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(More customer reviews)In most Civil War's histories, Farragut is mentioned but in passing. So, despite spending a lifetime reading military histories, and having a
considerable professional military education, I knew little of Admiral
Farragut before reading this tiny pocketbook.
In a book that took me a single afternoon to read, I managed to learn
about David Farragut as a man and as a Admiral.
As a Admiral, Farrught was strikingly modern in his view of military
operations. Logistics, detail planning (even table top war gaming ) and damage control emphasis in his fleet (which he considered as important as gunnery ability) army-naval cooperation, all was not only important but simply vital to him. He was also a man who always took great pains that his men were taken well care of.
But what interested me more, was the man himself. Schneller in this tiny book
managed to successfully show the kindness and humility of the man. To site but one example, his first wife struggled against illness during their entire sixteen year marriage. Farrught showed showing devotion that impressed the women of their town, one of them remarking "When Captain Farragut dies, he should have a monument reaching to the skies made by every wife in the city contributing a stone to it"
Schneller managed to protray Farraugut as a deeply religious man who could pray for guidance in the heat of a battle, who was a devoted family man (he later remarried and had a son) quick with genuine praise and a smile and cry over the bodies of his sailors. Yet he was at the same time the idealized figure of a 19th century firebrand fighting Admiral ("Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead!") but a fighting Admiral who understood and ran military operations in a very modern sense. This is a pocketbook well worth the few hours it takes to read.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Farragut : America's First Admiral (Brassey's Military Profiles)
'Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" With those words, David Glasgow Farragut led a fleet of Union warships into Mobile Bay, where he achieved one of the most celebrated victories in American naval history. What separates the good officer from the great one, writes Robert J. Schneller, Jr., is the courage to make difficult decisions in the heat of combat despite personal fear or the awful realization that some men will have to pay in blood. Farragut's personal attributes, such as his sharp intelligence and confidence, and his careful preparations, keen situational awareness, and courage to act boldly at decisive moments produced the Union's most important naval victories and resulted in his appointment as the U.S. Navy's first admiral. These qualities also made Farragut the greatest naval officer, Union or Confederate, of the Civil War and, indeed, the most outstanding U.S. naval officer of the nineteenth century.
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