November 5, 2009
Historian to talk about Civil War era ship Nov. 12
Civil War historian Lorraine McConaghy will talk about her new book, Warship under Sail: The USS Decatur in the Pacific West, at 4 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12 in the Peterson Room of Allen Library. The lecture is the tenth in a series sponsored by the Department of History and the UW Press with the support of the Emil and Kathleen Sick Endowment Fund.
Ordered to join the Pacific Squadron in 1854, the sloop of war Decatur sailed from Norfolk, Va, through the Strait of Magellan to Valparaiso, Honolulu, and Puget Sound, then on to San Francisco, Panama, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, while serving in the Pacific until 1859, the
eve of the Civil War. McConaghy presents the ship, its officers, and its crew in a case study
that illuminates the forces shaping America’s antebellum navy and foreign policy in the Pacific, from Vancouver Island to Tierra del Fuego.
One of only five ships in the squadron, the Decatur participated in numerous imperial adventures in the West, enforcing treaties, fighting Indians, suppressing vigilantes, and protecting commerce. With its graceful lines and towering white canvas sails, the ship patrolled the sandy border between ocean and land.
Warship under Sail focuses on four episodes in the Decatur’s Pacific Squadron mission:
- the harrowing journey from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean through the Strait of Magellan
- a Seattle war story that contested American treaties and settlements
- participation with other squadron ships on a U.S. State Department mission to Nicaragua
- more than a year spent anchored off Panama as a hospital ship
In a period of five years, more than 300 men lived aboard ship, leaving a rich record of logbooks, medical and punishment records, correspondence, personal journals, and drawings. McConaghy has mined these records to offer a social history of a warship under sail.
McConaghy is the historian at the Museum of History and Industry. She received her undergraduate degree as well as her master’s and doctorate from the UW.
For more information, see the UW Press Web site or the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest here.
