Reviews The Captain Who Burned His Ships: Captain Thomas Tingey, USN, 1750-1829 by Gordon S. Brown (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2011, 214pp, illus, notes, biblio, index, ISBN 978-1-61251-044-6; $28 .95hc) The naval commanders of the American Revolution, the Quasi-War with France, the Barbary Wars, and the War of 1812 form the "A-List" of American heroes from that period, of which no shortage ofbiographies have been published over the years. Names like Stephen Decatur, Isaac Hull , Oliver Hazard Perry, and Thomas Macdonough dominate our national memory and the pages written abo ut that era in naval history. These men are duly remembered for their courageous acts during ship-to-ship combat, commanding newly built ships of the fledgling United States N avy. One thing about real life, however, is that while a few names seem to get all the credit, we all know they didn't achieve success on their own. Beside them and behind them were countless individuals who supported the fleet and the men in the ships with supplies, ships, logistical support, and administrative organization, that worked together to put those A-listers in the right spot at the right time. Captain Thomas Tingey was one of those B-list individuals-or perhaps even C-list. Few would know his name, but his service to the US Navy was important to its success in the first part of the eighteenth century. Tingey was a native of Great Britain andservedforashort time in the Royal Navy as a young man, but he found his way to Philadelphia prior to the American War for Independence, marrying an American girl and getting employment in commercial sail for a Philadelphia shipowner. It was through this connection that he began his service in the US Navy. What fo llowed took him in a different direction than some of his fellows. He was captain of naval vessels in the West Indies, taking numerous prizes but nothing terribly dramatic that would give him celebrity status. Tingey, instead, was called on to supervise the construction of a new navy yard in Washington, and he served this post for nearly three decades until his death in 1829. The navy yard would become the service's largest shipbuilding facility, and SEA HISTORY 139, SUMMER2012
Tingey personally oversaw its development and personnel. In his new book, Gordon Brown serves both as a biographer and a chronicler who looks at a rapidly changing time in the navy, the nation, and in the growth of the US capital in Washington. Tingey was an effective administrator, but not without flaws, and Brown does a good job of painting an admirable but balanced picture of the man in the context of his times.
gem in the Portsmouth Navy Yard in New Hampshire long before the start of World War II. Interwar competition between the yard and private firms proved that working outside the bounds of the service's own submarine construction facilities could be troublesome; private firms like Electric Boat and Lake Torpedo Boat Company were more likely to stray from plans and develop their own designs that might not meet important specifications. By 1930, the Portsmouth Navy Yard was the only producer of submarines for the United States Navy. Rodney K. Watterson's 32 in '44 carries the story of the Portsmouth Navy Yard's submarine construction heroics from an average of two submarines per year in the 1930s to an asto unding seventy-nine constructed between 1July1940and1 July 1945. In one peak production year, 1944,
THE GLENCANNON PRESS And the tide, The Captain Who Burned His Ships? Tingey did in fact burn his ships. When British forces were invading Washington in 181 4, Tingey gave the order to burn the shipyard he had spent the last dozen years building, and the ships in it, to keep them from British hands. Afrer the war, T ingey stayed on to rebuild it all. Brown's examination of Thomas Tingey is worth a read for his careful look at a man whose work had a significant impact on the early US Navy and for the view into Tingey's time and surroundings during the formative years of our government and navy. MARTIN
R.
PERRY
Falmouth, Massachusetts
32 in '44: Building the Portsmouth Submarine Fleet in World Wtzr II by Rodney K. Watterson (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD , 2011, 17lpp, photos, notes, ISBN 978-1-591-149538; $34.95hc) The United States had already found a
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