Blue & Gray at Sea: Naval Memoirs of the Civil War

by Brian M. Thomsen (Editor)

The Civil War immediately calls to mind images of battlefields and cavalry ¿ but not all of the fighting took place on dry land. Yankees and Rebs alike fought on the high seas as well.

Blue & Gray At Sea is their story.

Taken from the memoirs of such veterans as Union Admirals Porter and Dewey, and Confederate Officers James Morris Morgan and James I. Waddell, Blue & Gray At Sea provides a glimpse into the often neglected naval campaigns of the Civil War with tales of Ironclads and blockade runners and the advent of submarining, as well as Incidences Involving no less than Jefferson Davis and his family, and Lincoln's own master of the high seas David Farragut.

Genres: Civil War

448 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2003

About the author

Brian Thomsen was a founding editor of the Questar Science Fiction line of books, and served as managing fiction editor at TSR, Inc.; he also wrote over 30 short stories, and collaborated with Julius Schwartz on Schwartz's autobiography. He also worked as the publisher for TSR's Periodicals Department at one point. He was a consulting editor at Tor Books; as an author he was a Hugo Award nominee.

He died on September 21, 2008, at his home in Brooklyn at the age of 49. He was survived by his wife, Donna.

Reviews

[Mark]

A surprisingly light read, considering that this is an anthology of memoirs and primary sources from the Civil War, focusing on the naval side of the conflict. Due to its nature, quality is uneven; David D. Porter's flowery writing style and sometimes loose acquaintance with accuracy test the reader's patience, and the excerpts from Arthur Sinclair's "Two Years on the Alabama" are so eccentric in style that they become difficult to slog through. On the other hand, the excerpts by (later) Admiral George Dewey are smooth and clear, perhaps the best-written of all the memoirs anthologized.



A good read for someone who might want to get the "I was there" flavor without obtaining and going through the full collection of primary sources.