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24 October 2023
Welcome back to our National Maritime Historical Society members and friends who share a love for naval history!
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Happy Navy Day! This Friday will mark the 101st anniversary of what would become a major annual event on the Navy’s calendar. Our feature is a “Greatest Navy Day Ever” article that appeared in Sea Power in December 2020. Of course, Navy Day is no longer “a thing,” following the designation of 13 October 1775 as the Navy’s official birthday in the 1970s.
We received feedback that some of you were not able to link to the interview with Dr. Berube on the Naval Academy Museum’s Preble Hall Podcast last week. The link is in our “In Case You Missed It” feature.
Speaking of podcasts, a huzzah to Tom Cutler, who produced a Naval Institute podcast discussing his recent article on the fifteen founders of the US Naval Institute. Listen to it here.
In our recognition feature we are pleased to note the Oral History Mid-Atlantic Region (OHMAR) Forrest C. Pogue Award was presented to our own co-compiler Dr. David Winkler. The captioned “grip and grin” photo is below.
Military Classics Seminar has posted its 2023–24 schedule here. A long-time Washington institution, the book review gathering typically meets monthly in Arlington at Fire Works Pizza, on Clarendon Blvd., with sessions beginning at 5:30 pm with a no-host reception, buffet dinner starting at 6:20, and the formal presentation beginning at 7:30. Dinner is now $40 per person. Organizer Dr. Randy Papadopoulos welcomes new attendees and can be reached at hdv3001@yahoo.com.
Naval History Book Reviews thanks Tom Duffy for critique of Capt. Brent Sadler’s US Naval Power in the 21st Century: A New Strategy for Facing the Chinese and Russian Threat. Once again If you have recently published a naval history-related memoir or history—let us
know! The revised book list is attached! New titles have been added!
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Tuesday Tidings is compiled by Dr. David F. Winkler and Jessie Henderson as a benefit for members of the National Maritime Historical Society and friends of naval history.
As always, comments are welcome at nmhs@seahistory.org.
| ITEMS OF IMMEDIATE INTEREST | |
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The Greatest Navy Day Ever!
By David F. Winkler
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Although Navy Day is celebrated no longer, a previous Historical Perspective column published in in October 2001 credited the Navy League with the creation of what became an annual national embracement of the US Navy following the First World War. Ironically, though the US Navy had made a substantial contribution to the allied victory during that global conflict, there was little sentiment to support future shipbuilding programs. Reasoning that “The Great War” was fought to end all wars, many Americans believed that future conflicts would be resolved peacefully through the newly formed League of Nations. Furthermore, leaders of the victorious powers agreed to negotiate naval arms limitations. With the size of the Navy being negotiated at the Washington Naval Arms Conference rather than the halls of Congress, the utility of the Navy League as a sea power advocacy organization came into question. Navy League membership declined. In 1921, with declining revenues, the Navy League’s leadership ceased publication of Sea Power. With no journal in circulation, the Navy League anticipated a loss of another 60% of its dues-paying members. The 2001 article went on:
Demonstrating leadership and a firm belief in his organization’s cause, Navy League President Colonel Robert Thompson latched on to an idea that arose from the New York chapter to sponsor a day to celebrate the United States Navy. Contributing $10,000 of his own funds in a gambit aimed to revitalize the organization, Thompson agreed with the selection of 27 October 1922 to honor the birthday of one of the Navy’s greatest champions, the late President Theodore Roosevelt. President Warren Harding endorsed the concept and Navy League chapters across the country mobilized to stage events in honor of those who wore the naval uniform. While many radio stations and newspapers dedicated space and air time to saluting the men in blue, several other news organizations seemed skeptical of the Navy League’s ulterior motives.
The historical record reveals that such skepticism was likely justified. In researching for his book Selling Sea Power: Public Relations in the US Navy, 1917–1941 (Oklahoma 2019), Ryan Wadle discovered that the assistant secretary of the navy Theodore Roosevelt Jr. instigated the idea following a 4 July 1922 meeting with a New York socialite. Floating the idea of a “naval day for all the land” to the senior naval hierarchy, Roosevelt received many “likes” (using the current Facebook parlance) and a recommendation from Rear Adm. William V. Pratt of the Navy’s General Board suggesting a date in October due to generally good weather and non-interference with the fleet’s annual exercise schedule. In picking October, Pratt likely looked across the Atlantic to Great Britain, where, two years after the formation of the Navy League of Great Britain of 1894, the British made the October 21st annual anniversary of Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar into a commemorative day of parades, dinners, and other celebrations throughout the empire. Given the lack of an October Trafalgar-like triumph on the US Navy’s resume (Leyte Gulf was 22 years in the future!) Pratt suggested 27 October, the birthdate of the recently deceased 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt.
President Roosevelt’s son agreed to the date, but recognized that such an initiative coming from the Department of the Navy would be seen as very self-serving and undermine the initiatives objectives. Wadle brilliantly documents the correspondence between the Navy and the Navy League which, in turn, took ownership of the concept. With pre-planned Navy support and only a few weeks to plan, the inaugural 1922 Navy Day proved successful with a number of the Navy’s larger warships dispatched to New York, while smaller vessels called on ports along the eastern and western seaboards. For 1923, with more time for planning, the Navy League and Navy expanded festivities to fifty of the nation’s largest cities. Thirty radio stations broadcast speeches by prominent citizens about the Navy and hundreds of newspapers provided coverage about the Navy, with two-thirds of these papers lauding the sea service in their editorial sections. Papers that a year earlier had questioned the need for such a day joined in on the chorus.
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Past Oral History Middle Atlantic Region (OHMAR) president Dr. David Caruso presents Dr. David Winkler with the Forrest C. Pogue Award “Honoring his distinguished, unique, and continuing efforts on behalf of excellence and professionalism in all aspects of oral history activity.” Following the presentation last Wednesday at the Oral History Association annual meeting in Baltimore, Winkler acknowledged Pogue’s role as a sea-service oral history pioneer, serving as the Marine Corps oral historian for several decades. He served as a role model for other sea service oral historians such as Regina Akers, Paul Stillwell, and Jan Herman.
During his remarks, Winkler spoke of his four oral history journeys, discussing the oral history course he taught at the Naval Academy as the Class of ’57 Chair of Naval Heritage, his oral history collection efforts at the Naval Historical Foundation in partnership with the Library of Congress Veterans History Project, his time with the Naval Reserve Combat Documentation Detachment 206, and his ongoing relationship with OHMAR and the assistance that organization provided to help him succeed.
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2024 Naval Order USN Art Calendars Now Available! | |
Interview with Preble Hall Podcast Director Claude Berube | |
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TT: Congratulations to the US Naval Academy Museum’s Preble Hall Podcast Series, which just reached a milestone with its 200th episode featuring Dr. John Sherwood with the Naval History and Heritage Command interviewing New York Times journalist John Ismay (USNA ’99) about his career providing us the first cut of history. It’s been nearly four years since the first podcast on 29 October 2019 with Kate Jamieson discussing Nelson, gunners, and impressment. At this juncture, we thought it might be useful to reflect back on the series and how it has evolved and what is the direction ahead.
TT: First question to set the stage: Just what is a podcast, and how have podcasts gained popularity with audiences across the country/around the world.
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Dr. Claude Berube, Executive Director of the Naval Academy Museum and founder of the Preble Hall Naval History podcast.
Berube: A podcast is a digital audio file that is uploaded to platforms that enable anyone to listen to an episode at their convenience. Part of the appeal is that you can find a podcast on any topic of interest, no matter how minute. Topics can be on a global scale or on a localized level or a topic that might not be covered by any television or radio program because the audience might not be in the millions, but in the hundreds or thousands. It’s a very democratizing platform. I think it’s attractive for listeners in finding whatever topic interests them.
TT: Who can we credit for pushing this boulder off the top of the hill and getting it rolling, and what was the inspiration?
Berube: When I was mobilized to Guantanamo Bay in 2018/19, I started listening to a lot of podcasts on national security, especially Net Assessment (from War on the Rocks), Midrats, CIMSEC’s Sea Control, BBC’s In Our Time, etc. I tried finding a podcast that was focused only on naval history and couldn’t really find anything, so when I returned I decided that the Naval Academy Museum might offer an appropriate medium. It’s the oldest Navy museum in the country (its first curator was hired five days after the establishment of the Academy in 1845) and part of its mission is to inform the general public about naval history. I wanted each episode to be a conversation where I would ask very simple or broad questions. I also wanted to learn something from each guest.
TT: What were some of the challenges that had to be overcome...for example...production quality?
Berube: The first challenge was determining what needed to be done to start a podcast. I read a lot and watched instructional videos, devised a game plan, then placed some orders of the equipment and initially some help from the Academy’s Information Technology staff to ensure it was available on our website. Getting consistent quality is a challenge. The sound tends to be better when the interview has been in person at Preble Hall (the Naval Academy Museum) vice via Zoom or Skype. I also budgeted for a proper studio in the museum, but there are always challenges within the government to getting something done. In this case, Public Works couldn’t get a quote for me for nearly a year. They estimated another year to get the job done. Then their quote came in, which was prohibitive. In the end, I kept it simple and have conducted the interviews in an informal setting in my conference room or office. I’ve worked in both the public and private sectors. It’s so much easier to get things done in the private sector.
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Dr. John Sherwood interviewing New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Ismay for the 200th episode of the Preble Hall Podcast. Photo: Dr. Claude Berube. | |
NAVAL HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS | |
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US Naval Power in the 21st Century: A New Strategy for Facing the Chinese and Russian Threat By Brent Droste Sadler, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD (2023)
Reviewed by Thomas M. Duffy
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...The ultimate strategic purpose of a Navy gets lost in the terms used when we don’t want to discuss the violence inherent in war: “targeting of Chinese and Russian national leadership’s strategic calculus;” “degrad[ing] an adversary’s decision making;” “attack[ing] the enemy’s cognitive decision cycle.” Look, there are much cheaper ways to accomplish these goals than building a 355-ship Navy. These rationales for a Navy are bloodless and socially acceptable ways of talking about conflict that leave unexamined our poor track record in determining an enemy’s thought process, and in a number of cases, even accurately determining who the enemy decision makers actually were. This is not a book about using force to achieve political outcomes on terms favorable to the United States, the classical understanding of strategy. For all of its advocacy for a “war-winning US Navy,” the book misses the point that the best a Navy can do is win battles, not wars.
Sadler has faithfully and effectively captured how we Americans talk when we discuss national security in the opening decades of the 21 st century. His book is really about budget strategy rather than warfighting strategy, making the welcome case for a larger US Navy and overall American naval enterprise. But, as is the case with Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro’s September 26, 2023 “New Maritime Statecraft” speech, it’s hard to see why “naval statecraft” or “maritime statecraft” are stand-alone concepts. Much like the old question of “why is maritime strategy seen as distinct from strategy?” so too it’s not clear here why “naval statecraft” is distinct from simply “statecraft” for a maritime nation such as the United States of America.
Buried in the middle of the book—at the beginning of Chapter 3—is a one-sentence, Corbettian summation of why America has a navy: “Navies exist to assure access to markets and influence events on land for political ends.” Sadler has captured in that one sentence what differentiates the Navy from the other services. I look forward to a future book in which he makes the case for explicitly prioritizing the maritime over continentalist thinking and examining the advantages America derives from our Navy that we cannot get from other sources.
Read full review>>
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NAVAL HISTORY BOOKS AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW | |
NAVAL HISTORY CALLS FOR PAPERS | |
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The Gilder Lehrman Military History Prize is a $50,000 prize sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The award recognizes the best book on American military history in English distinguished by its scholarship, its contribution to the literature, and its appeal to the broadest possible general reading public. Books that touch upon historic military events of other countries may be considered as long as their primary focus is on American military history. Publishers, critics, and authors may submit or nominate books published in the current year.
Please note that as of 2022, only books with a primary focus of American military history can be considered.
To nominate books copyrighted in 2023, please send five copies to the address below before the submission deadline of 31 December 2023.
Daniela Muhling
Book Prize Manager
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
49 West 45th Street, 2nd Floor
New York NY 10036
For more information, please call 646.366.9666 ext.144 or send an email to bookprizes@gilderlehrman.org.
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UPCOMING NAVAL & MARITIME HISTORY GATHERINGS | |
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7–8 November: Beyond the Ocean’s Depths—Revisiting the Challenger Expedition Interdiscliplinary conference at the Royal Museums Greenwich, Greenwich, London
28–29 November: Historic Ships 2023 – National Maritime Museum, London Historic Vessels – Sustainable Futures
18–21 April 2024: Society For Military History Annual Conference Arlington, VA
24–25 April 2024: Council of American Maritime Museums, Constitution Museum, Boston, MA
20–23 June 2024: Joint NASOH/CNRS Conference, St. Catherines, Ontario
24–28 September 2025: 12th Maritime Heritage Conference, Buffalo, NY
| PREBLE HALL NAVAL HISTORY PODCAST | |
A naval history podcast from Preble Hall – the United States Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Maryland. Preble Hall will interview historians, practitioners, military personnel, and other experts on a variety of naval history topics from ancient history to more current events.
Click here for the latest episode: 201: The Worst Military Leaders>>
Click here for all Preble Hall Podcasts >>
| DRACHINIFEL YOUTUBE CHANNEL | |
Welcome to Navy History Matters, Naval History and Heritage Command’s biweekly compilation of articles, commentaries, and blogs related to history and heritage. Every other week, they gather the top-interest items from a variety of media and social media sources that link to related content at NHHC’s website, your authoritative source for Navy history.
Click here for most recent article>>
| INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NAVAL HISTORY | |
The International Journal of Naval History (IJNH) provides a preeminent forum for works of naval history, researched and written to demonstrable academic standards, with the goal of stimulating and promoting research into naval history and fostering communication among naval historians at an international level. IJNH welcomes any scholarly historical analysis, focused on any period or geographic region, that explores naval power in its national or cultural context. The journal is independent of any institution and operates under the direction of an international editorial board that represents various genres of naval history.
Click here to read the February 2023 edition and archived issues on the IJNH website >>
| SUPPORTING US NAVAL HISTORY & HERITAGE | |
With the 250th anniversary of the US Navy on the horizon, NMHS seeks your support as we plan to honor those who have provided for our maritime security.
Click here to donate today >>
If you are one of those friends who have considered joining the Society or have wanted to recommend membership to friends, the Society is offering a 60th anniversary membership sale: ten bucks! See: Anniversary Membership Special Offer.
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