As the U.S. Merchant Marine has declined over the last several decades, so too has the memory of the countless acts of unflinching courage and patriotism performed by its civilian officers and seamen in America`s armed struggles. Scouring long-out-of-print books and dusty archives, veteran writer and merchant marine officer Bruce Felknor has collected the most dramatic of these stories from all of America`s wars through World War II into a single comprehensive illustrated volume. Excerpts from such authors as Winston Churchill, Samuel Eliot Morison, and Lowell Thomas are combined with eyewitness accounts -- many never before published -- by heroes, victims, and survivors. Those profiled include Capt. Thomas Boyle and the crew of his Baltimore schooner, Capt. Jonathan Haraden and the crew of his privateer that captured British merchantmen three times their size and fire power during the Revolutionary War, as well as some of the nearly six thousand merchant mariners killed or drowned in World War II. Felknor`s scene-setting essays and clarifying notes, drawn from ship`s logs, shipping records, official archives, and his own wartime service, provide fascinating background and context, and offer intriguing comparisons of the men, conditions, pay, and performance across the decades. Such valuable information casts new light on the nation`s rich maritime legacy. The phenomenal record of Confederate raider Raphael Semmes is described in colorful detail by members of the merchant crew of his infamous Alabama and by his Union victims. Here too are the thrilling, triumphant stories of the armed merchantmen Silver Shell, Norlina, and Navajo, each of which destroyed German U-boats in 1917 afterhours-long pitched battles. Containing the most previously unpublished material, the section on World War II recounts devastating attacks on merchant convoys by U-boat wolfpacks, kamikazes, dive bombers, and even a flaming Junkers-88 bomber. There are also chilling stories of men in lifeb
