Amerika Samoa: A History of American Samoa and its United States Naval Administration*
By Captain J. A. C. Gray, MG, U. S. Navy. Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1960. Illustrated. 295 pages. $6.00 ($4.50 to Naval Institute members.)
REVIEWED BY
Captain T. F. Darden, USN (Ret).
The author of this absorbing volume has given full recognition to the fact that a history of the naval administration of the Territory of Samoa cannot be rendered complete and meaningful from naval records alone. Consequently, he has expertly integrated official Navy Department records with interesting and appropriate material on the Samoans (the fa'aSamoa), a subject which has no codification, hardly any documentation, and abounds in conflicting personal viewpoints. It is apparent that the author, after having exhausted all available written matter, has extended his research to the unwritten legends and folklore as passed down in the ceremonial speeches of the Talking Chiefs, the custodians of the fa'aSamoa.
The deeply rooted traditions and customs of the Samoans exerted very real, and at times very strong, influences on the actions of successive Naval Governors in their administration of the Territory. This influence, at times not even apparent, was rarely adaptable as material for inclusion in official Navy reports and records.
For instance, the stories of the Ipu of the Tui Manu’a and the Skipjack are seemingly inconsequential in themselves (one involving the use of a special cup, the other the possession of a fish) but are important in the unrecorded fa'aSamoa. They had direct bearing on subsequent naval administration, because as the author points out, they typified the ever-present conflict between the traditional rights and prerogatives of the Samoan High Chiefs and our Western ideas on the basic rights of the individual.
Another important and necessary ingredient is a brief history of the entire Samoan group, from the time of its discovery to its separation into Western Samoa and American Samoa at the turn of the century. The author includes a vivid and detailed description of the hurricane of 1889, which caused the loss of both the German and United States naval squadrons in Apia harbor. This disaster had a marked effect on the subsequent behavior and attitude of the Samoans during a critical period of negotiations.
A member of the medical profession, the author strikes a very nice balance between the medical and the other functions of government—education, public safety, the courts, the economy, agriculture and the land question, and the administration of political subdivisions—treating each in its place without bias, pleading the cause of no person or faction.
He who has never been to Samoa will find the book a most interesting account of a small and remote, but nonetheless important, island possession of the United States, written in a scholarly manner and showing a keen insight into and understanding of the Samoan character. Those of us who have served in American Samoa will welcome the book even more, for it fills a long felt need for a thoroughly researched and objective work on the subject, with perhaps some nostalgic recollections added as a by-product.
Captain Darden was Naval Governor for the two years immediately preceding transfer of administration of the Territory from the Navy to the Department of the Interior.
Frontiers of the Sea*
By Robert C. Cowen. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1960. Illustrated. Bibliography and index. 307 pages. $4.95.
REVIEWED BY
Lieutenant Commander Arnold S. Lott, USN
After some five thousand years of navigation, the earth’s 139,400,000 square miles of ocean have been well charted as to latitude and longitude. Yet only in the past century has man begun to explore beneath the surface of the seas. The topography of earth’s nearest celestial neighbor, the moon, is better known than is that of the ocean bottom. Even in recent months, a Russian space vehicle photographed the far side of the moon, 240,000 miles away, before the Navy’s bathyscaph Trieste carried men down for a first look at the Pacific’s seven-mile-deep floor.
Oceanography, the subject of this book, is the application of many sciences—physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and geology—to discovering the secrets and potentialities of the oceans. This story of oceanographic exploration, by the Natural Science Editor of the Christian Science Monitor, is terse, factual, and interesting.
The history of oceanography begins with Benjamin Franklin, who first charted the Gulf Stream and published his findings in 1786. The Navy’s own Matthew Fontaine Maury helped lay the foundation for modern physical oceanography with his Physical Geography of the Sea, published in 1855. Great Britain initiated scientific exploration in 1872 when HMS Challenger sailed on a round-the-world cruise lasting more than three years.
Yet, despite the vast amount of information since gained concerning the physical aspects of the sea, less than 2 per cent of the deep sea floor has been accurately charted. There are still many mysteries in the 328,740,000 cubic miles of water which it is the Navy’s mission to control. Dr. Cowen describes this little-known region, with its towering sea mounts, immense canyons, teeming marine life, and intricate system of rivers beneath the sea. One of these, the Cromwell Current, was discovered only in 1952. Rivaling the Gulf Stream in size, it flows eastward some 3,500 miles across the Pacific at about 3.5 miles per hour. Exact knowledge of such currents may have great military value. This reviewer’s only criticism of Frontiers of the Sea is that it fails to discuss the urgent need for comprehensive oceanographic knowledge in connection with ASW and other aspects of naval operations.
However, there is an enlightening section on oceanography in relation to food supplies and the exploitation of submarine mineral resources. At present the United States obtains all its magnesium and 80 per cent of its bromine from the sea; the world’s fishing fleets provide some 20 million tons of food from the sea annually. Increasing world population demands increased food production, part of which may come from plankton harvesting and scientific fish farming. There is untold treasure in the sea if it can be economically extracted: one cubic mile of salt water contains 26 million tons of magnesium, 4 million tons of potassium sulphate, and 25 tons of gold.
For what returns oceanography promises, the national investment—some 8 million dollars in 1958—is relatively small compared to our “space” budget. To achieve true control of the seas, in all the fields promised by oceanography, it appears that increased expenditures are urgently required. For a better understanding of the sea, the last terrestrial frontier, this book is recommended.
Lieutenant Commander Lott is a Special Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Information, Navy Department. He is the author of Most Dangerous Sea, a history of mine warfare recently published by the U. S. Naval Institute, and A Long Line of Ships, the story of the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, also a Naval Institute publication.
A History of Polar Exploration*
By L. P. Kirwan. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1960. Illustrations, maps, diagrams. 374 pages. $5.95.
REVIEWED BY
Rear Admiral George Dufek, USN (Ret.)
Packed in this one book is the first complete history of polar exploration in the Arctic and Antarctic. L. P. Kirwan has been Director and Secretary of the Royal Geographic Society since 1945. Mr. Kirwan’s close association with the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University and his active participation in the organization and mounting of Great Britain’s recent polar expeditions afford him an excellent background for writing in this field.
Beginning with the first landing on Greenland by the Viking Chieftain, Eric the Red, the chronology of polar expeditions of all nations takes the reader plunging through ice and storms to the completion of the International Geophysical Year in the Antarctic.
Mr. Kirwan seeks to portray the motives for the drives to the polar ends of the earth. In the beginning there was the search for new hunting grounds. This was followed by probing for new trade routes through the polar regions, the thirst for exploration, international rivalry for prestige, personal ambition, and scientific investigation.
Mr. Kirwan attempts to avoid dwelling on the spectacular feats of heroism and endurance of individual explorers. Rather, in a masterly manner, he vividly describes the character of a man with a single cogent word or phrase. Place names on maps come alive with the telling of long-forgotten accomplishments of individuals in roles subordinate to the leaders of the expeditions.
The zig-zag thrusts of the expeditions seeking the Northwest Passage, the Northeast Passage, and the North and South Poles, and the unveiling of Antarctica are kept in focus by the passage of time.
The author loses some prestige as an unbiased historian by attempting to prove that it was the Englishman, Bransfield, and not the American, Palmer, who first sighted the Antarctic Continent. Also, he dwells considerably on the faults of the American Admiral Wilkes, but avoids any serious criticisms of English explorers. It is natural that he should be more familiar with the organization and command status of British polar expeditions than those conducted by the United States. In the latter case he has made some errors.
This volume is a well-documented history written in a scholarly manner. It is recommended for libraries and students of polar history.
Rear Admiral Dufek was Commander, U. S. Naval Support Force Antarctica during the International Geophysical Tear. He is the author of Operation Deepfreeze and Through the Frozen Frontier.
A Social History of the Navy 1793-1815
By Michael Lewis. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1960. 450 pages. 42s.
REVIEWED BY
Commander R. D. Ross, RN
In his History of the British Navy published in 1957, Professor Lewis who until recently was Professor of History at the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, referred to the absence of any study of the officers and men who fought afloat in the Old Navy of Britain. He has now repaired that deficiency in this welcome volume. For his material he has naturally drawn from the whole canvas of his scholarship, though he has concentrated chiefly on the journals of Dillon, Gardner, Boteler, Cullen, Byam Martin, and Mangin, published by the Navy Records Society.
The first and possibly least entertaining part of the book, is a detailed and at times almost labored statistical analysis of the officers’ social and geographical origins. Professor Lewis has compiled tables illustrating from which counties in the United Kingdom the officers were drawn. As might be expected, Devonshire, Kent, Hampshire, and London easily lead the field, in that order—a fact which has not passed unnoticed by those responsible for naming Britain’s new County-class guided weapon destroyers. The only other fact that this geographical study highlights is the unexpectedly high proportion of Scotsmen—one in seven—amongst the officers.
The examination of officers’ backgrounds shows that the vast majority were the sons of officers and middle class professional men who were relieved only by a leavening of the aristocracy and a sprinkling from the lower deck. The Royal Navy had always claimed its own small quota of the aristocracy, for whose entry the English system of primogeniture, the chances of prize money, and the opportunities afforded by patronage were responsible. But lack of social qualifications was in itself no bar to the quarterdeck at a time when the rank of officer was still coupled with the description of gentleman, and there were a number of successful captains who had risen from the lower deck.
The second part of the book is devoted to considering methods of entry. Covering a period which was still half a century before the introduction of the competitive examinations, these methods seem by modern standards to have been more than unduly haphazard. The standard of the officer entry still lay in the hands of the captains of ships, whose responsibility for recruiting their junior officers and men was still a personal one, as it was with the colonels of regiments.
The promotion of officers was still largely subject to the vagaries of influence—the only safeguard being that true merit always attracted a patron. The swollen size of the Service, resulting from the war, provided an excellent career factor to those who had been lucky enough to be born at the right time. Nearly 50 per cent of lieutenants who were promoted to that rank in 1793 eventually became captains, but the same expansion which provided such a prospect also resulted in the worst promotion jam ever known. By the middle of the nineteenth century, despite a number of retirement schemes, the situation was such that retirement in its modern sense had to be introduced.
A chapter about the wardroom explains who was allowed to occupy that mess and relates the social standing of its members. Chaplain Mangin’s journal is quoted to give an idea of the wine and messing costs, but the subject of the officers’ drinking habits is not dealt with in any detail. The popular misconception of overindulgence is at first sight supported by Gardner. In the biographies which he gives of 66 of his messmates, eleven are noted for “their fondness for grog” but a more detailed examination shows that of these eleven, ten are warrant officers and only one a commissioned officer. A fair conclusion might therefore be that drunkenness, although quite common amongst the warrant officers, was very much less so amongst their superiors.
An examination of the rates of pay, remarkably uncomplicated by modern standards, shows that the junior officers and men had little more than a sufficiency on which to support themselves and one is left wondering how their families can have subsisted. Was there an allotment system whereby men could send money to their families and what, in fact, were the actual arrangements for making advances of pay? Prize money, head money, and for commanding officers, freight money, were the real attractions, and Cochrane’s statement that “prize money ever formed the principal motive of seamen to encounter the perils of war,” is fully confirmed.
The final part of the book is directed towards an analysis of the manpower attrition rate. The surprising figures which are revealed show that over 80 per cent of casualties were the result of disease, 14 per cent the result of explosions and shipwrecks, and only 6 per cent the result of enemy action.
This book is full of fascinating information about the lives and habits of the officers and men whose lives it portrays. “So many ships, so many navies” was the old saying which described the irregularity which prevailed in the Royal Navy before the Napoleonic wars. The period under review covered the beginning of the evolution and regulation of the Royal Navy as it is today and provides a valuable understanding into many present-day customs. The whole book is full of interest, and if shortage of space has sometimes compelled Professor Lewis to concentrate on the officers to the occasional exclusion of the men, it is hoped that he will soon be able to enlarge on their conditions and viewpoint in a companion volume.
Commander Ross, who is a Supply Officer, joined the Royal Navy in 1937. After the war he was called to the English Bar and has since specialized in court-martial work. He contributes to a number of British newspapers including The Times and Scotsman.
Kitty Hawk to Sputnik to Polaris
By Eugene E. Wilson. Barre, Massachusetts: Barre Gazette, 1960. 231 pages. $5.00.
REVIEWED BY
Rear Admiral Paul P. Blackburn, Jr., USN
A book by Mr. Wilson is always rewarding. Kitty Hawk to Sputnik to Polaris is exceptionally so. The author, one of the outstanding pioneer aircraftsmen, is a very knowledgeable and deeply dedicated American who brings to his work a broad grasp of U. S. and world strategy.
He outlines in clear and comprehensive fashion the frustrating and abortive struggle of the aircraft industry to generate an American air policy. As part of this portrayal the author explains in some detail the complex situation with respect to the regulations of domestic civil air transport. He then gives the reader a clear picture of the bitter, as he calls its, “fratricidal war” over U. S. military air power. It is interesting and encouraging to note the moderating and broad-gauge influence exerted by the great majority of the Congressional Committees and the perceptiveness exhibited in the reports of their inquiries. In sharp contrast is the narrow vision of the civilian air power investigative committees whose reports, while sadly lacking the statesmanlike outlook of the Morrow Board of 1925, still exerted a major influence on U. S. air policy.
The heart of the book lies in the author’s exposition of the strategic and moral problems implicit in the use of air power. He pleads for and makes an excellent case for practical morality in the use of the present day, immensely powerful and destructive, weapons of war. The documentation of the tragedy of the British essay into strategic bombing as promoted by Trenchard points the lesson for America. Whether the British loss of stature in the world directly resulted from that abandonment of moral principle is open to more complete proof, but the thesis appears entirely tenable.
Mr. Wilson concludes his book with a proposal leading to World Peace through World Law by, among other things, orderly and universal regulation of space vehicles and their uses. This is a problem which is now, and will become, increasingly urgent.
There is much food for thought as well as deeply patriotic inspiration in this book. One can only wish that the editing of this poorly printed book had been more thorough than it was.
The reviewer is a 1930 graduate of the Naval Academy who has been in naval aviation since shortly after graduation. He is now on duty in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.
Ghost Ship of the Pole: The Incredible Story of the Dirigible Italia—An International Tragedy That Has Shadowed a Man and a Nation for Thirty Years*
By Wilbur Cross. New York: William Sloane Associates, 1960. Illustrated. 304 pages. $5.00.
REVIEWED BY
J. Gordon Vaeth
At 12:24 a.m. on May 24th 1928, the semi-rigid airship Italia successfully reached and circled the North Pole. Ten hours later, returning to Kings Bay, Spitsbergen, it crashed out of control onto the polar pack, ripping off its control car and leaving ten men stunned and stranded upon the ice. Then, with six crew members still aboard, Italia floated up and away to the north, an aerial derelict doomed never to be seen or heard from again.
Against this background Wilbur Cross masterfully tells one of the most incredible stories this reviewer has ever read. It is a story that excites, as the nine survivors—one died almost immediately from his injuries— fight to live long enough on the drifting ice to be found and rescued. It is a story that inspires, as the great explorer, Roald Amundsen, comes out of retirement and gives his life to help search for the man he detests. And it is a story that angers, as Fascist Italy obstructs the rescue operations and then proceeds methodically with the character assassination of General Umberto Nobile, Italia's commander. As the sub-title indicates, it is a tragic tale and a shameful one.
The hero is Nobile, whose prominence had engendered the enmity of Fascism’s air hero, Italo Balbo, and whose failure with Italia, the wrath of Mussolini. The spiteful defamation of the airshipman by these and other Fascists will disturb the reader and arouse in him a sense of injustice at the example it offers of man’s inhumanity to man, of a government’s corruption and ingratitude.
That Nobile deserves the world’s sympathy rather than its scorn for the Italia fiasco seems unquestionable in the light of the events revealed by author Cross. Yet this reviewer cannot help but wonder to what extent Nobile brought some of his troubles upon himself. Certainly airship people never considered him a very good pilot. The Norwegians said he almost crashed Norge into the ice while flying Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth across the Pole from Spitsbergen to Alaska two years before. Hugo Eckener, the most successful of all dirigible operators, even wrote in his memoirs: “Nobile is a nervous stallion. People like him should stay away from airships.” Like everyone, the General evidently had his faults but never, however, such as to warrant the treatment accorded him by his political enemies in Rome.
At last, thanks to Mr. Cross, the story of Italia and the strange fate of General Nobile has been clarified. He has written it with skill and illustrated it with thirty-five unusual photographs, including some taken aboard Italia and on the ice pack where men unnecessarily had to await rescue for forty-nine days!
This book must be an immense satisfaction to Umberto Nobile, now living in Naples. It is his vindication—and Mr. Cross leaves little doubt that it is both well deserved and very long overdue.
A frequent writer on lighter-than-air subjects and author of the book Graf Zeppelin, Mr. Vaeth served with Navy airship commands during World War II.
BOOK BRIEFS
Marine Salvage Operations
By Edward M. Brady. Cambridge, Maryland: Cornell Maritime Press, 1960. $8.50.
An interesting book on actual ship salvage operations with chapters devoted to types of ship salvage, practical diving, naval architecture, equipment and structures used in salvage, salvage practice, and miscellaneous salvage operations, techniques, and hazards.
Tanker Tonnage of the World 1960
Edited by Leonard G. Fay. New York: John De Graff, Inc., 1960. $12.00.
An excellent annual compilation, including detailed lists of tankers, statistics of world tanker tonnage, and twelve professional articles. Valuable for reference.
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Books marked with a single asterisk (*) are to be found in many ship and station libraries, those with two asterisks (**) may be borrowed from the nearest Navy Auxiliary Library Services Collection, and those with three asterisks (* * *) are available in both ship and station libraries and in loan collections.