A Short History of the Civil War at Sea.

By Spencer C. Tucker. The American Crisis Series: Books on the Civil War Era, No. 5. (Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 2002. Pp. [xiv], 188. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 0-8420-2868-4; cloth, $60.00, ISBN 0-8420-2867-6.)

This is a "niche book": a well-written, interesting, and brief account of a subfield of Civil War history that has too often received scant attention by specialists. As the title implies, the book is about "blue-water" operations; in contrast to the usual emphasis on inland riverine operations, Tucker maintains that "the war at sea was immensely important in deciding the outcome" (p. xi). In addition, some of the naval innovations of the war stressed by Tucker are the first ironclad vessels, submarines, and Dahlgren guns; new types of mines (then called torpedoes); and steam-powered ships with armored turrets and the world's first screw propellers.

Both sides started the war with rather little in naval equipage, but the South--as in most things--had much less. Both sides, however, managed to build their forces quite impressively: the South mainly by foreign purchases, the North by manufacturing. Within eight months after the start of the war, the U.S. Navy had 135 ships, and by the end of 1864 it had 671: 113 screw-propelled steamers, 2 paddle-wheel steamers, 323 other steamers, 71 ironclads, and 112 various sailing vessels, which made the U.S. Navy the world's second largest, behind only that of Great Britain. Tucker points out that a significant number of African Americans served aboard Union ships--some 24,000 of them, according to one estimate, comprising about 16 percent of all Federal naval personnel. Also, along with the first U.S. Navy hospital ships, the Civil War witnessed increasing efforts to provide religious ministry to sailors, though Tucker gives too little attention to this crucial aspect of the "new military history."

Perhaps one of the greatest boons from which the South profited was that many capable former U.S. Navy officers sided with it. As Tucker details, "In the spring of 1861 there were 571 officers in the U.S. Navy (captains, commanders, and lieutenants). Of these, 253 (44.3 percent) were born in the South and one-half (126) resigned to go with the Confederacy" (p. 9). And some of these men were very fine officers, especially Raphael Semmes and John McIntosh Kell. The Confederates scored their greatest blue-water successes in commerce raiding and blockade running. The successful (though ill-fated) submarine C.S.S. Hunley was a profoundly important harbinger for latter-day naval operations, but Tucker' s coverage of this vessel is disappointingly brief, possibly luring readers to other works that provide more detail. The Union, too, experimented with submarines, but they did not take to the sea during the Civil War.

HERMAN HATTAWAY
University of Missouri-Kansas City