The Navy in the War of 1812,
Tripoli Raid Subjects of New Books
By RICHARD R. BURGESS, Managing Editor
1812: THE NAVY’S WAR
By George C. Daughan. New York:
Basic Books, 2011. 528 pp. $32.50
ISBN: 978-0-465-02046-1
UTMOST GALLANTRY: The
U.S. and Royal Navies at Sea
in the War of 1812
By Kevin D. McCranie. Annapolis,
Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2011.
384 pp. $39.95
ISBN: 978-1-59114-504-2
THE CAPTAIN WHO BURNED
HIS SHIPS: Captain Thomas
Tingey, USN, 1750-1829
By Gordon S. Brown. Annapolis,
Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2011.
214 pp. $28.95
ISBN: 978-1-61251-044-6
The bicentennial of the War of 1812
is a welcome opportunity for authors
to recount the Second War for
Independence, as the war also is
known, and of the new Navy’s key
role in securing the fragile existence
of the new nation from its former
colonial master. The war featured the drama of close-in
combat at broadsides and boardings that produced heroes
whose names have graced the hulls of warships ever since
and whose actions inspired future generations of Sailors.
The war at sea ranged from the Great Lakes to the
Chesapeake Bay, Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean
and Mediterranean Seas, and even the South Pacific.
In 1812: The Navy’s War, George Daughan, a profes-
sor of American history, describes the ship-versus-ship
battles in which the 20-ship U.S. Navy took on many
ships of the 1,000-ship U.K. Royal Navy and proved a
scrappy force more often victorious than not. The U.S.
successes enabled the new nation to establish itself in
European minds as a force to be reckoned with, and
proved the wisdom of the constitutional mandate to
“maintain a navy.”
In Utmost Gallantry, Kevin McCranie, a professor at
the Naval War College, takes a macro look at the strug-
gle of the U.S. Navy to contest Britannia’s rule of the
waves, while Britain sought to destroy the upstart
American Navy all the while waging war against
Napoleonic forces in a worldwide conflict. McCranie
evaluates the strategic impact of entire deployments on
the course of the war and the operational decisions of
the navies’ leaders in an era of slow or nonexistent
communications.
The Captain Who Burned His Ships is the biography
of Capt. Thomas Tingey, a former Royal Navy midshipman and a merchant captain who became a captain in
the U.S. Navy. Tingey built the Washington Navy Yard,
the new nation’s largest naval base, which equipped and
supplied the ships that waged war against Britain in the
War of 1812. Tingey fought in no major naval battles,
but his political skills and administrative acumen were
critical to the success and growth of the Navy. Tingey
had to burn the Navy Yard during the British invasion
of Washington to keep it from enemy hands.
DECATUR’S BOLD AND
DARING ACT: The
Philadelphia in Tripoli 1804
By Mark Lardas. Oxford, U.K.:
Osprey Publishing, 2011. 80 pp.
$18.95
ISBN: 978-1-84908-374-4
This monograph, lavishly illustrated with original art, is one of
Osprey’s “Raid” series. It describes the raid in 1804 led
by Lt. Stephen Decatur Jr. to seize or destroy USS
Philadelphia, a frigate that ran aground while being
chased by Barbary pirates and was captured four
months earlier in Tripoli, Libya. Decatur led a boarding
crew gathered mostly from USS Enterprise onboard
USS Intrepid, a captured Tripolitan ketch, into Tripoli
at night, supported by USS Syren. Decatur’s men seized
the refloated Philadelphia and burned it useless, escaping without losing a man. The U.K. Royal Navy’s Adm.
Horatio Nelson called the action “the most bold and
daring act of the age.” The raid was a turning point of
the Barbary Wars in favor of the U.S. Navy. Most of the
leaders of the raid were honored in future years by warships bearing their names. ;
