Battle of the Virginia Capes, 5 September 1781 oil on canvas by v. Zveg, 1962. U.S. Navy Art Collection, NHHC photograph. | |
|
Tuesday Tidings Naval History Newsletter
Honoring Our Navy History & Supporting the Naval Heritage Community
| |
|
10 January 2023 — Welcome from NMHS Chairman James A. Noone
Dear Members and Friends of the National Maritime Historical Society:
As many of you may know, the Naval Historical Foundation (NHF) was dissolved at the end of last year. Like the National Maritime Historical Society (NMHS), the mission of NHF was to preserve and promote maritime heritage, in particular ensuring that America’s great naval history is proudly remembered.
While we regret the demise of this esteemed organization founded in 1926, we support the efforts of its leaders and members to continue much of its work under the auspices of the U.S. Naval Institute (USNI). We applaud USNI and its CEO and publisher VADM Peter Daly, USN (Ret.)—a 2018 NMHS Distinguished Service Award recipient—for their decision to host NHF naval history content online and to preserve its naval history recognition programs, while continuing USNI’s own naval history initiatives, including the immensely popular journal Naval History.
However, USNI will not be continuing NHF’s popular weekly e-letter, Thursday Tidings—as host of the Naval Institute Press, weekly reviews of many of its own publications could pose potential conflicts of interest. I am pleased to announce that NMHS has agreed to continue hosting the series, including its regular book reviews, upcoming events in the naval field, and news from the greater maritime heritage world. Those of you already familiar with the weekly blast, now renamed Tuesday Tidings, will be pleased that NMHS has retained its writer, Jessie Henderson. Ms. Henderson earned NHF’s Captain Kenneth Coskey National History Day Prize in 2020 and 2021 and is well on her way to a maritime career in history and digital content development.
This inaugural edition of Tuesday Tidings opens with an announcement of two upcoming lectures—including one this evening!—available for online attendance by historians Craig Symonds and Trent Hone on the same topic: Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. We also note that registration is now open for the Western Naval History Association Symposium in San Diego next month. Our feature reviews from Sea History are A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early US Republic by Michael A. Verney, reviewed by John Grady, and On Wide Seas: The US Navy in the Jacksonian Era by Claude Berube, reviewed by Salvatore Mercogliano, PhD. Finally, let me add my congratulations to Paul Stillwell on receiving the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for his Naval Institute Press book, Battleship Commander: The Life of Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee Jr.
We hope you enjoy this newest e-letter series from NMHS and welcome your feedback. Please visit us online at www.seahistory.org/navyhistory, and send your comments to nmhs@seahistory.org.
| |
Tuesday Tidings is sad to report the death of Dr. William N. Still on 8 January 2023 at age 90. The maritime and naval history communities have lost a major figure, influence, and wonderful soul. He was the founder of the East Carolina University maritime studies program and was considered a foremost scholar of late 19th/early 20th-century naval history. Being a recipient of the Naval Historical Foundation's Commodore Dudley W. Knox Medal for lifetime achievement in naval history was but one of many honors that he received during a fulfilling career. His funeral and viewing will be held at 3:30 PM this Friday, 13 January 2023, at Wilkerson’s Funeral Home in Greenville, North Carolina. A more detailed overview of Dr. Still's accomplishments will be featured in next week's edition of Tuesday Tidings. | |
Upcoming Events & Items of Immediate Interest | |
|
Surface Navy Association 35th National Symposium
Naval Heritage Program 9/11 Boatlift Panel
Live-streamed and in person at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Crystal City, VA
Moderators: Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard Vince Patton, USCG (Ret.), and Capt. Matthew Gimble, USCG (Ret.)
Panelists: RADM Michael H. Day, USCG (Ret.), VADM Michael McAllister, USCG (Ret.), Former Chief of Chaplains of the Navy, RADM Gregory N. Todd, CHC, USN (Ret.), and CAPT Brian Hall, USN (Ret.)
Wednesday, 11 January 2023, 5:30 PM EST
CLICK FOR MORE INFORMATION
| |
|
Mastering the Art of Command:
Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and Victory in the Pacific
This Wednesday's Naval Order of The United States History Night hosted by Captain Robert Whitkop and Dr. David Winkler features award-winning naval historian and author Trent Hone.
Zoom: Wednesday, 11 January 2023, 8:00 PM EST
CLICK FOR MORE INFORMATION
| | |
|
|
New Naval History Textbook Published
Wiley publishes America, Seapower, and the World, 2nd Edition featuring an overview of textbooks used at the U.S. Naval Academy. On its webpage, Wiley describes it as "the gold standard in college-level American naval history texts, edited by the foremost scholar in the field." Of course, that scholar is James C. Bradford, ably assisted by his son John who collaborated with over two dozen notable historians to produce the newly revised second edition of America, Sea Power and the World, which the publisher describes as “an extensive and authoritative survey of American naval history, the place of the United States in world affairs, and the role of that country’s naval forces during peacetime and wartime.”
CLICK FOR MORE INFORMATION
| |
News From the Greater Maritime History World | |
2023 National Maritime Awards Dinner
Save the date! The National Maritime Historical Society is thrilled to announce the honorees for the 2023 National Maritime Awards Dinner on 9 May 2023 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC: USS Constitution Museum, Congressman Joseph D. Courtney, and Oyster Recovery Partnership. Registration, sponsorship, and additional details will be shared in next week's Tuesday Tidings.
| |
Naval History Book Reviews | |
A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early US Republic by Michael A. Verney (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2022) | | |
|
|
Reviewed by John Grady
What makes A Great and Powerful Nation such an interesting book to read are the sharp, pointed mini-biographies of the persons who set the tone for each chapter. An excellent example of this comes in presenting Elisha Kent Kane, the surgeon who led the second Grinnell expedition to the Arctic. Although Kane battled rheumatic heart problems throughout his short life, he was in turn a war hero, with service in Africa and China before the High North explorations.
A Great and Rising Nation belongs on the same shelf as Benjamin Armstrong’s Small Boats and Daring Men, Claude Berube’s On Wide Seas: The US Navy in the Jacksonian Era, Dane Morrison’s Eastward of Good Hope, and Jason Smith’s To Master the Boundless Sea.
READ THE FULL REVIEW IN SEA HISTORY 181
| |
On Wide Seas: The US Navy in the Jacksonian Era by Claude Berube (University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 2021) | | |
|
|
Reviewed by Salvatore Mercogliano, PhD
On Wide Seas: The US Navy in the Jacksonian Era is a must-read for those interested in the early Republic of the United States and the development of the US Navy in the decades before the Civil War.
Berube’s use of primary sources and an extremely well-laid-out format provides the reader with a wealth of information, supplemented by charts and photographs. Many of the issues facing the Navy in the early 19th century still resonate in the Navy of the early 21st century.
READ THE FULL REVIEW IN SEA HISTORY 181
| |
Naval History Books Available for Review | |
Naval Historical Anniversaries of Note | |
|
On 1 January 1934, the Flag Signals System went into international use. The first widely used flag code was created by Captain Fredrick Marryat, Royal Navy, in 1817. However, that system used numbers only. Letters were introduced by a revision made in 1857. Forty years later, a new code was created by a committee under the British Board of Trade and sent to many other nations, who then used it to make their own translations. The First World War created a demand for an international code, and Great Britain organized an attempt to make revisions with cooperation from the United States, France, and Italy. In 1927, seven editorial editions of the code were made (in English, French, Italian, Scandinavian, Spanish, and Japanese). This new international code went into effect on 1 January 1934.
Read more about the code >>
See the international flag code >>
View Colors Aloft, a painting showing signals in use >>
| |
Naval History News from the Fleet | |
Recognition in the Naval Heritage Community | | |
|
|
Congratulations to Paul Stillwell. His book Battleship Commander: The Life of Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee Jr. published by the Naval Institute Press earned the prestigious Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature from the New York Commandery of the Naval Order of the United States.
For Stillwell, author of Battleship Arizona: An Illustrated History (Naval Institute Press, 1991, 1st ed.) and numerous other notable books, the award represents a triple crown, as his biographical study of Lee also earned him honors as the Naval Institute Press's Author of the Year and the North American Society for Oceanic History John Lyman Book Award in the category of "Naval and Maritime Biography and Autobiography."
| |
Naval History Calls For Papers | |
Upcoming Naval History-Related Gatherings | |
|
17-18 February 2023: Western Naval History Association Symposium, USS Midway Museum, San Diego, CA
23-26 March 2023: Society for Military History, Hilton San Diego Bayfront, San Diego, CA
9 May 2023: National Maritime Awards Dinner, National Press Club, Washington, DC
17-20 May 2023: North American Society for Oceanic History Conference, Maritime Museum of San Diego, CA
21-22 September 2023: McMullen Naval History Symposium, US Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD
October 2023: Naval Order of the United States Congress, San Diego
| |
Preble Hall Naval History Podcast | |
|
The United States Naval Academy Museum's naval history podcast from Preble Hall features historians, practitioners, military personnel, and other experts on a variety of naval history topics from ancient history to more current events.
EP169: 8 January 2023 >> Admiral Mike Mullen, Part IV. NHHC historians John Sherwood and Tyler Pitrof continue their series with retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, USN (Naval Academy Class of 1968).
EP168: 1 January 2023 >> Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a Confederate Navy. Historian and author Alex Rose discusses his latest book, The Lion and the Fox: Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot to Build a Confederate Navy.
| |
Naval History & Heritage Command H-Grams | |
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.
DONATE TODAY >>
| | | | |
