Warships of the Civil War Navies (review)

BOOK REVIEWS181 handsome Maj. David F. Boyd, CSA, postwar president of LSU (51); 1st Lt. Jefferson D. VanBenthuysen, Jr., CSA, minus the eye he lost at Gettysburg (68); childishly young-looking CpI. Grant R. Taylor, CSA, captured at Port Hudson (99); and the first Union military governor of New Orleans, portly Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. "Beast" Butler, USA, portrayed all too revealingly in profile (251). A close reading of the text revealed only one factual error recognized as such by this reviewer: on page 336, "Carpetbag" governor Henry C. Warmoth is said to have died on September 30, 1901. Actually, Warmoth died thirty years later. All in all, this is a splendid addition to the general pictorial record of the Civil War, and especially to Louisiana's role in that conflict. Scholars and buffs alike will want to have a copy. It is to be hoped that future volumes in the Portraits of Conflict series will embody the same high standards of selectivity and scholarship that characterize this volume on Louisiana. Mark T. Carleton Louisiana State University Warships of the Civil War Navies. By Paul H. Silverstone. (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1989. Pp. xiii, 271. $38.95.) When one views the revolutionary changes that took place in naval warfare during the Civil War, it is surprising to realize that so much time had passed before someone compiled a satisfactory reference book giving basic information on each of the warships of the Union and Confederate Navies. To be sure, several attempts were made to fill this gap in the literature covering the American Iliad. Perhaps a few brief glances at the work of his predecessors will help us to evaluate Paul Silverstone's fine new study of Civil War ships. In 1864, even before the fighting ended, Bradley Sillick Osbon, the picaresque "sailor of fortune" turned journalist, published his Handbook of the United States Navy. His little volume lists both Union and Confederate ships in one alphabetical sequence. On the Southern side, omissions are far more frequent than entries and lacunae are numerous, even for the North. Moreover, interpolated into the list are place names, events, and other miscellaneous concepts the author felt might be of interest. Osbon seems to have included in each ship's entry only the information that was readily at hand. For instance, he tells us how many guns a ship carried but does not specify their types or diameters of bore. Such ambiguity leaves the reader confused, for few ships of that period carried weapons of only one type and size. In his coverage of operations, Osbon is highly erratic. On occasion, he will go into great detail in recounting an incident in the career of a comparatively minor steamer and then almost entirely ignore the service of an important man-of-war. 182CIVIL WAR history It should be noted that his book contains no pictorial material—neither photographs, nor paintings, nor plans—and, therefore, does not enable the reader to visualize these interesting and widely varied vessels. Although Osbon never updated or corrected his inaccurate and obviously incomplete handbook, it served as the main source of information on Civil War fighting ships for almost six decades. It was finally superseded in 1921 when the Navy Department's Office of Records and Library published Volume 1, Series 2, of its comprehensive documentary of the Civil War afloat, the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. This book holds entries for all Union and Confederate ships in separate alphabetical sequences, which contain fuller and more accurate data on the vessels as physical entities than can be found in Osbon. They tell us how each ship entered and left naval service and, where possible, give their new names as well as occasional other hints of their subsequent fates. However, most of the entries contain little, if any, account of the ships' operations. The volume has some illustrations but leaves the reader in the dark as to the appearance of most of these vessels. Silverstone's Warships of the Civil War Navies now provides us with a convenient, one-volume source of information on all of the ships which fought on both...