A History of the Confederate Navy


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Pushing aside the long-held belief that the answers went up in flames when the Confederate Navy archives were torched during the evacuation of Richmond, Luraghi combed fifty archives in four countries and uncovered information that shattered prevailing myths about that service's contributions.







Navy Gray


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By Richard T. Frey.




Four Years in the Confederate Navy


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John Low came to America from England in 1856 at the suggestion of his uncle, Andrew Low, a prosperous Savannah- Liverpool businessman. Just as he established himself in nautical businesses in Savannah the Civil War broke out. Low was ordered to England to help in the undercover task of buying, building, and convoying warships to the South. William Stanley Hoole traces Low's adventures in the service of the Confederacy. Low aided in the acquisition and delivery of the ironclad Fingal and the Florida. He served with Admiral Semmes aboard the famed raider Alabama and was involved in the capture, commissioning, voyage, and detention of the Tuscaloosa. His final task was to deliver the Ajax in the last days of the war.




War on the Waters


Book Description

Although previously undervalued for their strategic impact because they represented only a small percentage of total forces, the Union and Confederate navies were crucial to the outcome of the Civil War. In War on the Waters, James M. McPherson has crafted an enlightening, at times harrowing, and ultimately thrilling account of the war's naval campaigns and their military leaders. McPherson recounts how the Union navy's blockade of the Confederate coast, leaky as a sieve in the war's early months, became increasingly effective as it choked off vital imports and exports. Meanwhile, the Confederate navy, dwarfed by its giant adversary, demonstrated daring and military innovation. Commerce raiders sank Union ships and drove the American merchant marine from the high seas. Southern ironclads sent several Union warships to the bottom, naval mines sank many more, and the Confederates deployed the world's first submarine to sink an enemy vessel. But in the end, it was the Union navy that won some of the war's most important strategic victories--as an essential partner to the army on the ground at Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, Mobile Bay, and Fort Fisher, and all by itself at Port Royal, Fort Henry, New Orleans, and Memphis.













The Civil War at Sea


Book Description

Continuing in the vein of the Lincoln-prize winning Lincoln and His Admirals, acclaimed naval historian Craig L. Symonds presents an operational history of the Civil War navies - both Union and Confederate - in this concise volume. Illuminating how various aspects of the naval engagement influenced the trajectory of the war as a whole, The Civil War at Sea adds to our understanding of America's great national conflict. Both the North and the South developed and deployed hundreds of warships between 1861 and 1865. Because the Civil War coincided with a revolution in naval techonology, the development and character of warfare at sea from 1861-1865 was dramatic and unprecedented. Rather than a simple chronology of the war at sea, Symonds addresses the story of the naval war topically, from the dramatic transformation wrought by changes in technology to the establishment, management, and impact of blockade. He also offers critical assessments of principal figures in the naval war, from the opposing secretaries of the navy to leading operational commanders such as David Glasgow Farragut and Raphael Semmes. Symonds brings his expertise and knowledge of military and technological history to bear in this essential exploration of American naval engagement throughout the Civil War.




The U.S. Navy


Book Description

This brisk narrative charts the history of the United States Navy from its birth during the American Revolution through its emergence as a global power amid the world wars of the twentieth century and finally to its current role as a superpower in the twenty-first century.