Ironclads and Big Guns of the Confederacy: The Journal and Letters of John M. Brooke.

Edited by George M. Brooke Jr. Studies in Maritime History. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, c. 2002. Pp. [xviii], 257. $39.95, ISBN 1-57003-418-4.)

While the published dimes of several Confederate War Department insiders have been long available to historians, precious few primary sources reveal details about persons and affairs in the Confederate Navy Department. This edited version of the journal and letters of Lieutenant John Mercer Brooke goes a long way toward balancing the scales. The Brooke papers have been in the possession of his grandson, George M. Brooke Jr., emeritus professor of history at Virginia Military Institute, where John Brooke also taught following the Civil War. George Brooke mined his grandfather's papers for his biography John M. Brooke, Naval Scientist and Educator (Charlottesville, 1980), and he has given some other historians (including this reviewer) access to the papers.

Considered by contemporaries to possess one of the Confederacy's outstanding scientific minds, John Mercer Brooke was a career naval officer who served the entire war in Richmond, including two years in charge of the Office of Ordnance and Hydrography. Throughout the war Brooke wrote revealing letters to his frail wife, Lizzie, from whom he was physically separated, as well as writing in his journal and corresponding with other Confederate naval figures.

Much of the material in Ironclads and Big Guns of the Confederacy reiterates details available in Brooke's biography. Still, it is revealing to read the full text of journal entries and letters about such familiar issues as the feud between Brooke and naval constructor John L. Porter over the design of the CSS Virginia (Merrimac). Confessing that the feud made him "sick" of the Virginia (p. 95) and of shipbuilding, Brooke directed his energies to the development and testing of heavy guns, especially the banded rifled guns that bear his name. Details of this work fill the pages of the book.

The journal and letters also contain much unexpected material, especially in letters written to Brooke. Of particular value to new research on Confederate submarine warfare are letters from William G. Cheeney, who experimented with a submarine in the James River in 1861-62. Brooke also wrote in November 1862 that Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory was "desirous of having some experiments made in firing guns under water" (p. 118).

While Brooke did complain about "old fogyism" (p. 96) in the Navy Department (at least until he won promotion) and incompetence in Confederate government, readers should not expect much gossip or political intrigue. In contrast, the enormous detail about ordnance in the book's second half will be as uninteresting to the general reader as it is riveting to the naval specialist. Editor Brooke's annotations identify people and places, but they are sometimes frustratingly silent regarding questions raised by the text. Despite these shortcomings, the journals and letters of John M. Brooke live up to the expectations of those historians who have longed to see them more widely available.

JOHN M. COSKI

The Museum of the Confederacy