The book is:
"Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy" by Ian W. Toll
From the Amazon review (4.7 of 5 stars with over 450 reviews!):
Not confined to sea battles, Toll's history of the U.S. Navy's formative decades, from the mid-1790s to the War of 1812, rounds out affairs by anchoring the nascent navy to its financial supports. Navies are not inexpensive, and the costs of building and maintaining ships appear lightly but persistently in Toll's narrative. It centers on the first vessels purpose-built for the navy, the half-dozen frigates of which the USS Constitution (moored in Boston today) is the last survivor. Besides money, their construction involved politics; the Federalists favored the naval program (creating the Department of the Navy in 1798), while Jefferson's parsimonious Republicans were more diffident. Toll is as insightful about the essential domestic and diplomatic background as he is with his dramatizations of the naval engagements of the new navy, which produced a crop of national heroes such as Stephen Decatur. The maritime strategy and the highly developed sense of officers' honor, which influenced where particular battles occurred, emerge clearly in this fluent account. That number of 6 frigates is a paltry figure compared to the English Navy, which numbered over 600 warships worldwide at the time (if I remember right). That was also the challenge for England though, as their ships were spread out all over the map, getting enough seamen was tough to do (which brought about the history of pressed seamen) and a "mad little man in France" kept the Brits pretty busy too.
To counter all that, instead of building 36-gun frigates, the U.S. built longer 44-gun vessels -- and length equals speed in boat design. That difference in hull length, sailing speed -- and of course the higher number and poundage of the guns -- all proved to be a decisive decision by the newborn U.S. Navy.
While this book does get into the politics of the era, as noted in the above text, I found it to be a fascinating read, and there's just enough naval action to keep you reading more.
* * * Reply here, and I'll pull a name out on Sunday Night * * *
Then the winner can PM me their mailing address.
Old No7
ps: Oh, the back cover and about 15 pages of the reference list at the back were eaten by my yellow lab!
But I've repaired it the best I could, and none of the actual text was lost.Luckily, "That too, did pass..." so my lab is doing fine...
