wirh oversight coming from rhe New York Education Department. By rhe 1930s the school desperately needed a shore-side campus and officially dedicated Fort Schuyler on rhe Throggs Neck peninsula in the Bronx as its new home in 1938. The faci lity became a major center for training not only New York State Maritime Academy cadet-midshipmen but also members of the federal US Merchant Marine Cadet Corps during the Second World War. The postwar period brought additional transformation to collegiate stat us as it began granting a three-year marine science bachelor's degree in 1946 and entered the Scare University of New York (SUNY) system in 1948. In 1949 rhe college started offering a bachelor's degree in marine engineering and graduated its first four-year class in 1952. The danger wirh any insrirurional history is to cell the story from the administrative perspective, and certainly Williams argues that, given the small size of the school, the early superintendents left lasting legacies. But h e also examines the school's history, both the successes and the failures, from the perspective of the students . This provides interesting commentary on the personality type of students who attended Maritime College. From the beginning Williams suggests "It was an education that was fun for a boy who learned by doing rather than sitting over a book." The many vignettes of graduates involved in activities, such as the 1905- 1906 North Pole Expedition, World
Hardcover Book with Color Photos
War II convoys, and rescue operations on September 11 , 2001, in Williams's words, "speak volumes about the character of the alumni." This includes 1974 graduate Marjorie Murtagh, rhe firsr woman to earn a Coast Guard license, despite an atmosphere of "almost nothing but harassment" during her time at the school. As confusion continues to persist regarding the difference between SUNY Maritime College and the US Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) at Kings Point, Williams devotes considerable attention to the complex relationship between rhe state school and federal service academy. (For an institutional history of USMMA, see Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and C hloe G. Kline's In Peace and ~r: A History ofthe US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, John Wiley and Sons, 2008). Long overdue, Williams's work contributes significantly to o ur understanding of maritime education in the United States and will hopefully encourage scholarship on the other state maritime academies. J ENNIFER
L.
SPEELMAN
Kings Point, New York
Hunting the Essex: A Journal ofthe Voyage ofHMS Phoebe, 1813-1814 by Midshipman Allen Gardiner, edited by John S. Rieske (Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley, UK, 2013, l 52pp, illus, appen, biblio, notes, ISBN 978-1-84832-174-8; $25.69hc) This slim volume is a wonderful ex-
ample of early nineteenth-century writing, done by an educated yo ung man about his travels from England , aro und Cape Horn, up the west coast of South America, and his return. H e documents in detail anchorages, shoreline descriptions, and the towns which he visits, as well as rhe people he met along the way. Interspersed with his narrative are bits and snatches of original poetry, which in many instances is quite good. Sadly, the tide is a bit misleading, as USS Essex plays a relatively minor role, taking up fewer than six of rhe 129 pages of the journal. The best description of the battle of HMS Cherub and HMS Phoebe vs USS Essex is found in an addendum in a letter by Phoebe midshipman Samuel Thornton to his father. Historically, the story is accurate, though it does leave a fa ir amount of history out, preferring to glorify the two-on-one bart!e against an already damaged ship in neutral waters. To their credit, both yo ung men credit Cap tain Porter and his crew with a valiant fight h ampered by the armament of Essex (carronades-short range, though heavyweight of metal) against their longerrange 18-pounders on the English ships. The editor, Mr. Rieske, presents an introduction filled with British arrogance and reliance on rhe biased and erroneous reporting of British historian William James. Among other specio us remarks in the introduction is rhe reference to Porter's Pacific raiding foray as "unauthorized"-
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SEA HISTORY 147, SUMMER 2014