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Sailors in the Holy Land: The 1848 American Expedition to the Dead Sea and the Search for Sodom and Gomorrah

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The multi-month expedition undertaken by the U.S. Navy to the Holy Land and led by Lt. William F. Lynch in 1848 rates as one of the most exotic the service has ever undertaken, as written by Daniel Pipes. At a time when the navy consisted of only eleven thousand officers and men and in general stayed on well-worn routes, setting off to the Dead Sea, not for any military purpose but in search of Sodom and Gomorrah, ranks as a folly. But the mission had serious scientific purposes, was professionally executed, and provides to this day important information on the Jordan River and its associated lakes. (This author cited Lynch's report at length in a 1988 article.)

Jampoler clearly took great pleasure in writing this very detailed account of the Lynch expedition, gamboling after topics that are not, strictly speaking, essential to his text (such as the marital infidelities of Lynch's wife while he was at sea or the connection between the city of Sodom and the jailing of Oscar Wilde). He satisfyingly tracks down references, provides historical context, and gives those details necessary to make the nearly yearlong trip come alive. But the author's focus is almost exclusively American, so that the Middle East of the time feels more like a colorful and unchanging backdrop than an alive and dynamic foreground. Any reader who would approach Sailors in the Holy Land from the point of view of learning about Palestine a century and a half back will be disappointed; for such readers, there is no replacing the accounts of the participants, including Lynch's two books and those of other participants, John S. Jenkins and Edward Montague.

On 31 July 1847, four months after the capture of the port of Veracruz during the Mexican war, an expedition proposed by Lt. William Lynch to circumnavigate the Dead Sea was approved by the Navy. The specific goal of the expedition was to establish the elevation of the Dead Sea. He also intended to collect mineral and other specimens. What he really wanted to do was to find the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Traven in these days was not nearly as easy as it is now. Lynch had a 'metallic' boat which he proposed to travel. But the horses that were to pull the boat were broken to the saddle, not harness. That was just the beginning.

This book tells the story of this expedition, but more than that puts it into place as a story of the time as well. This is a little known episode in the history of the U.S. Navy.