A History of the Confederate Navy. By Raimondo Luraghi. Trans. Paolo E. Coletta. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996. Pp. xx, 517). 

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Southern soldiers resigned their commissions and headed South to join their new nation’s army. The same was true of the navy, but many more sailors remained loyal to the Union because the South had no naval infrastructure and had more officers available than available positions. In his A History of the Confederate Navy, Raimondo Luraghi explores the creation of the Confederate Navy and its exploits during the war. Luraghi seeks to answer how an agricultural society with little industry created a navy that successfully confronted the U.S. Navy and why nobody has written on this subject.

Using Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory as a centerpiece to the entire work, Luraghi’s study begins at the onset of the Civil war and ends with the surrender of the C.S.S. Shenandoah. As secretary, Mallory’s Mallory wanted to center naval strategy on four things: commerce raiding, which came to symbolize Southern naval strategy, the use of powerful rifled guns to render a wooden fleet useless, an armored fleet, and technological advances such as torpedoes and submarines. Mallory was a forward-thinking man; a characteristic he displayed when heading the Senate’s Committee on Naval Affairs before the war. Mallory faced a daunting task but approached it with zeal. Possessing an eye for talent, Mallory consistently put subordinates in positions which were conducive to their abilities and maximized their potential. However, he faced long odds due to the South’s lack of industrial ability.

Large amounts of raw materials were needed to implement Mallory’s overall strategy. The South’s industrial complexes could not handle them all, and agents, such as James Bulloch and Matthew Maury, were dispatched to Europe in order to contract ships in Britain and France. Though the South contained raw materials, mines were lacking and those that existed were not always efficient. The Tredegar Iron works in Richmond was the only place that could produce iron plates in the correct size for armor and very large guns. Copper, iron, wood, and coal all had to be gathered for ships, and Confederate industry had to develop to produce these for ships. Though lagging industrially, the Confederacy initially held a technological advantage over the Union navy.

The launch of the ironclad C.S.S. Virginia marked a new age in naval warfare, and its subsequent battle with the U.S.S Monitor showed how obsolete wooden ships had become. The technological advances of armor plate and large rifled guns, innovations pushed by Mallory, made the Confederacy’s naval forces competitive against the Union. In addition, the employment of torpedoes, commando raids, and submarines helped give the Confederacy a fighting chance against the blockade and made sailors wary of naval operations without army support. Due to the lack of industrial strength, ingenuity and cunning were needed to strengthen naval forces.

The Confederacy’s commerce raiders, such as the Alabama and Florida, played a crucial role in naval matters as well. They provided a distinct psychological boost to the Confederacy and wreaked havoc with Union shipping. They too provided a glimpse into the future of naval warfare as the German wolf packs of World War I and II followed their example. Mostly outfitted in Britain, the commerce raiders created tension between the Union and Britain, eventually leading Britain to seize several ships being built for the Confederacy. Luraghi defends the use of the raiders and their abilities, though they failed to alleviate pressure from the blockade.

Though unsuccessful in breaking the Union blockade, Luraghi argues that Confederate naval efforts were important and contributed to the Confederacy’s ability to maintain its borders. The main problem lay in the Confederacy’s lack of industry and the overwhelming industrial strength of the Union. Most of the Confederacy’s ships were either sunk by their own captains to avoid capture or not completely finished, leading Luraghi to argue that the navy remained largely undefeated.

For almost thirty years, Luraghi combed archives in America in Europe in order to find the necessary records to write this work. Since most of the Confederacy naval records were destroyed, he was forced to rely on these records from all over the world. Focusing more on the logistical aspects of the Confederate navy and its creation, Luraghi has written a wonderful history of the Confederate navy and its struggles and successes against long odds.

Texas Christian University                                                                                       Blake Hill

A History of the Confederate Navy. By Raimondo Luraghi. Trans. Paolo E. Coletta. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996.

            At the outbreak of the American Civil War a country divided in two had but one mighty navy which, for the most part, remained loyal to the parent Union. This left the fledgling Confederacy defenseless against one of the most modern sea-faring forces in the world. In order to counter this Union advantage the rebels had to create from scratch a navy which could counter the United States Navy - but how could a primarily agricultural nation come together and create and effective naval fighting force? This is the question that Raimondo Luraghi sets out to answer in his thorough volume, A History of the Confederate Navy. For Luraghi, the Confederacy successfully achieved this endeavor through an innovative naval strategy.

            Unlike within the army, the United States Navy lost very few officers when the South seceded. Out of those who left, a small but seemingly competent naval affairs committee came into existence. Upon ascending to the presidency, Jefferson Davis promoted Stephen Russell Mallory to Secretary of the Navy. Mallory, a forward thinking senator with naval experience, chose a combination of traditional elements and innovation as the key to Confederate naval strategy.  The navy was always in the shadow of the army, but still the government expected the fledgling service to protect its shores from the ever tightening Union blockade.  Procurement of iron, cannon, and even timber remained unsteady throughout the war. As noted in many studies, along with this one, the Confederate industrial complex paled in comparison to even that of some of the larger Northern states. This disadvantage was repeated in shipbuilding facilities and transportation lines to critical naval stores regions. Not only did the Confederacy have to build new ships, it had to create a naval infrastructure from scratch.

            Mallory originally set out with a four-fold strategy. Commerce raiding, the second most famous activity of the Confederate States Navy (C.S.N.), became the initial backbone of the seagoing force. The creation of new naval guns which could render wooden fleets useless and armoring the fleet in order to become invulnerable to Union fire were the second and third parts of Mallory’s strategy. Lastly, the use of submarine warfare became the final doctrine in the South’s naval strategy.

            Luraghi zealously defends the efficiency of the confederate commerce raiding; although without adequate numbers, one has a hard time switching their opinion to Luraghi’s from that of the dean of naval history, Alfred Thayer Mahan. The latter insisted that commerce raiding had little effect during the Civil war. Still, the C.S.N. put together an impressive effort in the sea lanes of the world. Mostly outfitted from British sea ports, which the government eventually found illegal, these raiders captured many American trade vessels, but did little to help relieve the blockade.

            Strategically, in order to survive the Confederacy needed to break the blockade and open up commerce. This fell on the technologically advanced ironclad program.  Unfortunately, only about thirty of these beasts were put into the water, compared to more than sixty that entered the Union fleet. However, the C.S.N. did get the drop on the United States Navy (U.S.N.) for a short while in 1862. Pushing its ironclads into service before the Union could, the Confederacy dominated inland waters during this period.  The well documented battle between the U.S.N.’s Monitor and the C.S.S. Virginia would show the world that a new naval age had arrived. Additionally, the C.S.S. Hunly became the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel.

Luraghi, as many historians before him, concludes that in the end it was the superior industrial complex of the Union which did in the Confederacy.  Despite this, the author believes that the Confederacy had a successful naval effort. He states that the C.S.N remained virtually undefeated, and that most ships were destroyed by their own crews rather than taken by the U.S.N.  For Luraghi, the C.S.N. did its job effectively; it defended its sea coasts from maritime invasion. This is somewhat true, but it seems that only Mallory cared about this naval objective. Most citizens and the government thought that the Navy failed its main task – the breaking of the blockade.

Luraghi, a native of Italy, spent almost thirty years researching this book. He visited over fifty archives, and since the naval records of the Confederacy had been burned before the fall of Richmond, he had to arduous task of compiling confederate records from all over the world. It had two editions in Italy before the Naval Institute Press picked it up, and this is a good translation. Although a little sentimental towards the C.S.N., Luraghi’s history is a strong addition to Civil War scholarship.

Daniel Vogel                                                                                       Texas Christian University

A History of the Confederate Navy. By Raimondo Luraghi. Trans. Paolo E. Coletta. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996.

      During the American Civil War, no other Southern branch of service confronted such difficult circumstances as the Confederate States navy. The Confederacy, challenged not only by the modern and powerful fleets of the U.S. navy, also struggled against the woeful industrial and transportation resources of the South to build surprisingly effective, and in some cases technologically revolutionary, maritime forces. Against incredible odds, the often overlooked Confederate navy distinguished itself in a number of desperate encounters against the Union armada, which, despite eventually resulting in defeat, forever transformed naval warfare. In A History of the Confederate Navy, noted naval historian Raimondo Luraghi provides an insightful account of the fleet from its early inception and construction to the final surrender of the commerce raider Shenandoah in November 1865, the last Confederate military force to capitulate at the end of the war.

     The Italian historian Luraghi conducted an amazing twenty seven years of research for A History of the Confederate Navy, consulting an impressive amount of primary sources concerning Confederate naval operations and organization. Due to almost total wartime destruction of the Confederate Naval Archives, Luraghi compiled his research almost completely from other firsthand sources that dealt with the Southern flotilla, which constitutes an incredible accomplishment. As he admits, the lengthy project required visits to “almost fifty archives and repositories, situated in four different countries, including the United States. I had to cross the ocean from Europe to the United States more than forty times, spending in this country, all in all, more than six years” (xii).

      The Confederate navy, forced to fight against the overwhelming numerical and industrial superiority of its opponent, relied heavily on remarkable technological innovations to wage the war at sea. The most famous of these include the revolutionary ironclads Virginia and Arkansas, the pioneering submarine Hunley, as well as the effective and groundbreaking use of commerce raiding, torpedo boats, mines, and commando raids. The infamous Confederate commerce raiders, most notably the Alabama, were particularly successful in seriously damaging the Union economy and forcing the North to reassign crucial blockading warships to hunt down the elusive Southern warships. While the celebrated ironclads and submarines succeeded in temporarily challenging the Union navy for control of the sea, the severe industrial limitations of the Confederacy and the early loss of irreplaceable construction facilities at Nashville, Memphis, and most importantly New Orleans greatly restricted the efficiency and number of ironclads that could be constructed and employed. Far more valuable were the cost effective and dangerous mines and torpedoes that damaged or sank numerous Federal ships and were a serious defensive obstacle that threatened the U.S. navy until the end of the war. The Confederate navy benefited from the skill of several talented and resourceful officers and personal, including the Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory, who was one of only two Confederate cabinet ministers to maintain their original assignments during the entire war, and created astoundingly extraordinary manufacturing centers such as the Columbus Naval Works. The accomplishments of this too often forgotten branch of the Confederate military reverberated throughout the world, and greatly influenced such future naval conflicts as World Wars I and II.

     Ultimately, the vast industrial and monetary superiority of the North overcame the small but inventive Southern navy. Luraghi concludes that the Confederate Navy was one of the most valuable military forces serving on either side in the war, as “for four years it protected the rear of the Southern armies fighting on several fronts and contributed substantially to retaining control of port cities through which vital supplies arrived for these armies. In the end, it was the collapse of the land fronts that directly or indirectly caused defeat” (346). Although vanquished from the seas, the Confederate navy earned an innovative and influential reputation in naval history, and Luraghi’s work delivers the critical analysis and detail that it deserves.

Than Dossman

A History of the Confederate Navy. By Raimondo Luraghi. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996, 514 p.

           How did the Confederate States of America build an advanced and sophisticated navy?  That a nation of rural farmers and planters who lacked a serious industrial base was able to construct an innovative navy that contained submarines, torpedo boats, ironclads, and the precursor to modern day commandos or Navy Seals is the driving focus of Luraghi’s work. The text is a narrative in scope like most Civil War histories and lacks a true thesis. The author’s main mission is to place the Confederate naval experience in the context of the military and naval evolution in the industrial age.

          Due to the nature of the subject, Luraghi’s coverage is very broad. He focuses primarily on Confederate naval strategy, operations, technology, and the blunders. The author also covers warship construction, financing the navy and keeping it afloat, diplomacy, and the notion that many of the Southern leaders saw the Confederate Navy as more or less an auxiliary force and second in nature to the Confederate Army.  The lives of the common naval personnel are not contained within the text. Luraghi details certain stories on the officers and their actions and he is highly impressed with the Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Stephen R. Mallory.  The author is in awe by Mallory’s ability to build a Confederate navy in the face of all the glaring inadequacies of the Confederacy and his treatment of Mallory shows this.  Luraghi also comes back to the industrial weaknesses of the Confederacy yet pointing out that the Southern navy’s technological advances are quite stunning.  He argues that these advances actually led the formation of Confederate naval strategy and planning.

          The prevailing notion of Confederate naval strategy is that the strategic objective of the South throughout the war was to break the Union blockade.  Luraghi argues that, from the perspective of Mallory, the initial strategy was to defeat the Union navy by means of “technical surprise”.(69) This surprise consisted of armored ships, rifled naval guns, commerce destroying raiders, and submarine weapons. The loss of New Orleans, the upper Mississippi, and the first five ironclads built by the Confederacy led Mallory to shift his strategy from technical surprise to defense against Union amphibious operations.

          Contained in this broad survey of the Confederate navy are some of the more memorable episodes in its short but lively history.  Luraghi chronicles the birth and career of perhaps the most feared ship of the nineteenth-century, the C.S.S. Alabama.  Luraghi’s archival research in England, France, and Italy adds depth to the studies of Confederate high-seas raiding.  The C.S.S. Arkansas running the gauntlet into Vicksburg is also here.  The author details the adventure of Lieutenant Charles W. Read who began raiding the Northern coastline with a ship of sails, in the age of steamers.  Another interesting facet of the history of the Confederate navy is their use of commandos.  These commandos launched surprise attacks on Union fortifications, ships, and in one instance succeeded in capturing a passenger ship on Lake Erie with the purpose of eventually capturing a Union warship on the lake. 

          A very interesting and informative effort.  The prose reads well considering it is an English translation of an Italian text.  Whether this is due to Luraghi’s writing ability or the translator’s does not matter.  What does matter, is that the author’s narrative is grand in scope and very well done.  Anyone interested in Civil War naval history and naval history in general, should not hesitate to read this work.

Halen J. Watkins