Customer Reviews

Fire on the Waters : A Novel of the Civil War at Sea

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I sometimes think that David Poyer is a well-kept secret of a growing cadre of devotees. In my opinion, his best work so far is Thunder on the Mountain. It is an historical novel of the Depression era, describing a wild-cat strike at an oil refinery in Pennsylvania. This book succeeds brilliantly in the same way: it evokes an era. Mr. Poyer has done his homework, and many threads of the Civil War era are articulated in this book, particularly the confidence of Northerners at the outset of the Civil War that the rebellion of the Southern states would promptly be put down, which was the prevailing opinion at the time, as strange as that may seem to us who know how cataclysmic that struggle turned out to be. I admire Mr. Poyer's novels of the modern Navy. But here he goes beyond his characteristic acumen in developing characters, as his protagonist wrestles with the elemental struggle of liberating himself from dependence on his wealthy father, through the epiphany of horrendous loss of life in warfare. As always, the dialogue sparkles. This is a worthy book, and I share other reviewers' eagerness for the publication of further works in this trilogy.

Fire on the Waters, the latest from acclaimed author David Poyer, earns a well deserved Bravo Zulu (Naval Shorthand for Outstanding Job)for the superb job he has done on this Civil War tale of two navies. His ability to keep multiple sub-plots moving, nautical and period details both accurate and interesting, and keep a lively pace are once again showcased to their fullest extent. His ability to keep a plot twist hidden until the last instant was just one more thing that kept me reading until the wee hours of the morning. I could not put this book down. His characters are sympathetic and interesting, and most importantly, believable. I have read most of Mr. Poyer's books, and once again he has not disappointed me. My only regret is that I have to wait for the next one to come out. This book, like all his books, leaves me eagerly anticipating the next. Mr. Poyer is an outstanding author of Naval Fiction, both contemporary as well as historical, and he has successfully crossed into other genres as well. I highly recommend ANY book he has authored. Bottom line: BUY THIS BOOK!

David Poyer has once again demonstrated his leadership talent in telling an unique Navy story. This novel will be a Navy classic alongside such books as the Sand Pebble. It brings into the reader's face the struggle between those who wore the uniform between their allegience to their respective states or to their country. It was only after the Civil War that Robert E. Lee is said to have remarked that before the war he was a Virginian and afterwards he was an American. This novel is a glimpse into that gray area just before full hostilities broke out. It is captivating and it will keep you turning pages. If you can only read one historical Navy fiction this year, then this is the one.
CAPT David E. Meadows, USN
Author of THE SIXTH FLEET series

This Civil War novel by retired navy captain David Poyer was certainly a good introduction to his writings. "Fire on the Waters" , although is heralded as the introduction to a three volume series , does much more than serve as a vehicle to introduce the requisite cast of characters ; it certainly gets the characters in their places and definitely distinguishes the "good guys" from the "bad guys".

From the start we are introduced to young Elisha Eaker , the son of a New York financier Micah Eaker , who joins the navy as an officer-volunteer. As he reports aboard the U.S. Navy steam sloop Owanee , several other primary characters in the drama to follow -- primarily Lieutenant Ker Clairborne , the executive officer , and Commander Trezevant , the Captain of the Owanee -- are brought into focus. The regular Navy men are somewhat taken aback by young Eaker , since the man appears to be in poor health as well as inexpreienced.

Eaker has volunteered for several reasons : to escape his totally domineering father and to either postpone or avoid an arranged marriage to his cousin , Araminta van Velsor. In addition , we find that "Eli" as he comes to be named throughout the story , is also suffering from tuberculosis!

Captain Trezevant allows Eli to sail on board the Owanee due to the political climate -- many of the lower officers on board the sloop have resigned their commissions and headed South prior to the looming outbreak of hostilities in 1861. The first real mission is a voyage to Charleston , S.C. in the relief of Fort Sumter. Eli amanages to distinguish himself to the satisfaction of the "regulars" and is accepted aboard and commissioned properly.

At the outbreak of war , many others leave the Union Navy and because of their loyalties to their homes and families join the Confederacy.

To reveal any more detail than this would belabor the issue and reveal too much that the reader should discover on his own. Altho I labored a little adapting to the author's style at the start of this book , I found the novel to be highly entertaining
and rated it four stars. Only a few warts on this one. Recommended.

Fire on the Waters is the first novel in a projected series of books set during the Civil War. The action of the entire book takes place during the month of April 1861, but there's no lack of conflict and danger. The fictional U.S. sloop-of-war OWANEE begins and ends the novel at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but in between she attempts to bring relief supplies to Fort Sumter, hunts a Confederate battery on the Potomac, and plays a critical role in the destruction of the Gosport Navy Yard.

The novel focuses on Elisha Eaker, a tubercular young volunteer officer who joins the Navy to achieve independence from his domineering father, a wealthy New York merchant who is as ruthless with his family as he is with his competitors. Poyer's creation of Eaker as the protagonist is a smart move, because it allows the reader to see OWANEE and her crew through the new officer's inexperienced eyes. We get to learn the working of OWANEE's engine room, for example, as it is explained to Eaker by the ship's chief engineer. It's an effective technique for introducing readers to a time and technology that lies beyond most peoples' experience.

One of the fun things about Fire on the Waters is the parade of historical characters that appear throughout the book. Virtually every important person connected with the U.S. Navy in April 1861 is present, including Gideon Welles, Hiram Paulding, Benjamin Isherwood and Charles Wilkes among others. Some, like Gustavus Fox, play a pivotal role in moving the plot along, while others add important color to a scene or event. The Army is represented, with Eaker's brief encounter with Major Anderson and Captain Doubleday inside beleaguered Fort Sumter, and Horace Greeley and Frederick Douglass even make brief cameos. It's a credit to Poyer's skill at crafting the plot that the regular appearance of these figures doesn't seem like a historical novelist's attempt at name-dropping; rather, they all turn up in a plausible sequence of events and never steal the scene from the main focus of the book, the fictional officers and crew of U.S.S. OWANEE.

Even without the dust jacket's announcement of Fires on the Waters as the first in a series of novels, it's obvious that the book was written with that intent. Two major characters in the book "go South" during the course of the novel, leaving unresolved plot threads that will have to be sorted out later. One or the other of these men, no doubt, will be conning C.S.S. VIRGINIA into Hampton Roads two or three novels hence.

A significant sub-plot in the novel involves Eaker's cousin Araminta Van Velsor, who is betrothed to Eaker and who is also struggling to get out from under the stifling "protection" of Eaker's father. This story is less fully developed than Eaker's, and appears to exist as much for the sake of a change of scenery in the novel as for anything else. Miss Van Velsor is not fully explored as a character. Her rebellion against her uncle's domination is mildy interesting, but it's difficult for her personal struggle to count for much in readers' minds when contrasted against the momentous events her cousin is witnessing. One hopes that she will play a more important role in future volumes of the series.

Poyer's book is a good read, and unlike O'Brian's over-adulated work, it never seeks to impress the reader with the author's command of obscure linguistic or culinary trivia. There's not a pretentious word in this book. If you want a good sea story on a subject that has been almost entirely overlooked by

The story and characters are brilliant, and evoke the time in a way that connects with modern readers. However, Poyer has taken it on himself to use long dashes "--" instead of quotation marks. This is something that I couldn't get used to, in part because there is no mark to indicate the END of a quote. --Go below, Eli said. The first time I read a line like this, I think that it's someone telling Eli to go below. It's actually Eli speaking. 99% of the time there is little confusion, but basically you have to de-code every line of dialogue. A real pain in an otherwise first-rate book.

I read one of David Poyer's earlier, modern naval books, probably 10-15 years ago, and wasn't impressed with either it or him. I guess in the interim he learned to write, or I became more tolerant of his foibles, because I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

The story begins in 1861, with the U.S.S. Owanee. One of the main characters of the book is the ship's executive officer, Lt. Ker Claiborne, a Virginian who is unsure of his loyalty to the Union, but certain of his determination to keep his oath of loyalty to the Navy, the flag, and his ship...at least as long as he's a serving officer in the Navy. As the book starts, the ship is joined by a volunteer lieutenant, a New York blueblood who's talked his way into the Navy by exaggerating his skills as a yachtsman, to escape an overbearing father.

The ship then sails south, and almost starts the Civil War by participating in a rescue or reinforcement mission to Fort Sumter. When that fails, the ship returns first to Washington, then Newport Naval Station, where they ultimately tangle with the first rebels towards the end of the book.

This is one of the better naval novel's I've read in a long time. The author has adopted Charles Frazier's habit (Charlie Huston uses it too) of preceding everything anyone says with an em dash rather than using actual quotation marks. I'm not sure what the point of that is, but it works here, for the most part. Perhaps I'm getting used to it.

I enjoyed this book, and I'm proceeding on to the second one in the series right now.

The time is the opening days of the US Civil War. Secession is imminent but has not yet happened and many still hold out the hopes that it will not. The issues of the day, however, are driving people apart, even people who have worked closely with each other. This includes the officers and crew of the sloop of war, OWANEE, just back from the Africa station.

The ship is tired as are her crew. She was expected to be put into ordinary but now has to scramble to take on the missions assigned to her as the nation prepares for rebellion. Matters are not helped by the fact that the crew is composed of northerners and southerners, whites and blacks. The loyalties of the southerners are in question even when they go above and beyond the call.

Into this mix is introduced a frail young yankee man as a gentleman volunteer. He has his own issues in addition to those of the country. He has the head knowledge of a sea officer but no experience. Neither is he familiar with the customs of the navy. He wants to serve, however, because he is escaping a controlling father and because he wants to prove himself. He is also a fierce abolitionist.

The entire action of the novel takes place over the course of just a few days. The ship is sent to the relief of Ft. Sumter and then dispatched to Hampton Roads to aid in the evacuation of the naval base. During the course of these actions the aspiring sea officer changes from a timid boy to a responsible man.

This is certainly not the best naval fiction I have read nor is it the most interesting. It is quite readable, however.

One small thing stood out for its nuisance value. The author uses a long dash "-" to mark quotes instead of quotation marks. I found this a bit distracting but it did not harm anything.

Another winner by David Poyer with "Fire On The Water." A Nation at war with itself as a Southerner fights battles within himself as well as on the high seas!

This is going to be a most interesting series because it is the rarely novelized naval side of the American Civil War, the war seen from off shore, and shows the awkward mid-19th century transition period between sail- and steam-powered ships. This first novel deals with three weeks of turmoil and unsettling time in April 1861 as the Civil War came into being, people began to sort themselves out, and incompetence was rampant. This parlous state of affairs makes for a rather unsatisfactory novel. There's hardly a competent person on view and all are confused. This is probably realistic but makes for more frustration than satisfaction on this reader's part. It will undoubtedly make more sense as the larger series unfolds, for David Poyer is an excellent author of novels of the modern navy and of diving. I don't know why people claim this will only be a trilogy; if so it will have to be most highly selective of events, given the level of detail and incident displayed here. Although it seems the central character is to be a volunteer New York officer--an abject, tuburcular pappa's boy who is so naive he appears to be a "cool customer" under fire--the story is also chopped up among several other characters and their viewpoints: Southern Federal officers who must decide where their loyalties lie, an enthusiastic steam engineer, a Black gunner, casual bigots of the time, and a sheltered feminist abolitionist. Because Poyer doesn't play the omniscient author, we all stumble through this first book together. We can expect to see these characters again, each providing a markedly different perspective on the war, from below and above, from home and at sea. Some of the Southern gentlemen may come back aboard Confederate ships as opposed to the exclusively Federal ones here, and there are hints we can expect to see ironclads and Adm. Farragut in future volumes. Certainly more than enough for two more books! Sounds and colors are described in iron hard metallics. Much of the story is grey-toned, frequently taking place in fog or night or firelight, much exacerbated by the unsettled, and unsettling, times when all was rumor. We see conflicts between sections, father and son, financier and ward, black and white. Poyer is excellent in scenes of storm, shot and shell, and fire, whether ashore or on the water. Several passages, like stoking a boiler or the swaying out of ship's boats, seem to be inserted for atmosphere or to show off Poyer's knowledge of period minutiae. The book has been composed with a nice old-fashioned look: a spidery typeface, analytical chapter headings, antique jargon, and (annoying) m-dashes instead of quotation marks for spoken words. The cover art is useful.