Jack Friend

Sometimes one doesn't need a deep analysis, as a rousing old-fashioned narrative will do. That's what you have here with this account of Adm. David Farragut's greatest action in the Civil War. If nothing else Friend does a good job of setting the place of Mobile in wider strategic considerations, suggesting that an earlier emphasis on shutting down and taking the port might have paid dividends. While any of the complaints I have are fairly minor, Friend's narrative approach of letting the reader know only what the period individual on the scene knew does seem a little forced at times. At the very least I became a bit peeved when the CSS "Tennessee" was described about half a dozen times as being "the most powerful" warship in the world, when it's only about the last time this honorific is thrown out that it's clarified this was a period description used by a U.S. Army officer. Just for the record, Britain and France each had serveral ocean-going ironclads that would easily have put the "Tennessee" to shame, never mind the best of the USN monitors. I know this is a minor point, but it became an irritant after awhile.… (meer)