In his foreword to this biography about a great friend, Herman Wouk describes the book as "the unadorned truth about . . . a decidedly human gentleman with human failings, more than balanced by rare willpower, brainpower, and humor." A maverick with less than reverential views of the navy that was his life for more than forty years, Gallery was a man of strong character and sharp wit who never shied from controversies and who became known as a formidable opponent. Through the years he repeatedly took courageous public stands on matters of naval policy, including the "Revolt of the Admirals," that nearly cost him his career. 
Gallery is best known for his dramatic capture of a German submarine (U-505) on the high seas, the first such taking of an enemy vessel since the War of 1812, and for his forceful support of aircraft carriers after the war. He also is known for his success as a writer, and the best of his work makes up a significant part of this book--excerpts from magazine articles, short stories, and letters that are incorporated into this biography by two English professors who vividly portray the highly original man behind the deeds and the writings. 
Readers will learn about each stage of Gallery's life, from his days at the Naval Academy when he called the Secretary of the Navy's son a draft dodger--and then knocked him out--to his humorous stories about navy life and his final essays and books on such controversial subjects as the Pueblo incident. They will also come to appreciate his public relations successes in getting U-505 moved to Chicago, in sponsoring baseball competitions, and in establishing the navy's steel band.

Admiral Dan Gallery: The Life and Wit of a Navy Original

Biographies & Memoirs

Daniel V. Gallery

C. Herbert Gilliland

Robert Shenk

Leaders & Notable People

Naval Inst Pr

In 1844 the USS Yorktown sailed from New York, as part of the U.S. Navy's newly established African Squadron, to interdict slave ships leaving the African coast. Aboard the sloop of war, Master's Mate John C. Lawrence, an educated New Yorker in his early twenties, kept a private journal describing what happened during the extraordinary two-year voyage and his reactions to the events he witnessed. His frank and vivid observations take the reader into a world known to few. Through Lawrence's eyes we see the men of the Yorktown in action and encounter many other nineteenth-century figures either engaged in or attempting to combat the slave trade. Among the cast of characters are an infamous slave ship captain, an abolitionist slave-owning minister, the Yorktown's admirable skipper, Liberian colonists, and native Africans. In a final entry we bear witness to Lawrence's nearly overwhelming confrontation with the horrors of slavery as he records his experiences aboard the captured slaver Pons on the way to Liberia with more than nine hundred slaves.
 In addition to Lawrence's never-before published journal, this book includes material that narrates parts of the slavery story Lawrence could not tell. C. Herbert Gilliland sets the journal in historical context to give readers a full understanding of events as they unfolded in the mid-1840s. Although there have been many books written on the slave trade and many others on life in the antebellum Navy, no other book has succeeded so well at bringing to life the issues of America's role in the Middle Passage while exposing the thoughts of a nineteenth-century naval officer.

Voyage to a Thousand Cares: Master's Mate Lawrence With the African Squadron, 1844-1846

Business & Money

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Books by C. Herbert Gilliland