AWARDS

"If By Sea" received the Samuel Eliot Morison Award from the New York Commandery of the Naval Order of the U.S. in New York City on November 3, 2008. The award is given every year to an "American author, who by his published writings shall have made a substantial contribution to the preservation of the history and traditions of the US Navy".

"If By Sea" has received an Honorable Mention for the prestigious 2009 Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award. "The award is presented each year to the author of the best, newly published work on the American Revolutionary period, combining original scholarship, insight and good writing,......." The committee is also empowered to name additonal awards such as Honorable Mentions..... whenever they deem appropriate".

Best Seller Lists

#5 on the best seller list for the San Francisco Chronicle.

#8 on the best seller list for the Maine Sunday Telegram.

Review

"This is a book for those who like their history braced by serious thinking - and spiced by action. Goerge Daughan makes us realize just how complicated it was for Americans to acquire a navy - and keep one - for the first three decades of our national existence. Simultaneously he grips us with vivid narratives of what these mostly forgotten sailors accomlished."

Thomas Fleming, author of The Perils of Peace: America's Struggle to Survive after Yorktown.

Review

"If By Sea" illuminates the tangles and contested origins of American naval power better than any other book in recent memory. Daughan has a sharp eye for detail as well as a firm grasp of the big picture. His writing combines passionate conviction with a deep knowledge of seamanship in a way reminiscent of Samuel Eliot Morison. This is a book I will read again."

Edwin G Burrows, co-author of Gotham

Review

"If By Sea by George C. Daughan covers the Navy's first forty years with authority, clarity and detail. He puts the famous names - John Paul Jones, Oliver Hazard Perry - in context, while bringing others - including dozens of Revolutionary War figures, hitherto unknown to me - to light. He shows how the military, like any other large organization, lurches and learns over time, from blunders, missed opportunities and general snafu, until those moments when the right men are at headquarters and in the field, and everything gloriously clicks."

Richard Brookhiser, author of George Washington on Leadership and What Would the Founders Do?

More Reviews

Reviews are added below as they come in. In order not to be too repetitive many of the reviews are condensed.

Journal of Southern History, November 1, 2009

If By Sea: The Forging of the American Navy--From the American Revolution to the War of 1812 is really two books. The first (through page 239) is a well-crafted military history of the American Revolution from Lexington and Concord to Yorktown with special emphasis on the role played by naval forces. The second (the next 235 pages) concerns the political argument between advocates and opponents of a standing peacetime American navy from 1783 through the end of America's second war with Britain in 1815. Author George C. Daughan ties these subjects together by showing how the United States struggled to decide what kind of naval force was appropriate to the new nations's needs: a blue-water navy on the British model or a defensive gunboat navy for harbor defense. His answer, curiously, is that the country made the wrong choices both during the Revolution and in the thirty-plus years afterward.

During the Revolution, Daughan contends, the Americans used the Royal Navy as a model to build a Continental navy that proved worse than useless, not only failing in its mission but also squandering scarce resources. It would have been far better, he argues, if the Revolutionary generation had opted for a swarm of row-gallerys that could have cooperated with General George Washington's army at Boston and New York. "The real problem," Daughan writes, "was not that the patriots could not produce an effective navy, but that they created the wrong kind" (p235). Then they did it again. Confronted with the danger of being drawn into the war in Europe after 1793, the United States relied on a gunboat navy when, Daughan insists, it should have been building blue-water warships.

The book has many strengths. Daughan is entirely successful in providing requisite background and context for events and issues. His history of the Revolutionary War is so thorough that a novice would have no trouble following both the events and the subsequent policy arguments. In addition to providing a vivid narrative of the sea actions, Daughan outlines land comapaigns to show how naval forces might have played a role. Moreover, this context includes insightful assessments of both American and British political and military decision makers.

Another strength is the prose itself, which is lively, even gripping at times. Daughan's thoughful introductions to the major historical characters quickly involve the reader in the narrative. And Daughan does not limit himself to the usual suspects. While he includes a sprightly account of John Paul Jones's 1779 fight with the HMS Serapis in the North Sea, he concludes that "suburb leaders," like Jones and others, "were wasted in largely meaningless, although at times spectacular and heroic, missions" (p.76). The British naval theater commander, Lord Richard Howe, who, according to Daughan, "carried out his orders selectively," plays a larger role in the story than does Jones (p.165).

In the second half of the book Daughan contributes to the ongoing rehabilitation of President John Adams, portraying him as both realistic and courageous (though Daughan has nothing but scorn for Thomas Jefferson, whom he depicts as not only averse to war but so horrified by the prospect as to behave cravenly). If Jefferson survived a French threat to Louisiana and a war with the Barbary powers. Daughan concludes, then it was becouse he was lucky rather than good. Daughan describes Jefferson as "pusillanimous" in his relations with Britian adopting a policy of economic coercion that "invited contempt" (p. 384). These passionate arguments invite a response and will perhaps reinvigorate the debate over Jefferson and early American naval policy.

Craig L Symonds

U.S. Naval Academy