Rare and Out-of-Print Books
as Norman Rubin demonstrates in an article in the American Neptune (July 1(}77, p. 164). And even builders' plans should be compared with actual photos of the ship where this is possible. By far the greatest value of the Survey lies in the recording that was done on actual vessels. This goes beyond the hull form , deck layout and sail plan , to include the least frequently recorded feature of historic ships, their internal hull construction . The price places the seven-volume set well beyond the reach of most collectors of marine books. But ifthe majority of the 300 sets printed end up in marine reference libraries around the country and around the world, a very useful end will have been achieved . The publishers originally planned to sell only complete sets, but both the Ayer Company, and Saga Press of Sagaponak, New York, are now offering sets of plans of individual vessels for prices ranging from $15 to around $200. And there is nothing to prevent a publisher from eventually producing a smaller format edition of the material affordable by a wider market. By far the best result that could come out of the publication of this material would be a renewed interest in recording historic ships and ultimately a reestablishment of the Survey itself. The Historic American Buildings Survey is still very active, as is the Historic American Engineering Record, created in the 1960s, which concerns itself with industrial , civil engineering and land transportation sites and artifacts. However, as Eric Steinlein, now retired and living in Maryland, pointed out in the introduction of the original HAMMS catalog, there is nothing to prevent interested people from doing their own recording of important vessels they encounter, and forwarding the results to be added to the HAMMS file in the keeping of the Department of Marine Transportation of the Smithsonian Institution . NORMAN J. BROUWER Mr.Brouwer is Curator of Ships at South Street Seaport Museum in New York.
Axis Submarine Successes, 1939-1945, by Juergen Rohwer (Patrick Stephens Ltd ., Bar Hill , Cambridge, CB3 8EL, England , 1983, 386pp, index , ÂŁ17.95) . In no aspect of sea warfare is the fog of war so hard to penetrate as in the submarine battles of World War II. Wolf-pack tactics meant that torpedoes were often running from several directions at once and vigorous counter-attacks by escorts and aircraft added noise and confusion to the battle and SEA HISffiRY, SPRING 1985
made accurate attack assessment almost impossible for the submarine. Until recently, Allied war records and the products of the secret decoding Ultra teams were classified . As a result , too little is known of the successes of that relatively small force of Axis submarines which came close to defeating the biggest maritime force the world had ever seen . Juergen Rohwer has set out to right this situation. He devoted 20 years of research to an earlier 1968 German edition, of this authoritative study of Axis submarine attacks, and this has since been updated by inclusion of Allied records. The result is a definitive record of German and Italian actions, and as accurate a record as the more sketchy Japanese records will allow. Only in the case of Soviet ships attacked has Rohwer been unable to produce such a high degree of confidence. In the main text, each claimed sinking is analyzed for each theaterof war in chronological order. For each attack, the first seven columns are taken from submarine reports. They list the date, time and place of the first shot, the submarine name or number, the captain's name and his estimate of the type and tonnage of the target and report of the weapon employed . The next seven columns are from Allied records and give convoy designations , nationality, name, type and tonnage of the victim (if any) and the geographical position. The last column adds explanatory details referring to a comprehensive series of footnotes. It is these notes which bring the book alive for the informed reader, making it much more than .a document for research . In clinical language, all the horror and confusion of submarine battle emerges. Moments of heroic success mix with times of despair and doubt, all now clarified by the relentless researches of the author. The book is completed by a series of indices of submarines , their captains, allied convoys and ships attacked, adding yet more detail to the information contained in the main text, and charts of the German geographical grid system. ERIC J. BERRYMAN Lieutenant Commander, USNR Dr. Berryman is presently serving with the Navy at Saclant headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia. He is Secretary of the American Ship Trust. '1i
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