and their offer of freedom of gentlemanly pursuits like hunting and fa lconry. Lawson details Smith's life to the very end , well beyo nd his yea rs of exploration, into those fr ustrating days later in his li fe when he tried, repeatedly ye t unsuccessfully, to ge t himself financed fo r ano ther journey to the New World. U ltimately, Smith him sel f became a sea m a rk, his adventures a lesson to be learned from for wo uld-be followers of the paths he blazed .
The voyage will be long BRING A. GOOD BOOE
JOHN GALLUZZO
H anover, M assachusetts
TORCH: North Africa and th e Allied Path to Victory by Vincent P. O 'H ara (Nava l In stitute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2015, ix+ 374pp, illus, appen, notes, biblio, index, ISBN 978-1-61 251-823-7; $49.95) In TOR CH No rth Af rica and the A llied Path to Victo ry, nava l hi sto rian Vincent O 'H ara lays out in detail the first Allied amphibious invasion of Axis-infested E u ro pe and No rth Afri ca-"Operation To rch "-to establish a basis fro m which to evaluate the success or fa ilure of the undertaking. Readers wi ll find t hat the bulk of O'H ara's work addresses the experience of navies in the operation: the US Navy, the Roya l Navy, Ax is navies, and, perhaps the most interesting and fru strating of all, the French navy. Sea H istory read ers who h ave read Sa muel Eliot Morison's descri ption of Operation Torch in History ofNaval Operations in World War fl Operations in North African Waters (1947) will find his on-the-scene reporting holds up well in comparison with O'H ara's 2015 analysis, with in fo rmation from all sides in the co n Aict and seven decades of accumulated fac ts and opinions. O 'H ara and Morison both detail landings and naval conflict. Every landing was successful, in that none of the soldiers were pushed back to their transports. Nevertheless, every one was confused in its execution and produced res ults fa r di ffe rent from what the planners anticipated; US Marine invaders in the Pacific Theater of Operations experienced simil ar confusion. A lesson learned from Torch on la nd and sea was that untrained soldiers and sailors could not be expected to fulfill planners' expectations. Landing crafr losses of boats piloted by US Coast G uard trained coxswains was considerably lower than losses of boats piloted by men untrained on their vessels.
SEA HISTORY 154, SPRING 2016
SURVIVING THE ESSEX The Afterlife of America's Most Storied Shipwreck David 0. Dow ling
p aperback, 240 pp., $24. 95
Uk S J£A M AJllJK
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THESEAMARK
ICE SHIP
Captain John Smith 's Voyage to New England Russell M. Lawson
The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram Charles W. Johnson
hardcover, 252pp. , $29.95
hardcover, 336pp. , $35.00
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