The Maritime History Channel By The North American Society For Oceanic History

Edward J. Marolda joined the NASOH Video/Podcast to discuss his new book, Admirals Under Fire: U.S. Naval Leaders and the Vietnam War."  That work focuses on five US Navy Admirals - Don Felt, Ulysses Simpson Grant Sharp, Thomas Moorer, Elmo Zumwalt, and James Holloway.   Dr. Marolda discussed their roles as they related to not just the execution of the Vietnam War, but also the political and social issues that were facing the Navy and the country in that time period.    

He served as the Acting Director of Naval History and Senior Historian of the Navy. In 2017 the Naval Historical Foundation honored him with its Commodore Dudley W. Knox Naval History Lifetime Achievement Award. He has authored, coauthored, or edited nine works on the U.S. Navy's experience in Vietnam. In support of the U.S. Naval Institute's Oral History Program, he has interviewed Vietnam veterans and retired admirals Stanley R. Arthur and Joseph W. Prueher. At Georgetown University, Dr. Marolda has taught courses on the Cold War in the Far East and the Vietnam War. He holds degrees in history from Pennsylvania Military College (BA), Georgetown University (MA), and George Washington University (PhD).  

By Sea, Air, and Land

The U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War series (9 volumes edited by Dr. Marolda)

Combat at Close Quarters: An Illustrated History of the U.S. Navy in the Vietnam War

US Naval Institute Articles and Books by Ed Marolda:  

Dr. William Thiesen is the Atlantic-area historian for the U.S. Coast Guard and author of Industrializing American Shipbuilding: The Transformation of Ship Design and Construction, 1820–1920 and Cruise of the Dashing Wave: Rounding Cape Horn in 1860 (University Press of Florida, 2009 and 2010, respectively).    

On the NASOH Video/Podcast he discussed the U.S. Coast Guard's role in enforcing Prohibition, commonly referred to as the Rum War.  This included discussions on the tactics and technologies employed by the Coast Guard, including new cutters and aircraft, and the use of intelligence.  This was the largest expansion in the history of the Coast Guard up to that date and had a significant impact on their ability to prosecute the anti-submarine campaign and amphibious warfare in the Second World War.   

 USCG Historian's Office Page:  

Coast Guard Compass - the Official Blog of the Coast Guard:  

Articles by Dr. Thiesen in US Naval Institute Naval History:  

Articles by Dr. Thiesen in Maritime Executive

Cutterman Frank Newcomb and the Rescue of USS Winslow

Revenue Cutter C. W. Lawrence—Taming America’s Maritime Frontier  

The Overland Relief Expedition–Saving Whalers 120 Years Ago Above the Arctic Circle

30 Years After the Exxon Valdez Disaster—The Coast Guard’s Environmental Protection Mission

First Lady Harriet Rebecca Lane and the Cutters That Have Borne Her Name

Cutterman Hugh George Campbell: Master and Commander of Super-Cutter Eagle and Forgotten Hero of the Quasi War

Coast Guardsman Robert Goldman, and the Kamikaze Attack on LST-66

INDUSTRIALIZING AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING: THE TRANSFORMATION OF SHIP DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION, 1820–1920

The Coast Guard Museum:  

Donald Canney, The Rum War: The US Coast Guard and Prohibition

Robert Johnson, Guardians of the Sea: History of the United States Coast Guard 1915 to Present https://books.google.com/books/about/Guardians_of_the_Sea.html?id=8ILfAAAAMAAJ  

The Wisconsin Maritime Museum

The controversy surrounding the military naming items after Confederates have come to the forefront following the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter Movement.  The US Army is examining whether to change the name of ten bases that honor Confederate generals.    

For the United States Navy, this matter is present on the grounds of the US Naval Academy and in the fleet.  At the Academy, the residence of the commandant is named after Franklin Buchanan and a Ticonderoga-class cruiser is named for Confederate victory in the Civil War, USS Chancellorsville.    

NASOH examined Matthew Fontaine Maury, the Pathfinder of the Sea.  His statue is featured in Richmond on Monument Avenue, along with Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and JEB Stuard - the first two had ballistic missile submarines named after them.  Maury's name is affixed to an engineering building at the Academy and in 2016 a new survey ship was placed in service as USNS Maury for the Military Sealift Command.    

NASOH brought together four historians with an expertise in Matthew Fountaine Maury and the Nineteenth century US Navy.   

Dr. Penelope Hardy with University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and a graduate of the US Naval Academy.   

Margaret Stack, a doctoral candidate at the University of Connecticut  

Dr. Michael Verney of Drury University

Dr. Jason Smith of University of Southern Connecticut  

The video at the beginning was courtesy of YouTube:  

Heather Haley is a doctoral candidate who focuses on twentieth-century U.S. social and military history. Her primary research identifies the ways in which citizenship rights and military service intersected in the Cold War U.S. military. In her dissertation project, “Unsuitable and Incompatible: Ensign Vernon “Copy” Berg, Bisexuality, and the Cold War U.S. Navy,” Haley chronicles the incongruities in official policy between the Civil Service Commission (CSC) and the armed forces as it related to the compatibility of homosexuals—a catch-all that includes gay men and women and bisexuals—as federal employees and as active duty and retired service members. This research has received financial support from the Adams Center for Military History & Strategic Analysis at the Virginia Military Institute, the Society for Military History, and the History Department at Auburn University.

Haley also received her Public History certification in 2018. With the oral history skills she honed as a student of the Auburn University Public History Program, Heather initiated the Social Justice and Women’s Rights Oral History Project. As the project lead, she conducts oral histories and collects ephemera from the students, faculty, staff, administrators, and alumni of Auburn University who participated in local, regional, and national marches for the advocacy of women’s rights, science- and evidence-based policy, and social justice. She is currently partnering with the Ralph Brown Draughton Library Special Collections and Archives to permanently display the collection’s audio and visual contents online, making the materials accessible to researchers. The project has been generously funded through a Women's Studies Program grant, the Samia I. Spencer Creative Mentorship Award.

Haley holds a Master’s degree in History from Texas State University. While under the direction of Dr. Ellen Tillman, Heather's thesis, “Strategic Surprise: The Dispersal of Agent Orange in Vietnam and Korea in the late-1960s,” received the distinction of Outstanding Master’s Thesis in the Humanities and Fine Arts from the College of Liberal Arts.

Preble Hall Podcast:

Books and Sites referenced in the Video:  

Margot Canady, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691149936/the-straight-state  

Lillian Faderman, The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle

George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/george-chauncey/gay-new-york/9781541699212/  

USS Little Rock  

Meenu Rabecca is a first year PhD student in the Department of History at Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kerala, India. As an ardent researcher and beginner in the Dutch (VOC) history of Malabar and South East Asia, her doctoral research investigates the VOC’s interactions and manoeuvres in Cochin in the south west coast of India. She is presently in the early stages of her research.                                                                   

She holds an MPhil degree in history from Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit and Master’s Degree in History from School of Social science, Pondicherry Central University, India. She has received the ASPIRE fellowship (2019 – 2020) by Kerala government. The project titled “Papers of Power: Locating Cochin in Dutch (VOC) treaty making politics, (1662 – 1684) - A study based on Dutch and Malayalam treaties” is currently going on in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) New Delhi, India under the supervision of Professor Pius Malekandathil (JNU). She has presented various papers in historical conferences in Kerala. The latest is the paper titled “So Lang son en maan duuart” (As long as the sun and moon lasts): Exploring the Sanskrit Influence on Dutch treaties in South East Asia’ in the international Conference on ‘Sanskrit in Medieval India: Retrieving Lost Traditions’ at Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit Kalady from 10th to 12th December 2019.             

Recommended source sites:

The introduction to the North American Society for Oceanic History (NASOH) Podcast with its host, Dr. Sal Mercogliano. 

Dr. John Beeler of the University of Alabama discusses his paper, Britain, Spain, the United States and the Cuban Slave Trade during the American Civil War.  He also discussed his research in Admiral Alexander Milne of the Royal Navy and the field of Maritime History and research.  

John Beeler bio: https://history.ua.edu/people/john-f-beeler/   

British Naval Policy in the Gladstone-Disraeli Era, 1866-1880: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804729816/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0  

John Beeler WorldCat:  http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n97078743/