“sailor-scientists” spent 366 days among the islands, which included several groundings. By the time the expedition left the islands in 1906 for the trek home, the ship was without its navigator, who had been given a vote of no confidence by the rest of the team and decided to find his own way back to San Francisco. Battered during the lengthy voyage, when problems with the rig plagued the crew every couple of days, the schooner limped home, arriving at the Golden Gate late in November of 1906. The expedition’s successful return had become increasingly important. The previous spring, the museum had burned down in the aftermath of the great San Francisco earthquake of 18 April 1906 and was a total loss. With the return of the expedition, the thousands of specimens—lava lizards, mockingbirds, beetles, and other collected species—packed into the schooner would provide the museum with a new collection, saving the future of the museum itself. James recounts the expedition and the ripples it sent through the study of evolutionary biology for decades to come, ultimately vindicating the theories of Charles Darwin. John Galluzzo Hanover, Massachusetts
discussion of the fleets in which they identify the various warships of the navies involved in the war and make comparisons where possible. They define their terms in preparation for discussions of the conflicts. Appendix I, Ship Specifications, supports chapter one with a listing and silhouette of each nation’s vessels: Austro-Hungarian navy (Kaiseriche und Königllche Kriegsmarine), Ottoman navy (Osmanli Donanmasi), German navy (Kaiserliche Marine), French navy (Marine Nationale), Italian navy (Regia Marina), Russian navy (Rossiiskii imperatorskii flot), United Kingdom (Royal Navy), and Japanese navy (one ship, Takaschio). The chapters each cover a year in the war and examine the naval battles that occurred during that time, from 1914 through 1918. Each case is set out as illustrated in the example below, before a narrative description of the action, often replete with numbers of rounds fired by size and evaluations of the effectiveness of the shooting. Within each chapter the authors address actions in the North, Baltic, Black, and Mediterranean Seas, and nonEuropean waters.
Clash of Fleets: Naval Battles of the Great War, 1914–18 by Vincent P. O’Hara and Leonard R. Heinz (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2017, 373pp, illus, maps, notes, index, isbn 978-1-682-47008-4; $34.95) Books published by the Naval Institute Press are top notch and their recent title, Clash of Fleets: Naval Battles of the Great War, 1914–18, is no exception. Vincent P. O’Hara and Leonard R. Heinz have researched and set forth in detail all the naval battles of World War I. Engagements so minor as to leave little trace are included in a listing in an appendix. Mention of the Great War, what later became World War I, brings to mind trenches, artillery duels, tanks, machine guns, and human slaughter on a biblical scale, so overwhelming as to overshadow the active war on water. A reading of Clash of Fleets leaves the reader wondering why so much death and destruction at sea is rarely acknowledged. The authors open their work with a
Battle of the Falklands: 8 December 1914, 0919–2130 Conditions: Clear, deteriorating later Missions: British, none; Germans, raid British Force (Vice Admiral Doveton Sturdee): BC Invincible#, Inflexible+; CA Carnarvon, Cornwall#, Kent#; CL Glasgow#, Bristol; AMC Macedonia. German Force (Vice Admiral Maximilian Spee§: CA Gneisenau*, Scharnhorst;* CL Nürnberg,* Dresden, Leipzig*
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The following is a sample presentation from Clash of Fleets (p. 96):
[BC = Battle Cruiser; CA = Armored Cruiser; CL Light Cruiser; # = put out of action; + = damaged but remained in action; § = killed in action; * = sunk] Clash of Fleets: Naval Battles of the Great war 1914–18 makes good reading, but any reader who considers opportunity cost will blanch at: “…the Germans lost 954 killed
and 80 wounded …” and “The battleship sank with 640 men drowned.” The lives and the treasure expended on weapons and ammunition was, and continues to be, appalling. Notwithstanding, the book is a must-read for anyone interested in World War I, those wanting an exciting narrative, and general readers. Dr. David O. Whitten Auburn, Alabama To the Walls of Derne: William Eaton, the Tripoli Coup, and the End of the First Barbary War by Chipp Reid (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2017, 376pp, illus, biblio, notes, index, isbn 978-1-61251813-8; $29.95hc) To the Walls of Derne is a quite complete history of the Barbary Wars, offering detail generally not found in most of the works on the subject. One of my problems with this rendition is the book’s title; I expected the book to be about Marine Corps Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon and William Eaton’s march across 500 miles of desert—from Alexandria to Derne—with a somewhat ragtag group of mercenaries to attack Yusef Karamanli’s fort there. While the story did indeed include some of that march, it occupied barely fifty pages of the book. Mr. Reid spent an inordinate amount of time on the backstory and personal biographies that really were, while interesting to the reader, inconsequential to the subject—at least as stated in the title. Other irrelevancies include a political fight regarding the formation of the Marines, and USS Constitution’s visit to Portugal. The research Mr. Reid did, using mostly primary sources (an absolute mandate to any historian worth his salt), was copious and commendable; unfortunately, there was no filter on what got included. It was almost as though the author felt he had to include exact quotes from letters or other historic documents in order to be credible, instead of simply stating that thus and so happened, including a footnote for accuracy. This feature in the book made it a bit ponderous to work through for the reader. His editor should have remedied this, as well as some of the word errors that appeared from time to time. Occasional convoluted sentence structure confounded me, another editoSEA HISTORY 164, AUTUMN 2018