The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness Naval Battles: Graphic Eyewitness Accounts of History's Key Naval Conflicts, from Salamis to the Gulf War - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786712384 ISBN 13: 9780786712380

Publisher: Carroll & Graf, 2003

Synopsis

From the Battle of Salamis in 378 B.C. to crucial operations in the 1991 Gulf War, this mammoth volume offers first-hand accounts by the officers and crew who manned the galleys, sailing ships, ironclads, dreadnoughts, submarines, and flat tops in the world’s most famous battles at sea. With illustrations, diagrams, maps, and drama, these pieces record the tactics, setbacks, perils, defeats, and victories that have etched in our memory the names of naval heroes like John Paul Jones, who fathered the American navy; the gloriously celebrated Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson who proved that Britannia ruled the waves; “the sea wolf” Thomas Cochrane ; Captain Isaac Hull, the commander of “Old Ironsides”; David Farragut, who famously took the Union navy to victory in Mobile Bay during the American Civil War; and Commodore George Dewey, who effectively defeated the Spanish fleet in the 1898 Battle of Manila Bay. Eyewitness testimony records unforgettable moments in some of the most crucial encounters at sea during the twentieth century, most epically in the Pacific theater of World War II—at Guadalcanal, in the Battle of Midway, and momentously in the D-day landings at Normandy. Throughout, this exciting volume brings three millennia of naval history to life.

About this title

From Booklist:

This stout Mammoth series entry presents eyewitness accounts of great naval battles and campaigns, clear context-setting narrative passages, illustrations of ships typical of those engaged in each battle or campaign, and maps of the battles' and campaigns' areas and maneuvers. Here are reports of the close-quarters galley actions of the ancient encounters at Salamis, Actium, and Lepanto, as well as the almost equally close-quarters climaxes of clashes during the early modern days of sail, including the great Napoleonic fleet engagements through Trafalgar. Moving to postsail battles, the World War I fighting and retrieval of the dead at Jutland, the deadly submarine warfare of both world wars, and, via the experiences of a British sailor trapped below decks in a damaged destroyer, the Falklands conflict are covered. The ships, the shipmates, the sea, and the enemy are always vividly presented, making this a grand book to soak up before diving into Master and Commander, the big-deal movie based on one of the late Patrick O'Brien's best-selling salt operas, at the cineplex. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Carroll & Graf
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0786712384
• ISBN 13: 9780786712380
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544
• Editor: Lawrence Richard Russell