Bøker av Chuck Veit

Here is the unsung and all but forgotten story of a major failed mission of the American Civil War. Undertaken at the request of the President, the Navy dedicated a dozen gunboats (including the ironclads Monitor and Galena) and an untried secret weapon to the destruction of the railroad bridges connecting Petersburg with Richmond. Success would not attend their efforts, but the attempt was well worth the risk. Had it succeeded, the naval expedition might well have brought about or at least hastened the end of the Rebellion. That most of the squadron escaped unscathed was due entirely to the battles raging on the peninsula to the north. Southern leadership was necessarily focused on the Union army sitting but a few miles from their capitol--and missed the opportunity to capture or destroy a dozen of the Yankee ships on the James River.

A Lively Little Battle presents new research and a new perspective on the Battle of Fort Butler at Donaldsonville, Louisiana on 28 June 1863--including the plan of the fort, a never before published eyewitness account, and numerous newspaper articles never before factored into the story. The books seeks to meld all of these sources into a cohesive tale that finally explains the engagement.

Based on copious documentation and eyewitness accounts, this is the long-awaited book on the U.S. Navy's first submarine and its designer, Brutus de Villeroi, whose long career of accomplishments as a respected civil engineer was to be capped by his greatest creation, a working submersible for the navy of his adopted nation, with which it could sink the feared rebel ironclad, Virginia. The project did not go as planned, however, and it is difficult to explain the actions of the aging French inventor--actions that led to his dismissal. His boat would be taken over by the Federal Navy and become known as Alligator.

At the beginning of the epic siege of Sebastopol in 1854, Russian defenders blocked the entrance to the harbor by sinking several lines of older sailing ships at the mouth of the bay. One year later, as the Czar's forces abandoned the town, the remainder of the Black Sea Fleet, along with a number of transports and merchant vessels, were also scuttled. All told, nearly a hundred ships carpeted the bottom of the bay when British, French and Turkish forces occupied the port. English engineers pronounced the job of raising the hulks an impossibility, and were content to let them rot-a slow process that would ensure the strategic port remained unusable for years to come. But the Russians had a plan, one that involved a young American who, only a few years before, had managed another salvage project deemed "impossible by human means" by "professional" European divers.

This is the Civil War as Americans on the home front read about it: through the newspapers. No academic analysis long after the dust has settled, no interpretation from 150 years later-just the raw stories that defined and described American society in the turbulent years 1861-1865. It is a period not unlike our own . . .

This is the Civil War as Americans on the home front read about it: through the newspapers. No academic analysis long after the dust has settled, no interpretation from 150 years later-just the raw stories that defined and described American society in the turbulent years 1861-1865. It is a period not unlike our own . . .

This is the Civil War as Americans on the home front read about it: through the newspapers. No academic analysis long after the dust has settled, no interpretation from 150 years later-just the raw stories that defined and described American society in the turbulent years 1861-1865. It is a period not unlike our own . . .

This is the Civil War as Americans on the home front read about it: through the newspapers. No academic analysis long after the dust has settled, no interpretation from 150 years later--just the raw stories that defined and described American society in the turbulent years 1861-1865. It is a period not unlike our own . . .