REVIEWS US Navy. Not only did Well es's decision to allow recruitment of Afri can A1n ericans lead to the integration of thousands of black sailors into the Union Aeet, but it entitled them to the sam e pay and treatment as their white shipmates. A s this very well-written, exh austi vely-researched book demo nstrates, it was not until much later that black seam en were relegated to the mess room and the galley. Ramold's acco unt is no t confi ned to the re markable achievem ents of black sailo rs in th e C ivil War, but is prefaced with the interesting stories of their participation in the Revolutionary navies and th eir surprisingly large invol vem ent in the G reat Lakes sphere of the War of 18 12. A concluding chapter explores the reasons for the reduction of their numbers as the century wo re on, as they were in creasingly replaced by Filipinos . ] oAN DRUETT W ellington, New Zealand
mus produced the Yankee iro nclad and proved that the long-do ubted screw propeller would wo rk. His inventio n was initially met with "an impress ive degree of indifferen ce" by the British Admiralty to whom he first tri ed to sell it. The effort bankrupted his company in England (where he first went from Sweden) and put Ericsson in debtor's priso n. Afte r an indeterminate time, he was released and met an American Naval Officer, Lt. Robert F. Stockton, who wo uld change his life and
Well annotated and with an extensive bibliography, Reign ofIron is a wo rthy read fo r anyo ne interested in the C ivil Wa r, maritime history, or the early days of what wo uld becom e a burgeoning industry. WILLIAM
H. WHI TE
Rumso n, New Jersey
Enigma, The Battle for the Code, by Hugh Sebag-M o nrefiore Qohn Wiley & So ns, Inc., New Yo rk, 2004, 448 pp, illus, glossary, appen, no tes, biblio, index, ISBN 0-47 1-49035-0; $ 16.95pb) Enigma is o ne of the latest, and certainly one of the most complete, acco unts of the breaking of the code in the World War II Ge rman Naval system of cl assified communicatio ns called "Enigma" by the Allies. An extensive body of literature co ncerning Enigma, the code, has emerged since the end of Wo rld Wa r II as m o re inform a tio n has been declassified and as the persons involved have becom e older and T H F.STORY OF T H E nArru NC. IRONC. t ADS. more w illing to talk. In fact, the present THE MON ITOR A N DTH E MERRIMACK ages o f th e people involved in this work 60 years o r more ago suggests that this may be JAMES L. NELSON the ultim ate, o r at least penultimate, treatm ent of the subj ect whi ch include firsthand acco un ts. The auth or begins with the chan ce discovery of a co mmercial Enigm a machine by th e Polish Army's C ipher Bureau bring him to An1erica. No netheless, it was in l929, then moves to a key figure in the not all easy sailing here; his dealings with Ge:m a n D efense Ministry Cipher Office the US government we re often as frustrat- in 193 1 and hi s involvement with the ing as they might be today and, in addi- Fre n ch Deuxieme Bureau. By 1938 a good tion , the Swede had to deal with supposed deal o f low-level effo rt by Polish, French, "supporters" whose primary goal was to and E nglish code experts had confirmed tha t E nigma was a very successful maoffer Ericsson's ideas as their own. During an attack o n the Norfolk chine-generated coding system that was Navy Yard, the Union auxiliary frigate exrren1ely difficul t, but probably not imMerrimack was burned to keep her from poss ible, to break. falling in to Confederate hands. AfterThe co nvoluted social and intelliwa rds, in respo nse to rumors and intelli- gen ce- related acti vities of a number of Eugence reports that the North was creating rop ean natio nals who had been involved an ironclad vessel, the South decided to in the Enigma business are explained in a turn the hulk of the Merrimack into their way that show how these previously unown ironclad , renaming her CSS Virginia. identified min o r characters played crucial N elson covers this side of the story in as ro les fro m rime to rime. After the fall of France, the British much derail as the other and interweaves the Confederate effort with that of the wo1 rked in earnest because they realized Unio n. His descriptio n of the actual battle rh att German U-Boats were sinking alarmis brilliantly derailed and reveals the frus- ing; quantities of British shipping with the tration of both sides in their efforts to even use of the Enigma code, and Germany wo1uld win the war if allowed to continue damage their iron adversary.
Rf}GN IRON F I R~T
Reign of Iron: The Story of the First Battling Ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimack, by James L. Nelson (William Mo rrow, an Imprint of H arperCollins Publishers, New Yo rk, 2004, 432pp, illus, photos, index, ISBN 0-06-0 52403-0; $25 .95 hc) "The legacy of Monitor and Virginia does no t res t on the ships that wo n, but rath er o n the ships that lost. And the ships that lost were the wooden walls, the Aeets of the world, the end product of thousands of years of developm ent." Thus ends, fittin gly, the saga of the first clash of the iro nclads, Monitor and Virginia (Merrimack). James Nelson, well known fo r his seafarin g fi ctio n, has taken on a daunting task fo r a novelist and recreated the start of the "reign of iron" -the memo rable first battle of the two ships which made obsolete, not o nly the wooden ships of the pas t tho usand years, bm fun ctionally, sail as a means of p ropulsion in warships. Bo th were propelled solely by steam engines and carried no mas ts or sails. Like most of Nelson's novels, this first effort at non-fiction is emin ently readabl e, and the author does a credible job of bringing the players in this mmul tuous drama to life. Characters like John Ericsson, Swedish immigrant whose ge42
S EA HI STORY 109, WINTER2004-2005