International Journal of Naval History

U.S. Naval Historical Center

Fellowships, 2003-2004.

Hayes Fellowship: The Director of Naval History selected William Leeman a Ph.D candidate at Boston University, Boston, MA, to receive the $10,000 Rear Admiral John D. Hayes Predoctoral Fellowship in U.S. Naval History for 2003-2004.  Mr. Leeman is preparing a doctoral dissertation entitled “The Naval Academy Debate: Naval Education and National Character in the Early United States, 1775-1845.”  Leeman intends to study the evolution of proposals for creation of a naval school for officers from the earliest days of the War for Independence to 1845 when the U.S. Naval Academy was established. 

Hooper Grants: TwoVice Admiral Edwin B. Hooper Research Grants in U.S. Naval History ($2,500 each) were selected by the Director of Naval History for 2003-2004.  Dr. David C. Skaggs is a Professor Emeritus of Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, and the author of numerous published works on the U.S. Navy in the War of 1812. Dr. Skaggs will employ his Hooper Grant to support a book project entitled “Oliver Hazard Perry: Honor, Valor, and Patriotism in the Early U.S. Navy.”  The second recipient, Dr. Kevin J. Weddle, is a professor of strategy at the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA.  He plans to complete a book on Samuel Francis Du Pont, one of the most gifted Union naval officers at the start of the Civil War and later commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron off Charleston.

Morison Scholarship: The Director of Naval History selected Commander Jeffrey R. Macris, USN, to receive the $5,000 Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Scholarship, which is open to serving officers of the Navy and Marine Corps who are pursuing a graduate degree in history or a related field. Commander Macris, currently an historical instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy, is enrolled in a Ph.D program at Johns Hopkins University. His studies will focus on the U.S. Navy’s presence in the Persian Gulf prior to Operation Desert Storm.

For information on the Naval Historical Center’s grant, scholarship, and fellowship programs, visit www.history.navy.mil

New Publications

The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History, Vol. III, 1814–1815, Chesapeake Bay, Northern Lakes, and Pacific Ocean, by Michael J. Crawford, ed., 2002. GPO Stock No.    008-046-00200-2, $70.00, ISBN: 0-16-051224-7 (hard cover).

This work is the third volume of the Naval Historical Center’s projected four- volume documentary history of the naval and maritime aspects of the War of 1812. The volume focuses on the Chesapeake Bay, northern Great Lakes, and Pacific Ocean theaters of operation during the last two years of the war. Letters, reports, and other documents concerning Commodore Joshua Barney’s actions during the Battle of Bladensburg, the critical Battle of Lake Champlain, and the epic fight of Essex with Royal Navy warships off Valparaiso, Chile, as well as introductory essays by NHC historians, are presented in this comprehensive volume.

Sea Raiders of the American Revolution: The Continental Navy in European Waters, by E. Gordon Bowen-Hassell, Dennis M. Conrad, and Mark L. Hayes, 2003. GPO Stock No. 008-046-00202-9, $17.00. ISBN: 0-16-051400-2 (soft cover).

This lavishly illustrated booklet studies the lives and careers of three Revolutionary war sea captains, Lambert Wickes, Gustavus Conyngham, and John Paul Jones, whose exploits defined the U.S. Navy during the Revolutionary War. These naval leaders, against great odds, brought the fight to the powerful Royal Navy. This booklet provides examples to today’s sailors of the enduring values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment. The reader will also learn how the Continental Navy functioned and how the average sailor coped with shipboard life during the Revolution.

Long Passage to Korea: Black Sailors and the Integration of the U.S. Navy, by Bernard C. Nalty. In The U.S. Navy and the Korean War series, 2003. GPO Stock No. 008-046-0, $8.50, ISBN: 0-16-051355-3 (soft cover).

The Center’s latest monograph commemorating the Korean War traces the story of racial integration in the U.S. Navy. In the American Revolution, black sailors were part of every warship crew, but by the end of World War II, African Americans were restricted for the most part to the Steward’s branch.  A few years later in Korea, however, black and white Sailors and Marines were fighting side by side once again. In that war African Americans piloted fighters, manned guns, and fought their way up and down the frigid hills of North Korea. This booklet recounts the African American struggle to achieve equal treatment and opportunity in the Navy, especially during and after the Second World War. Necessities of war, changes in American society, politics and legislation, and the black press persuaded the Navy to amend its racial policies, opening enlisted ratings and the general line officer corps to African Americans.

Cordon of Steel: The U.S. Navy and the Cuban Missile Crisis, by Curtis A. Utz. No. 1 in The U.S. Navy in the Modern World series, 2003. GPO Stock No. 008-046-00157-0, $8.50, ISBN: 0-945274-23-8 (soft cover).

The Naval Historical Center has reissued this monograph, which first appeared in 1993, in relation to the fortieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In that confrontation, the United States and the Soviet Union came as close as they ever would to global war. During this dramatic and historic event, the U.S. Navy demonstrated its value for resolving international crises. By forcefully employing naval forces, President John F. Kennedy was able to prevent the development of Fidel Castro’s Cuba as an offensive bastion and to ensure the withdrawal of Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles from the island. The illustrated booklet features 60 photographs, maps, charts, and Navy art.

The Washington Navy Yard: An Illustrated History, by Edward J. Marolda. GPO Stock No. 008-046-00191-0, $20.00, ISBN: 0-16-050104-0 (soft cover).

First published in 1999, this reissued work highlights the accomplishments of the Navy’s oldest shore establishment still in operation, from its beginnings 203 years ago as a shipyard for the new warships of a fledgling Navy, to the end of the 20^th century. Associated with American presidents, foreign kings and queens, ambassadors, and legendary naval leaders, the Navy Yard was witness to the evolution of the country from a small republic into a nation of enormous political, economic, and military power. It was also home to tens of thousands of American workers manufacturing weapons for the fleet, including the 14-inch and 16-inch guns that armed the Navy’s battleships in World Wars I and II and the Cold War.

Each of these works identified above can be purchased through the Government Printing Office website: http://bookstore.gpo.gov

The U.S. Navy in the Vietnam War: An Illustrated History, by Edward J. Marolda, Brassey’s Publishers, 2002, $39.95, ISBN: 1-57488-351-8 (hard cover). [Reprint]

Initially published by the Naval Historical Center in 1994 as By Sea, Air, and Land: An Illustrated History of the U.S. Navy and the War in Southeast Asia, this new issue presents over 500 photographs, maps, charts, and combat art works and a narrative that relates the dramatic story of the U.S. Navy’s 25-year involvement in the struggle for Indochina. From 1950, when U.S. naval vessels delivered planes and river craft to French forces fighting Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh, to 1975, when helicopters and ships of the U.S. Seventh Fleet evacuated the last Americans from Saigon, the U.S. Navy was there. The handsome book illuminates the wartime experience of Navy men and women serving in aircraft carriers, destroyers, and hospital ships on the stormy South China Sea, on the muddy tributaries of the Mekong River, and in the skies over Vietnam and Laos.