to fight for the Continental cause, Barry saw his star rise during the War for Independence. As captain of the Lexington, Raleigh, and Alliance, Barry faced down broadsides, mutinies, and even a fleet of icebergs. He captured the first enemy warship taken by a Continental vessel and fought the last battle of the American Revolution. His hard-won victory over two British warships simultaneously garnered him international notoriety, while his skill as a seafarer and cool temper established Barry as a worthy foe among British captains. Without a ship during the winter of 1776-77, the ever resourceful Barry lead a battery of naval artillery at the battle of Princeton. With peace came a historic voyage to China, where Barry helped open trade with that reclusive empire. In 1794, President Washington named Barry as the first commissioned officer in the new United States Navy. Given the title of commodore, Barry ended his career during America’s naval war with France, teaching the ropes to a new generation of officers, most notably Stephen Decatur.

Drawn from primary source documents from around the world, John Barry: An American Hero in the Age of Sail by Tim McGrath brings the story of this self-made American back to life in a major new biography.

Lincoln’s Trident is the definitive account of the US Navy’s West Gulf Blockading Squadron’s quarantine of the Confederacy in the central and western Gulf of Mexico and adjacent river systems.

In Lincoln’s Trident, Coast Guard historian Robert M. Browning Jr. continues his magisterial series about the Union’s naval blockade of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Established by the Navy Department in 1862, the West Gulf Blockading Squadron operated from St. Andrews Bay (Panama City), Florida to the Rio Grande River. As with the Navy’s blockade squadrons operating in the Atlantic, the mission of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron was to cripple the South’s economy by halting imports and disrupting cotton exports, the South’s main source of hard currency. The blockade also limited transportation within the South and participated in combined operations with Union land forces.

The history of the squadron comprises myriad parts and players, deployed in a variety of missions across the thousand-mile-wide Western Theater. From disorganized beginnings, the squadron’s leaders and sailors had to overcome setbacks, unfulfilled expectations, and lost opportunities. Browning masterfully captures the many variables that influenced the strategic choices of Navy commanders as they both doggedly pursued unchanging long-term goals as well as improvised and reacted to short-term opportunities.

Notable among its leaders was David Glasgow Farragut, believed by many to be America’s greatest naval hero, who led the squadron through most of the war and the climactic Battle of Mobile Bay. Under his legendary leadership, the squadron not only sealed Confederate sea ports, but also made feints and thrusts up the Mississippi River as far north as Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Knowing the Navy’s role in isolating the Confederate economy and preventing the movement of troops and supplies within the South is crucial to understanding of the outcomes of the Civil War, as well as the importance of naval power in military conflicts. With thirty-five maps and illustrations, Lincoln’s Trident expounds upon an essential part of the Civil War as well as naval and American history.
 

Insightful and dramatic, Lured by the American Dream is the untold story of how Filipino servicepersons overcame tradition and hierarchy in their quest for dignity.

An analytical study of naval policy, expansion, and maritime strategy in the formative Jacksonian era.

The 1830s is an overlooked period in American naval history and is usually overshadowed by the more dramatic War of 1812 and the Civil War. Nevertheless, the personnel, operations, technologies, policies, and vision of the Navy of that era, which was emerging from the “Age of Sail,” are important components of its evolution, setting it on the long path to its status as a global maritime power. On Wide Seas: The US Navy in the Jacksonian Era details the ways in which the US Navy transformed from an antiquated arm of the nation’s military infrastructure into a more dynamic and effective force that was soon to play a pivotal role in a number of national and international conflicts.

By Andrew Jackson’s inauguration in 1829, the Navy had engaged with two major powers, defended American shipping, conducted antipiracy operations, and provided a substantive, long-term overseas presence. The Navy began to transform during Jackson’s administration due in part to the policies of the administration and to the emerging officer corps, which sought to professionalize its own ranks, modernize the platforms on which it sailed, and define its own role within national affairs and in the broader global maritime commons. Jackson had built his reputation as a soldier, but he quickly recognized as president the necessity for a navy that could foster his policies. To expand American commerce, he needed a navy that could defend shipping as well as conduct punitive raids or deterrence missions.

Jackson developed a clear, concise naval strategy that policymakers and officers alike could seize and execute. He also provided a vision for the Navy, interceded to resolve naval disciplinary challenges, and directed naval operations. Also, given Jackson’s own politics, junior officers were emboldened by the populist era to challenge traditional, conservative thinking. They carried out a collective vision that coincided with the national literary movement that recognized America’s future would rely upon the Navy.
 

Illuminates the early American period in the upper Caribbean

Scourge of the Caribbean explores the mysterious and dramatic life and career of Charles E. Hawkins, a relatively unknown naval figure in early national America. Hawkins’s action-packed life at sea in his brief but accomplished career reveals much about an era when the rules of the maritime world, especially in the Caribbean, were in flux. For the US Navy and its commanders, the Caribbean presented an untold number of ambiguities: revolutionary juntas, privateering, piracy, and deadly disease, all within some of the most beautiful landscapes and waterscapes on earth.

Hawkins, from a well-connected family, took to the sea as a midshipman in the US Navy. Stalled promotion, economic setbacks, and blunted opportunities stymied the young officer, but ambition, combined with varied experiences and maritime pursuits, presented other prospects. At a time when individual agency mattered most, Hawkins stepped outside traditional boundaries of conduct on numerous occasions. Hawkins followed a mentor into the Mexican navy and became the most successful and feared raider of Spanish ships, earning the sobriquet “scourge” because of his raids along Cuba’s northern coast. In 1835, Hawkins joined the Texas independence movement against Mexico. Within the historical narrative are lurid accounts of adultery, affairs of honor, a bloody assassination, and complicated maritime legal battles. Based on prodigious research, this lively tale will appeal to those interested in maritime and early American history and the upper Caribbean in the Age of Sail.

A revealing study on the little-known and misunderstood provincial navies established by North American British colonists.

In The First Fleets, Benjamin C. Schaffer reveals how, contrary to widespread beliefs, the American colonies had a long tradition of independent naval defense decades before the Revolution. He demonstrates that Anglo-American governments established and maintained significant provincial naval forces and that the history of provincial navies illuminates broader aspects of colonial history and the colonies’ ultimate break with the British Crown.

Based on meticulous research, Schaffer recounts the sea-borne threats that American colonies faced from the French, Spanish, pirates, and others. He reviews colonial governance and the relationships between colonial governments and Great Britain. Highlighting Britain’s scant naval power in North America, Schaffer demonstrates how the vulnerable coastal colonies undertook their own self-defense.

Schaffer’s readable study offers many fascinating episodes from colonial history. Establishing a navy was controversial in pacifist-minded, Quaker-dominated Pennsylvania. South Carolina deployed its scout-boat navy to pursue enslaved Africans who fled colonial capture. The first paper money issued in North America was an initiative to pay for a naval expedition against French Quebec in 1690. These and other episodes show the intimate connection between these little-known provincial navies and the major sociopolitical developments of their day.

The First Fleets will be of great interest to historians and readers of early American history, particularly colonial maritime and naval activities. Readers interested in the political and military dynamics of pre-Revolutionary America, as well as enthusiasts of naval history and maritime trade, will find The First Fleets both a valuable resource and an engrossing narrative.

How carrier-based air power helped define victory in the first hot war of the Cold War.

In The Naval Air War in Korea, Richard P. Hallion offers a compelling and authoritative account of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps air campaign during the Korean War, a conflict that marked a pivotal transition in the history of military aviation. Through meticulous research and engaging narrative, Hallion examines how carrier-based air power became a decisive factor in supporting United Nations forces across the Korean Peninsula.

From the desperate defense of the Pusan Perimeter and the dramatic Inchon landing to interdiction strikes, close air support missions, and air superiority operations, naval aviators demonstrated extraordinary adaptability in a rapidly changing battlefield environment. The conflict also witnessed the evolution of aviation technology as propeller-driven aircraft served alongside emerging jet fighters, foreshadowing the future of modern air warfare.

Hallion highlights the courage, innovation, and operational effectiveness of Navy and Marine pilots who flew from aircraft carriers positioned off Korea's coasts, projecting combat power far beyond the reach of ground forces. Beyond recounting key battles and campaigns, he explores the strategic lessons learned from the war and their lasting influence on American naval doctrine and Cold War military planning.

A valuable resource for historians, aviation enthusiasts, and students of military strategy, this volume illuminates the crucial role of naval air power in shaping the outcome and legacy of the Korean War.