James Fenimore Cooper
Published: 2015-07-01
Total Pages: 398
Get eBook
Excerpt from The History of the Navy of the United States of America, Vol. 1 of 2 While biographies of naval men are usually replete with interest, on account of the hazards and stirring incidents of the sea, few general records of nautical events have been found to attract attention, beyond the value that is attached to naked facts. If such has been the case with most of the histories of even the marine of Great Britain, a service that admits of the unity and interest that belong to the operations of fleets, still more may it be looked for in the records of the isolated and simpler incidents of a navy like that of the United States. The difficulty of overcoming this great obstacle has been foreseen from the commencement of this work, and some attempts, that are connected with the arrangements of the subject, have been made to obviate it. The writer is far from flattering himself with entire success, for a history of detached combats is, in truth, a series of episodes, the mind scarcely becoming concentrated on one, when it is required to give its attention to another, while the connecting materials, according to the ordinary practice, are merely a dry detail of documents. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.