Constitution, the establishment of a permanent military had become the most divisive issue facing the new government. Would a standing army be the thin end of dictatorship? Would a navy protect American commerce against the Mediterranean pirates, or drain the treasury and provoke hostilities with the great powers? The foundersparticularly Jefferson, Madison, and Adamsdebated these questions fiercely and switched sides more than once. How much of a navy would suffice? Britain alone had hundreds of powerful warships.From the decision to build six heavy frigates, through the cliffhanger campaign against Tripoli, to the war that shook the world in 1812, Ian W. Toll tells this grand tale with the political insight of Founding Brothers and a narrative flair worthy of Patrick O'Brian. According to Henry Adams, the 1812 encounter between USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere "raised the United States in one half hour to the rank of a first class power in the world." 16 pages of illustrations; 8 pages of color.

    Seventy detailed illustrations chart vessel dimensions, crew size, storage capabilities, and manner of rigging for packet ships, pleasure boats, privateers, frigates, and other ships.Fredrik Henrik af Chapman (1721–1808) was a naval architect, a vice-admiral in the Swedish navy, and the author of several books on shipbuilding. This volume constitutes an indispensable treatise for model builders, naval historians, and maritime enthusiasts, as well as anyone who appreciates the art of drafting.

    Driven by an unfettered appetite for personal challenge and a yen for the path of most resistance, Willis mounted a single-handed and wholly unlikely rescue in the jungles of French Guiana and then twice crossed the broad Pacific on rafts of his own design, with only housecats and a parrot for companionship. His first voyage, atop a ten-ton balsa monstrosity, was undertaken in 1954 when Willis was sixty. His second raft, having crossed eleven thousand miles from Peru, found the north shore of Australia shortly after Willis's seventieth birthday. A marvel of vigor and fitness, William Willis was a connoisseur of ordeal, all but orchestrating short rations, ship-wreck conditions, and crushing solitude on his trans-Pacific voyages. He'd been inspired by Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl's bid to prove that a primitive raft could negotiate the open ocean. Willis's trips confirmed that a primitive man could as well. Willis survived on rye flour and seawater, sang to keep his spirits up, communicated with his wife via telepathy, suffered from bouts of temporary blindness, and eased the intermittent pain of a double hernia by looping a halyard around his ankles and dangling upside-down from his mast. Rich with vivid detail and wry humor, Seaworthy is the story of a sailor you've probably never heard of but need to know. In an age when countless rafts were adrift on the waters of the world, their crews out to shore up one theory of ethno-migration or tear down another, Willis's challenges remained refreshingly personal. His methods were eccentric, his accomplishments little short of remarkable. Don't miss the chance to meet this singular monk of the sea.

    It provided definitions of maritime terminology, data on technical aspects of shipbuilding and the Navy's administrative and operational practices. This is a reprint of the 1815 edition as revised by the naval historian William Burney.

    The colorful, large-format work is enhanced by 300 illustrations that include contemporary photographs and artworks, diagrams and line drawings. In this timely follow-up to his bestselling Nelson's Navy, Brian Lavery examines not only the naval campaigns, from the scuttling of the Graf Spee to the winning of the Battle of the Atlantic and the dramatic landings at Normandy, but also the administration ashore and at sea that ensured those successes.The author casts a lucid eye over the strengths and weaknesses of a naval organization under acute strain that managed to rise to the challenge of war. He delves into all areas of the Royal Navy, from the ships and crews of the battle fleet to the fleet air arm and submarine service, coastal forces, and combined operations, and he covers all aspects of personnel, from the Admiralty to the Able Seaman. Lavery also takes a careful look at the merits of technological advances in ship design, armament, and sensors and of naval customs and tradition and sets them in the context of the period.

    Every time the wind breezed up, the organizers called off the race. These are contests for men in whites and boats with tender hulls, they muttered in the taverns of Halifax and Lunenburg. Why not show these fancy yachtsmen what the last of the working schooners, manned by genuine salts, can do? A Nova Scotia newspaper donated a trophy and threw down the gauntlet to the seamen of New England, challenging them to meet the Maritimes' best in a "race for real sailors." And so the International Fishermen's Cup was born.Exhaustively researched in archives in both the U. S. and Canada, A Race for Real Sailors is a vibrant history of the Fishermen's Cup series, which dominated sporting headlines between the two world wars. Here are the incidents and drama of each race and the almost living personalities of the schooners that contested them: the Delawana and the Esperanto, the Columbia and the Gertrude L. Thebaud, and dominating them all the Bluenose, the big brute from Lunenburg whose image shines on the Canadian dime to this day. Vying for the spotlight are the boats' larger-than-life skippers, among them Marty Welch, the hard-charging American who first took the cup; Ben Pine, the Gloucester scrap dealer whose passion kept the races afloat when they seemed destined to fade away; and the irascible, impossible Angus Walters, master of the Bluenose,who repeatedly broke American hearts but whose own heart was broken by Canada's refusal to come to the rescue of his beloved vessel.The stirring and poignant tale is illustrated with 51 historical photographs and five maps, and roundedout by a glossary of sailing terms and an appendix of the ever-changing race rules. This is a story that will keep even confirmed landlubbers pegged to their seats, a tale of iron men and wooden ships whose time will never come again.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Established in 1842 to enforce the ban on importing slaves to the United States, in twenty years' time the squadron proved ineffective. This book investigates how this unit earned a poor reputation and whether it is deserved, and traces the Navy's role in interdicting the slave trade.