The Lynch Expedition was the first and last U.S. Navy expedition into the storied waters of the Dead Sea. The explorers were all volunteers who had taken an oath of abstinence from alcohol and they traveled in boats made of copper and zinc to make them durable enough for the rapids of the Jordan River and be able to withstand the corrosive effects of the Dead Sea. This is an account with interesting aspects involving science vs. religion, the turmoil in revolutionary Europe, the transition from sail to steam, the legends and truths about Sodom and Gomorrah, and a cholera epidemic. Lynch himself was a fascinating character - naval officer, devout Christian, cuckolded husband, opponent of slavery, and, ultimately, a Confederate admiral. All in all, an absorbing tale that will appeal to a variety of audiences.
Andrew Jampoler lives in the Lost Corner of Loudoun County, Virginia, with his wife, Susan, a professional geographer, and their two golden retrievers. They have married children in Pennsylvania and Iowa. He is an alumnus of Columbia College and the School of International and Public Affairs, both of Columbia University, in New York City, and of the U.S. State Department Foreign Service Institute's School of Language Study. During more than twenty years on active duty with the U.S. Navy Jampoler commanded a land-based maritime patrol aircraft squadron and a naval air station. Later he was a senior sales and marketing executive in the international aerospace industry.
Jampoler has been writing full time for nearly ten years. He has just finished Horrible Shipwreck!, a book about the wreck of His Majesty's Transport Amphitrite, a bark driven aground in a furious storm September 1833 a half mile off Boulogne-sur-mer, France. Amphitrite was transporting female convicts from Woolwich, England to Botany Bay, New South Wales. One hundred eight women, twelve children, and thirteen of the crew--all but three aboard--drowned when her captain refused assistance from shore, fearing the possibility that some of the prisoners would escape and that he would be held responsible. "I never saw so many fine and beautiful bodies," wrote a mournful observer walking the beach the next day, "Some of the women were almost perfectly made." Fifteen years ago the wreck was identified as the subject of English painter J. M. W. Turner's unfinished 1835 masterpiece, "Fire at Sea." The book will be published this December by the Naval Institute Press.
His first book, Adak: The Rescue of Alfa Foxtrot 586, is the true story of a navy patrol aircraft ditching in the North Pacific Ocean in October 1978. A review in May 2003 in the Wall Street Journal described the book as "an adventure story to rival the best you've ever read." "Adak" later won Jampoler recognition as the Press's "author of the year." The crew's story based on this book has been the subject of television specials in Russia and Japan.
His next book, Sailors in the Holy Land: the 1848 American Expedition to the Dead Sea and the Search for Sodom and Gomorrah, is the story of the U.S. Navy's small boat expedition down the River Jordan and across the Dead Sea in mid-19th century. Nathaniel Philbrick, author of the award-winning Sea of Glory, described the book in 2005 as telling "the fascinating story of one of the most improbable operations ever mounted by the U.S. Navy... a meticulously researched account."
The Last Lincoln Conspirator: John Surratt's Flight from the Gallows, his third book, tells the remarkable story of John Harrison Surratt. Finally captured in Egypt eighteen months after his mother's execution on the same charge, Surratt was last person to go on trial for his role in John Wilkes Booth's plot to assassinate President Lincoln, and the only one to escape conviction.
Jampoler also writes for periodicals. One of his articles in "Naval History," about Lieutenant Emory Taunt, U.S. Navy, and the 1885 American expedition up the Congo River, was recognized by the magazine's publisher as its best piece of writing during 2006. Jampoler has given illustrated presentations about the subjects of his books and articles to audiences at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, in museums and embassies, at book stores, and aboard cruise ships.
For three weeks beginning the third week of August 2011 Jampoler will be on Africa's Congo River in an outboard motor boat with his son, going from Kisangani to Banana Point, on the Atlantic. The trip downriver is part of his research for the next book, tentatively titled "Congo, the Short Life and Miserable Death in 1891 of Lieutenant Emory Taunt, USN, on Equatorial Africa's Great River." Publication is scheduled by the Naval Institute Press for 2013.
