One evening in the spring of 1863, a detachment of Union sailors moved stealthily…
Lieutenant Sylvanus Backus was crazy drunk. Stumbling around the quarterdeck of the Mohongo after midnight with a drawn sword, his…
Navy secretary Gideon Welles fretted about the safety of California after the outbreak of war in 1861. The…
By early January 1861, mechanic W. Thomas Morrill and other employees of the Pensacola Navy Yard in Florida were caught in a…