Naval & Military Studies
The Civil War Spreads Overseas
Ask your average passerby to name a Civil War battle or theater, and you are likely to get a response like Gettysburg, Antietam, or Fort Sumter. Restrict that same passerby to naming a naval battle or theater, and the response might be ...
The Running of the Forts
This week marks 158 years since the Union's Civil War victory at the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip. These names might not conjure the same images as names like Gettysburg, Antietam, or Bull Run - if they conjure any images at ...
The U. S. Exploring Expedition in Antarctica
On January 19, 1840, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, USN, commander of the United States South Seas Exploring Expedition, claimed for his country the discovery of Antarctica after sighting land from the sloop-of-war USS Vincennes, the flagship of the ...
USNA Founder: William Chauvenet
William Chauvenet Today is Founders’ Day at the Naval Academy - the 174th anniversary of the school’s establishment. Those wishing to learn more about the academy’s early history should ...
When Battleships Had Wheels
As the United States entered World War I in April 1917, questions swirled as to just what role the U.S. would play. With the Battle of Jutland already a year in the past and only a single division of American battleships detailed to the ...
When Helium (Briefly) Ruled the Skies
On August 8, 1924, the airship USS Shenandoah (ZR-1) successfully executed its first mooring at sea to a mast affixed to the oiler USS Patoka (AO-9). The U.S. Navy's first rigid airship, Shenandoah was christened on October 10, 1923, at ...
The Voyage of the Jeannette
Despite centuries of exploration in high northern latitudes, the Arctic Ocean remained a puzzle in the late 1800s. What lay above latitude 71° north? An open polar sea? A land mass to correspond with ...
Copy That: The Midshipman Artwork of Copy Berg
Paging through a box of documents that would come to be known as the Mary A. Marshall Papers, you eventually, and altogether unexpectedly, come across the caricature of a woman smiling up at you while dangling an Army mule from her pearl ...
The Battle of Bunker Hill
The Battle of Bunker Hill, the first major battle of the American Revolution, occurred on June 17, 1775. In April, colonial militia and British regulars had clashed at Lexington and Concord, bringing Great Britain and her American ...
D-Day - 75th Anniversary Commemoration
Today is the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-day, the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France during World War II. In commemoration, presented below is a portion of a hand-drawn map of the landing beaches at Omaha Beach - specifically the Dog ...
The Battle of Jutland (1916)
May 31, 2016 marked the 100th anniversary of the largest naval engagement of World War I. In the North Sea off the coast of Denmark, the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet, 250 ships and ...