Chronicles: The eMagazine of History

The Tragedy of the Sultana: Keeping the Memory AliveRadar and the Sinking of the Bismark

The Battle of Jutland:The Longest Naval Battle of World War I

The eMagazine of Hiory

Vol. 1 No. 5September, 2010

Chronicles is sponsored byFireship Press, LLC

Box 68412Tucson, AZ 85737

www.Chronicles.us.comwww.FireshipPress.com

Phone: 520-360-6228Fax: 800-878-4410

[email protected]

CHRONICLES EDITORBarbara Marriott

[email protected]

SENIOR EDITORTom Grundner

[email protected]

Copyright © 2010 - Fireship Press, All Rights Reserved

www.FireshipPress.com

Contents

FROM THE EDITOR

September 2010 1

FEATURE ARTICLES

The Tragedy of the Sultana:Keeping the Memory Alive by Louis Intres 2

Radar and the Sinking of the Bismark by Corbin Williamson 5

The Battle of Jutland:The Longest Naval Battle of World War I by Dwight Jon Zimmerman 8

BOOK REVIEWS

Astrodene on Booksby David Hayes 10

NEW AND NOTABLE

The de Subermore Mystery Seriesby David Glenn 13

THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM:An Alphonso Clay Mystery of the Civil Warby Jack Martin 14

THE GRAY MAIDEN: Three Thousand Yearsin the Life of a Swordby Arthur Howden Smith

FULTONʼS STEAM FRIGATE: The Secret Weapon to End the War of 1812by Howard Chapelle

From the Editor...

Chronicles • September, 2010 • Vol 1, No 5

- 1 - www.FireshipPress.com - 1 -

! Our philosophy at Chronicles is to make available interesting his-torical articles in a fresh, easy to read format. After five months of publication we tweaked a few things which we believe will make the magazine more readable. First of all we changed from a monthly to a quarterly publication. This gives us the opportunity to offer longer arti-cles and a magazine with more diversity and larger content. We also decided to move the brief bios of our authors from this column to the end of their article. Itʼs like a personal introduction to the writer after he or she has told the story" This month our issue is all at sea. In The Tragedy of the Sultana: Keeping the Memory Alive; Louis Intres dips back to the Civil War to bring us the facts of a tragedy that occurred on the Mississippi River. Corbin Williamsonʼs article, Radar and the Sinking of the Bismark il-lustrates how in World War II, a new technology produced undiscov-ered pros and cons. Dwight Jon Zimmerman appears again in this is-sue of Chronicles. The Battle of Jutland: The longest naval battle of World War I, is a far cry from his descriptive article on the Colt rifle, but it still packs the same kind of punch with interesting and little known facts. Since this magazine is for you, please let us know how we can make it more interesting and user friendly. E-mail your comments and sug-gestions to [email protected].

Barbara Marriott

More and more Fireship Pressbooks are being converted

to the Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle.Be sure to check yourfavorite ebook store

! The solitude of the darkness was bro-ken only by the clapping of the riverʼs waves, as they broke over the inadequate levies on the Arkansas side of the river. The great Mississippi could sometimes reach forty miles in width after torrential rains like those falling recently in the up-per and middle river-valley corridor. The steamer, heavily laden with human cargo, labored against the current, pulling every ounce of energy from its patched boilers. Proper repairs to the leaking boilers had been delayed by the opportunity of a cash bounty, offered to the boatʼs owners for transport of soldiers to their northern home at the end of the Civil War.

! The explosion, said to have been heard for thirty miles, threw hundreds of men, like so many matchsticks, into the churning waters of the Mississippi River. The current, flowing at twice its normal speed, had developed whirlpools that no one could withstand by simply clutching broken pieces of debris from the ship. While many were killed instantly by the initial blast, many more died as the ship burned down to the water line, casting two and one-half thousand souls into the dark swirling waters of the river. Shrap-nel, from the explosion, concussion, burns, exposure and drowning, would take over 1800 lives that night, resulting in the greatest loss-of-life shipwreck in



The Tragedy of the Sultana:Keeping the Memory Alive

by Louis Intres

American history. It was 2:00 am, on the morning of April 27, 1865, barely two weeks after the signing at Appomattox, to end the Civil War. The story of the Sul-tana, as recorded by author Jerry Potter, was one of greed, mismanagement and carelessness, but mostly greed. ! The passenger list of the twin paddle-wheeler exceeded 2500 people, including over 2000 Union soldiers returning to their homes from southern prisons at the end of the Civil War. Their experiences were of the most horrible kind. After sur-viving some of the greatest and bloodiest battles in the last years of the war, they were captured and ended the war in the two most infamous Confederate Prison Camps; Andersonville in Georgia, and Cahaba, in Alabama. Notice of their pending release and repatriation was the first hope many had felt in months.! The Sultana, a 260 foot wooden steamer had been built only a few years

earlier in Cincinnati. It had a capacity de-signed to carry 376 passengers and cargo in hold. On this trip, however, the ship would be filled to a density that any right-minded captain would have never pulled from the dock for fear of impending doom. One-third the length of the famous Titanic, which sailed only 47 years later, the Sultanaʼs 2500 passengers and its death list of over 1800, both exceeded the Titanicʼs. The young, but experienced, captain agreed with his co-owners that the promise of great profits far out-weighed the risk, which later proved to be irresponsible at best, and criminal in the minds of all who later judged the incident.! The prisoners, having survived battles like Gettysburg, Antietam, Fredericks-burg, Franklin, Chickamauga and Cold Mountain, had been held as captives for up to eighteen months in southern pris-ons. They were subjected to starvation, disease, whippings, beatings, exposure



The Sultana literally hours before its destruction.

to the elements, unsanitary conditions and murder. They came from prisons that had the highest mortality rates and worst conditions of the war in the south. The United States Government had offered ship owners $5.00 per soldier and $10.00 per officer to ferry them from Vicksburg, Mississippi to Cairo, Illinois where they would be released to find their way home. They were taken to Vicksburg by rail, a difficult transi-tion, in itself, for most were sick. They suf-fered from scurvy, malnu-trition, dysen-tery, infected wounds, and significant loss of weight and strength, re-quiring that many be car-ried aboard on stretchers. One bystander described them as “marching skeletons, accompanying the dead.”! The Sultanaʼs chief engineer had es-tablished the second of three boilers to have a leak coming from a bulging seam. He initially ruled the Sultana “unsafe” and refused to sign off on its ability to sail safely. He recommended a full and com-plete repair which would have been costly in time and money, possibly costing the loss of the government contract. Being overruled by the captain and pressed to sign off, he did so reluctantly and with comment for the record. A small, metal patch, across and over the stressed seam, was all that was implemented be-fore the deadly trip. On April 24th, 1865,

the Sultana pulled from the dock in Vicksburg. Spirits were high as the sol-diers realized they had survived the Great War, imprisonment, inhumane treatment and for most, abandonment of hope.! Heading upriver against the swollen Mississippi river, the Sultana labored at a much slower speed than usual. It stopped to take on supplies at Helena, Arkansas. The final picture taken of the ship shows

it slightly tilted and riding low in the water. Leaving He-lena, it pro-gressed against the rising Missis-sippi and the notorious snags, whirl-pools and cross currents it was known for. About seven miles past Memphis, Tennessee, at a turn in the river called

Hens and Chickens, the boilers of the Sultana exploded without warning. It was a true holocaust as described by those who survived. Unspeakable wailing and crying could be heard from those who could fight for their lives. Others, too weak to swim or grab debris, simply dis-appeared below the murky waters of the Mississippi. It took a while for the ship to burn completely, and sink along the Ar-kansas side of the river, at the little town of Marion. There are other stories of heroism, from passengers and witnesses who braved the currents to drag some to safety. In total, however, the tragedy was,



The Sultana Memorial at the Mount Olive Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.

and still is the greatest ship loss in Ameri-can history.! Most people know little of, or remem-ber the Sultana and the men and pas-sengers who went down that night in the Mississippi River. They have never been given their historic place as the last great loss of the Civil War. Newspapers, eager to forget the casualties of the Civil War were busy covering the recent assassina-tion of President Lincoln, Boothʼs death and the surrender of the great southern General Joe Johnston on April 26th. Few national papers gave the story more than a dayʼs mention. History has nearly con-signed the Sultana to the old dust bin, not worthy of remembrance. A nation, so in-tent on remembering its war participation and its heroes with icons, monuments, memorials and statues, has forgotten one of its greatest tragedies.! Within the next five years, beginning with 2010, our nation will celebrate the

150th anniversary of every incident relat-ing to the Civil War, beginning with the election of President Abraham Lincoln and the secession of South Carolina. Most will see the end of this great re-membrance, stretching five years until April 9, 2015, with the signing at Appo-mattox. There are some that refuse to al-low the story of the Sultana to die. Authors like Jerry Potter and Gene Sal-ecker have written excellent books about the tragedy. Norman Shaw and Pam Newhouse keep the memory alive by managing and coordinating the National Association for the Remembrance of the Sultana. It consists of a large number of descendants of those men of the Sultana who meet annually to keep their memory alive. Letʼs take the opportunity for the coming 150th anniversary of the Civil War to include the story of the Sultana, by learning about it and telling it to our de-scendants.



Louis Intres is a Ph.D. candidate at Arkansas State University. Growing up near the Arkansas River the Sultana story was part of his childhood. Now re-tired from a banking career he is pursuing his love of history and research. His philanthropic work has earned him numerous awards for his service to public education.

! In the early morning hours of May 19, 1941, the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen left their home port in northern Germany and set course for the Atlantic. These two ships sailed with the purpose of finding and sinking merchant ships in convoys bound for Great Britain. After learning of their departure, the Royal Navy devoted massive resources in ships, aircraft, and men to hunting, tracking, and sinking the Bismarck. During the operations in the days following the Bismarckʼs departure, the relatively new technology called RDF, Range and Detection Finding, would play a critical role in the efforts of the Royal Navy to sink the Bismarck. More com-monly referred to as radar, this device was beginning to change the way navies searched and fought at sea. The ten-dency with new technology in combat is to overvalue the contribution of the new

piece of equipment. To guard against this tendency, this article identifies several challenges faced by the British and Ger-mans in using radar at sea. The introduc-tion of radar made important changes in naval combat, but more as an evolution-ary adjustment than as a revolutionary break with the past.! A short summary of the hunt for the Bismarck will provide a foundation for gauging the role of radar. The Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were spotted off the Swedish coast and then in a Norwegian fjord on the way to the Atlantic. The Royal Navy deployed several groups of ships to monitor the entrances into the Atlantic, including the heavy cruisers Suffolk and Norfolk in the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland. The German ships passed through this strait and were spotted by the two British cruisers. While being followed by these two ships, the



Radar and theSinking of the

BismarckBy Corbin Williamson

Germans engaged and destroyed the battlecruiser Hood and damaged her consort, the battleship Prince of Wales. After successfully escaping the shadow-ing Suffolk and Norfolk, the Bismarck was again spotted on her way to the French coast for repairs. After being damaged by a British carrier air strike, the German battleship was overwhelmed and sunk by two more British battleships, Rodney and King George V, and their escorts.! When the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen entered the Denmark Strait head-ing southwest into the Atlantic, the Suffolk was also sailing southwest as a part of her patrol pattern. The Suffolk had re-cently received an upgraded search ra-dar, one of the most powerful currently in service with the Royal Navy. Suffolkʼs ra-dar could scan a 270 degree arc in front of the ship. However, the radar did not

cover the stern area and so when the German ships approached from the stern, the radarʼs blind spot, a British seaman with binoculars was the first to spot them. This incident shows that radar was best utilized in conjunction with other scouting tools, including the human eye, and was not a panacea to the challenges of scout-ing at sea.! After spotting the Bismarck, the Suf-folk guided the Norfolk into a shadowing position off the Bismarckʼs port side. While the Norfolk was moving into posi-tion, the Bismarck was able to move into gun range and opened fire on the Norfolk without effect. However, the shock of fir-ing the Bismarckʼs guns damaged the Bismarckʼs search radar, making the de-vice unusable for the rest of the voyage. Radar equipment was still a rather imma-ture technology and susceptible to break-



The Bismark in 1940

ing or mechanical failure when jolted or shaken. Since Prinz Eugenʼs radar was still functioning, the German heavy cruiser was placed in the lead in front of Bismarck. While this provided frontal ra-dar coverage for the German ships, the less heavily armed and armored Eugen was now in the lead, a more vulnerable position. To maintain radar coverage, the German admiral, Lutjens, was forced to adopt a less favorable cruising formation due to fragile radar equipment on the Bismarck. During the evening of May 24th, Suffolkʼs search radar was out of operation for repairs for over two hours. It would be sometime before German and British radar engineers worked out these “teething” issues.! Another critical area in which radar was a developing technology was the range at which radar could detect ships and aircraft. Suffolkʼs radar had a maxi-mum range of 24,000 yards, around 22 kilometers, and Suffolk generally main-tained a distance from Bismarck less than this maximum range. However, the Bis-marckʼs main battery of 15-inch guns could reach targets 37 kilometers away. Therefore, Suffolkʼs radar was most use-ful when visual conditions such as fog and clouds, the rule rather than the ex-ception in the North Atlantic, prevented Bismarckʼs crew from spotting Suffolk. On May 26th, when a British carrier airstrike was attempting to find the Bismarck, the aircraft accidentally attacked a shadowing British light cruiser, Sheffield, due to an identification error. The radar on board the strike aircraft detected the Sheffield first but was unable to detect the Bis-marck due to the limited range of the air-borne radar. The aircraft attacked the Sheffield, without success, since the Sheffield was the only contact on their radar.

! This incident highlights another limita-tion of radar, that it was difficult, if not im-possible, to identify a blip on a radar screen as friendly or enemy. More difficult still was the task of determining what type of ship and which specific ship had been detected without additional information. Radar was useful for detecting an enemy ship, but often visual identification was necessary before the identity of a contact could be verified. British and German seamen found that radar could be em-ployed more effectively when used in combination with other detection and identification systems, such as sonar and trained human observers. ! As a system operated by human be-ings, radar could be misused and misin-terpreted. This is not a difficulty unique to radar, but rather an observation that trained personnel with a system of checks are often necessary for the proper use of technology. When the British bat-tleship King George V engaged the Bis-marck in the final battle, the British radar operators did not provide accurate range data to the gunnery officer due to an error on their part. The operators did not take into account the decreasing range to the Bismarck caused by the movement of the British ship toward the German ship. The operators continued to search for range the German ship at ranges that were greater than appropriate, given the rate of closure between the two ships. This error was primarily the result of insufficient training; an understandable situation given the recent introduction of radar on Royal Navy warships.! On the other hand, when radar func-tioned properly, the equipment allowed the Suffolk and the Norfolk to track the German ships through the fog, snow, and rain of the Denmark Strait for over 24 hours. Radar enabled the British to es-



sentially close the Denmark Strait to German ships seeking to reach the Atlan-tic undetected. The British admiral com-manding the two British cruisers, Admiral Wake-Walker, concluded in his official re-port to the Admiralty, “This was, I fancy, the first occasion that R.D.F. [radar] had been used for shadowing and the su-preme value of it for this purpose cannot be over emphasized.” While radar was susceptible to the effects of weather (a snowstorm late on May 23rd caused false returns on Suffolkʼs radar), the device

was far more effective at penetrating fog, mist, and cloud than the human eye.! Further challenges lay ahead in the development of radar for naval purposes. Radar would later play a critical role in hunting German U-boats in the Atlantic and in intercepting carrier airstrikes in the Pacific. The hunt for the Bismarck illus-trates several of the difficulties encoun-tered in using radar early in World War II, while demonstrating the impressive ca-pabilities of this new tool in naval warfare.



Corbin Williamson is working on his Masterʼs degree at Texas Tech University. He has been interested in naval history for most of his life and is currently re-searching cooperation between the Royal Navy and the US Navy during World War II.

Sign up for your FREE subscription atwww.Chronicles.us.com

Finally!!Donʼt Miss a Single Issue of

CHRONICLESThe eMagazine of Hiory

! Kaiser Wilhelm II had long been jeal-ous of British sea power and wished to supplant the Royal Navy with Germanyʼs High Seas Fleet. Though the Royal Navy had more ships, Germanyʼs were more modern, with better armor, cannons and shells. A plan was developed to destroy the Royal Navy in stages beginning with a fleet action in spring 1916. That fleet action became the Battle of Jutland, in-volving 250 ships, including 44 battle

ships (28 British, 16 German), and about 100,000 men.! The British had cracked the German naval codes, so knew Vice Admiral Rein-hard Scheerʼs plan when the High Seas Fleet weighed anchor for the North Sea on May 31. Preceding the High Seas Fleet was a battlecruiser squadron com-manded by Vice Admiral Franz Hipper. What the Germans didnʼt know was that Admiral Sir John Jellicoe leading the



THE BATTLE OF JUTLANDThe Largest Naval Battle

of World War IBy Dwight Jon Zimmerman

British Grand Fleet and a fast battle-cruiser squadron led by Vice Admiral Sir David Beatty had left their ports a day earlier and were on a path to intercept the German fleets.

! The two battlecruiser squadrons clashed first, sighting each other at 3:31 P.M. on May 31. The effectiveness of German gunnery was an unpleasant shock to many of the British fleetʼs offi-cers. Two ships were soon sunk, and several others, including Beattyʼs flag-ship, damaged. In a comment that later became famous, Beatty said, “There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.” Hipperʼs squadron was soon joined by Sheerʼs fleet and Beatty turned around to lure the German ships within range of Jellicoʼs fleet, thus setting the stage for what was in effect a battle between tradition and technology.! In truth, the German performance thus far had confirmed claims made by Admi-

ral Jellicoe eight years earlier, in 1908. Appointed Controller of the Royal Navy that year, Jellicoe was responsible for su-perintending the departments that built, fitted out, and repaired warships. Jellicoe

kept close tabs on the Imperial German Navy and deduced that the Germans, unhampered by centuries of tradition, had made great strides in long-range gunnery, tactics, and surface ship design. Though German big gun caliber was smaller, they had developed first-class range finder and aiming systems, and long-range armor-piercing shells. They had also made great strides in night fighting ac-tions. And, even though both sides used armor plating manufactured by the Ger-man steel firm of Krupp, a point of some controversy when this became known, the hulls of the German warships was ac-tually superior in both the thickness and design of armor plating and watertight compartments. Then, there was the



Admiral John Jellicoe Admiral Reinhard Scheer British Commander German Commander

matter of the U-boat, whose full impor-tance wouldnʼt be recognized until after the war had begun. In addition to alerting his superiors, Jellicoe had tried to use his authority to make changes, but his term of Controller expired before he could im-plement them, and his successor chose not to follow through.! So, with dusk soon to come, Admiral Jellicoe faced a situation where his fleet, upon which the fate of his country rested, would have to soon fight at night, a condi-tion for which it had not been trained, against a surface fleet technologically su-perior to his, with the potential of attack by U-boats whose danger was now fully known. Well aware that the fate of Britain rode in the success or failure of his fleet, Jellicoe, as Captain Chatfield who partici-pated in the battle later commented, “was not prepared to take immeasurable risks with [his fleet].” Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty put it even more succinctly, “[Jellicoe] could have lost the war in an afternoon.”! The fleets met at 7:15 P.M. Jellicoe succeeded in positioning his ships in a maneuver called “crossing the ʻTʼ” where his ships were able to fire full-power

broadsides at an enemy that could only use its forward turrets, giving him a nu-merical advantage. As darkness settled, the battle became a confused night action analogous to two heavyweight prize fighters flailing at each other blindfolded. By the following morning both sides had retired.! Each claimed victory. The British lost 6,784 men and ships totaling 111,000 tons; the Germans 3,058 men and ships totaling 62,000 tons. In strategic terms, the British won. But raised in the tradition of such decisive naval victories as the Spanish Armada and Trafalgar, the British public was unhappy about the incomplete nature of this triumph, which left the German High Seas Fleet largely intact. Despite the fact that the German High Seas Fleet had held its own against the British fleet, the German naval high command shifted to a strategy that fo-cused on U-boat operations. The German High Seas Fleet never again challenged the Royal Navy.

Excerpted from The Book of War by Dwight Jon Zimmerman, published by Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, Inc., © 2008, and used with permission.



Dwight Jon Zimmerman has just added two more book awards to his growing list. He received the Gold Medal Award from the Military Writers Society of America for his book: The Vietnam War: A Graphic History. The society awarded him the Bronze Medal in the young adult category for his Tecumseh: Shooting Star of the Shawnee.

Astrodene on Books! Last issue I studied naval literature set during the American struggle for independence. One such work was James L. Nelson's George Washington's Great Gamble and this month I thought I would start by taking a closer look.! When I interviewed him in May, James told me that he thought the book “would really surprise people on many levels. Most history books will mention off-handedly that there was this naval battle before Yorktown, and then Washington went on to beat Cornwallis. In fact, when you read the original correspondence, particularly Washingtonʼs, you see that the naval action was absolutely central to the alliesʼ plans for Yorktown. Once the French had won at sea, victory on land was a foregone conclusion.! People are also going to be surprised to see how much luck, behind the back dealings, British in-fighting and various other unsavoury factors led to the victory at Yorktown. I also explore how Washington ran what ended up being a virtual dress rehearsal for Yorktown in his effort to capture Benedict Arnold, a thing I have never read anywhere else.”! With this new work we get a close look at both the land and sea events that led up to the Battle of the Capes and ultimately the British losing the struggle for American Independence.! At the start of 1781 there seemed little that would bring the war to a conclusion. For the British government it had become global and whilst keen to retain the American colonies the loss of the Caribbean sugar islands would have been much more damaging and this area would therefore be where the bulk of naval and army forces would be concentrated,

Book Reviews



apart from those protecting the home islands from invasion. The generals in New York had a strategy of moving South to North through the states in the hopes that each would return to the crown in turn. However it was growing clear to them that as soon as the

army moved forward insurrection broke out again behind them and they were unlikely to get sufficient forces to garrison areas behind the front line. Washington was still focussed on a battle to recover New York but recognised that with Naval superiority his enemy could move there forces at will and strike where they wished as they had demonstrated at Charleston. Largely dependant on militia recruited for short periods he did not see that he could win without French forces to help on land and gain mastery of the sea.! A French force under the Comte de Rochambeau, accompanied by a small fleet, had landed at Newport, Rhode Island the previous July and in September Benedict Arnold's treason had been discovered and he had fled to the British. The 1781 campaign opens with Arnold, now a British general, sent to

Virginia to disrupt American supplies flowing south to Greene's army opposing Lord Cornwallis in the Carolinas. After raiding up the James river he retires to establish a base in the Chesapeake at Portsmouth.! Seeing a chance to capture the traitor Washington sent twelve hundred men under the Marquis de Lafayette to Virginia and the French fleet under the Comte de Barras sailed to cut him off by sea. Pursued by the British fleet they engage at the Battle of Cape Henry and whilst the British are badly mauled and weakened the French do not follow through and retire to Newport ending the attempt to take Arnold. Meanwhile Cornwallis has defeated Greene at the Battle of Guildford Court house but at the cost of so many casualties that his army is badly weakened. After a stay at Wilmington, without reference to his superior General Clinton in New York, he abandons his attempt to control North Carolina and marches for Virginia where he links up with Arnold's Army.! In August, now with ambiguous orders from Clinton, with whom he is feuding, he moves to Yorktown and Gloucester and starts to fortify them. Washington believes that he may at last attain naval superiority when he hears that the Comte de Grasse will move his West Indies fleet to the American coast during the Hurricane season and decides to gamble on moving most of the American and French forces south in an attempt to capture Cornwallis.! On September 5th the superior French fleet which had arrived a few days earlier is forced to slip anchor, leaving many of their men ashore, and depart the Chesapeake via treacherous channels to engage the British under Admiral Graves. Graves misses his opportunity to attack as they leave the bay in disarray and largely due to his insistence on maintaining the line is defeated at the Battle of the Capes when many British ships fail to engage or fire from long range. The French had 24 Ships of the Line against the



English fleet of 19 and therefore more sailors were involved in this fight than all the soldiers of both sides throughout the war. Cut off from promised reinforcement by sea Cornwallis surrenders in October and peace negotiations begin the following year.! George Washington's Great Gamble is a meticulously researched study of the campaign. Whilst the book is based around Washington, it studies the actions of Clinton, Cornwallis, De Grasse, Lafayette and many others as their decisions and actions decide the fate of America and gives a balanced view from both sides of the

conflict. It is recommended reading for anyone interested in the history of the American Revolution.! Turning to what is newly available, and an earlier piece of American history, Fireship press have released The Fox and the Hedgehog, a novel based around the conflict between Wolfe and Montcalm at Quebec. Interestingly, many of the officers who featured so prominently in Nelson's book learnt their military skills in this conflict.! Also out was The Price of Glory, book three in Seth Hunters Nathan Peake series, A Battle Won by S. Thomas Russell was released in the US, and for those who like

alternative history's, in this case mixed with a bit of fantasy, Tongues of Serpents the latest novel in Naomi Noviks Temeraire series. If you are not familiar with Novik's work the books are based during the Napoleonic conflict but with sentient dragons being used as an air force. A novel concept that many enjoy reading.! Finally in non-fiction First Rate: The Greatest Warships of the Age of Sail by Rif Winfield is now available. “This book is a celebration of these magnificent ships, combining an authoritative history of their development with reproductions of many of the best (and least familiar) images of the ships, chosen for their accuracy, detail and sheer visual power in an extra-large format that does full justice to the images themselves.”



New and Notable



The de SubermoreMystery Series

Introducing David Glenn

“The de Subermore Mystery Series is a must for any devotee of the

Elizabethan Era.”

The Queenʼs JewelsA lady in waiting to Queen Elizabeth I is murdered. Later, the Queen discovers some of her jewels are missing. These are obviously two unrelated events—or are they?

The Queenʼs SwordDecember 1599. A grimy, plague-ridden London is beginning its painful emergence into a great city; but there is treachery afoot as yet another plot is devel-oping to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I.



THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM:An Alphonso Clay Mystery

of the Civil Warby Jack Martin

A traitor, a free-lance female spy, and a murderer—all must be dealt with or the Army of the Ohio is lost.

Tennessee, Autumn 1863. Staggered by the loss of Vicksburg in July, the Confederacy has rebounded with a crushing defeat of the Union forces at Chickamauga. The shattered Union army now lies stranded and under siege.

Washington has dispatched Ulysses S. Grant to retrieve the situation. But Grant finds that his task is made almost impossi-ble by the presence of a rebel spy high in the Union command structure. Unfortunately, the only officer who could identify the spy is murdered before he can reveal the traitor's name.

Grant dispatches Captain Alphonso Clay to find the murderous turncoat, but Clay soon finds himself in a nest of intrigue. To identify the traitor, he must solve the murder, deal with a lethal female undercover agent for the financier Jay Gould, and over-come a monstrous secret society that is older than the United States itself.

As Longstreet's army surrounds Knoxville, Clay races the clock to keep the Army of the Ohio from being betrayed to the Con-federacy. If that should happen, the Confederacy would regain all that it lost at Vicksburg, and will be well on its way to ulti-mate victory.

THE GRAY MAIDEN:Three Thousand Years in

the Life of a Swordby Arthur Howden Smith

" This is the story of the sword, Gray Maiden." It was forged with magic and mystery in the dim beginnings of time. It saw the rise of Greece, and the crowning of Alexanderʼs fortunes. It was witness to both the majesty and the decay of Rome. It led the rush of Islam. It knew the glories and the ago-nies of the Old World, and the birth pangs of the New." For generations it lay hidden in tombs or burial mounds, or hung in grim solitude upon the walls of armories. Yet, whenever men turned to war, eager hands reached for it—its shining blade bright in the van of battle—for the Gray Maiden had a secret power. The man who held it could not be killed by any other blade." As some medieval owner scratched in the hard, gray steel:

Grey Maide men hail MeeDeathe doth Notte fail Mee



FULTONʼS STEAM FRIGATE:The Secret Weapon to End

the War of 1812by Howard Chapelle

On December 24, 1813, Robert Fulton invited a group of friends to his home in New York City. The War of 1812 was in its second year, and the economic effect of the British naval blockade was crushing the fragile U.S. economy. At that meet-ing he revealed a plan to end the British naval dominance—a plan for what became the first steam-powered warship in his-tory.

For almost 150 years historians debated over what that ship, the Demologos, actually looked like. The only known picture was a patent drawing made for Fulton; but it was at hopeless variance with eyewitness accounts. Then something extraordi-nary happened.

in 1960, a Danish naval architect was looking through a folder at the Royal Archives in Copenhagen. He was looking for some plans that were said to exist for the ironclad ship, the Monitor. They werenʼt there, but he found something even better—the plans to Fultonʼs vessel. With that discovery it was possible to prepare a model reconstruction of a truly revolutionary ship and, for the first time, to understand how it worked.

Fultonʼs Steam Frigate brings the Demologos back to life. It is a superb summary of the history and design of one of the most radical ships ever built.





For the Finest inNautical and HistoricalFiction and Nonfiction

www.FireshipPress.com

Interesting • Informative • Authoritative

Chronicles: The eMagazine of History

Documents

bismarkthe battle of

mississippi river

dwight jon zimmerman

memory alive louis intres

memory aliveradar

corbin williamsons article

descriptive article

feature articlesthe