Customer Reviews

Warship under Sail: The USS Decatur in the Pacific West (Emil and Kathleen Sick Lecture-Book Series in Western History and Biography)

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If you have ever been to sea, sailed, or even simply enjoyed looking at the ocean, Warship Under Sail will be a delightful read. The author recreates life on a 19th century naval vessel, based on exhaustive research and detailed examination of the log books of the USS Decatur. But she does more than simply energize a work of popular history. The book is a serious illumination of how the idea of "manifest destiny" played itself out in the decade prior to the Civil War.

Collingwood, in The Idea of History, argued that history fostered self knowledge by illuminating the actions of people in the past in light of the presuppositions that guided them. As we see what drove them, we can examine what drives us. So it is with Warship Under Sail. The book identifies presuppositions which are relevant still: that the Enlightenment ideas of freedom and reason reached their culmination in the United States; that it was the mission,indeed the manifest destiny, of the US to spread these ideas throughout the hemispheres, employing military power to do so if necessary; and that the economic self interests of people(slavers, capitalists, and freebooters) ordinarily not supported by decent folk could be legitimately pursued under the noble cloak of the Enlightenment project. In Seattle, San Francisco, Nicaragua, and Panama, Warship Under Sail shows these presuppositions driving the men and officers of the USS Decatur just as surely as the winds of the Pacific drove the Decatur itself.

This astonishing book grabs your attention with its great research and takes you on a fantastic voyage with colorful characters. You can practically smell the sea air, and taste the questionable food, of a voyage under sail.

It's a wonderfully documented book and part of its enormous readability is that it deals with some interesting back roads of history. I picked it up thinking it would capture Seattle's early, pioneer days. Well it does that beautifully. But the book is really about the lives of sailors in the early history of the navy. And what a different time it was. Captains and officers ruled with a strong arm. The captain of the USS Decatur is part Captain Ahab and part Captain Horatio Hornblower.

If you love the books of Patrick O'Brian or C.S. Forester, you'll be amazed by this true story. If you crave history of the US Navy, you won't find a better book. And if you just like a good, old-fashioned story, told in stirring fashion, this is the book for you.

Magnificent.