Academy on the James: The Confederate Naval School.

Academy on the James: The Confederate Naval School. By R. Thomas Campbell. (Shippensburg, Pa.: Burd Street Press, c. 1998. Pp. xii, 283. $39.95, ISBN 1-57249-130-2.)

In March 1861 the new Confederate States of America authorized the establishment of a school to educate young naval officers. R. Thomas Campbell rejects criticism that the naval school represented a dissipation of resources that could have been used more effectively elsewhere. Instead, he argues that it was a natural action for leaders confident that southern independence was inevitable and that the new nation would need trained naval leaders.

From the start of the Civil War young men were taken into the Confederate States Navy as midshipman and dispersed to ships and shore stations all over the South. Establishing the school took two years, and it was not until July 1863 that 56 of the Confederacy's 106 midshipmen received orders to report to the training ship Patrick Henry, a converted passenger steamer stationed at Drewry's Bluff on the James River below Richmond. Over the next twenty months the midshipmen's studies were often interrupted by calls to active service, usually manning shore batteries when Union gunboats moved up the James River but sometimes on detached service such as when eight midshipmen traveled overland to New Bern, North Carolina, to participate in the capture of the USS Underwriter in February 1864.

Campbell, author of four volumes; on Confederate naval forces, has thoroughly researched this account, but his presentation of this material does the school less than complete justice. Separate chapters describing formation of the institution, its faculty, the Patrick Henry, and daily life at Drewry's Bluff are followed by four chapters narrating the activities of school personnel on detached duty. Campbell relies heavily on long extracts from primary sources to tell his story. Many are interesting--those from the journal of Midshipman Hubbard T. Minor, for example--but the large number of block quotations gives the entire work an anecdotal style that breaks the narrative flow and can become annoying. The most egregious example of relying on quoted material is Campbell's final chapter, which describes the defense of the Confederate treasury by midshipmen while government officials fled Richmond in the final days of the Confederacy. After a single-page introduction, Campbell completes the chapter with a thirteen-page quotation from William H. Parker's Recollections of a Naval Officer (New York, 1883).

Numerous illustrations and maps complement the text, and 100 pages of appendixes--lists of midshipmen appointed to the school, assigned to the Patrick Henry, and serving overseas; extracts from a "log" kept by Midshipman Clarence Cary in late 1864; and facsimile reproductions of school publications and parts of textbooks written by Parker--augment 155 pages of text and make available much useful information. Somewhat flawed by a lack of analysis, the work is a useful introduction to the history of a little-known aspect of the Confederacy.

JAMES C. BRADFORD

Texas A&M University