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The History of Our Navy From its Origin to the Present Day 1775 to 1897 V4
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
636 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2005
About the author
John Randolph Spears
82 books3 followersJohn Randolph Spears was an American author and journalist.
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January 4, 2013
This is a very comprehensive history. Mr. Spears is obviously prejudiced about his subject. His comments about how it was naval victories that solidified the notion of 'nation' for Americans is probably accurate. When the nation was young, it would have been important to give the people something to crow about and the Navy gave it to them. John Paul Jones was the first, then during the War of 1812, the Constitution and others won battles on the seas. These victories were important to give Americans a feeling of independence and freedom from England and Europe. In fact the Naval victories during the Civil War helped defer the European powers from entering the war or otherwise supporting the South.
Mr Spears does give quite a lot of information about who was commanding the ships and descriptions of the battles. A lot of the battles were incomprehensible to me as I am not conversant with naval lingo. My interest in the battles was in the descriptions of the injury the ships suffered and still floated. It is so destructive of the ships, but the need to do as much harm to the enemy as possible, made burning the ships imperative.
Mr Spears did not pull any punches in the stories he told. He likened the British to those who burned and library in Alexandria and then commended those responsible. During the Spanish-American War there was some questionable actions by a captain and Mr. Spears gives the facts as best he could find them. When on of the presiding officers and the court martial did not answer his question, he told of it. Mr Spears was just trying to get it right and he did not want to leave any stone unturned.
This was not the exact book I read, but close enough.
Mr Spears does give quite a lot of information about who was commanding the ships and descriptions of the battles. A lot of the battles were incomprehensible to me as I am not conversant with naval lingo. My interest in the battles was in the descriptions of the injury the ships suffered and still floated. It is so destructive of the ships, but the need to do as much harm to the enemy as possible, made burning the ships imperative.
Mr Spears did not pull any punches in the stories he told. He likened the British to those who burned and library in Alexandria and then commended those responsible. During the Spanish-American War there was some questionable actions by a captain and Mr. Spears gives the facts as best he could find them. When on of the presiding officers and the court martial did not answer his question, he told of it. Mr Spears was just trying to get it right and he did not want to leave any stone unturned.
This was not the exact book I read, but close enough.
Displaying 1 of 1 review