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eBook
USS Constellation on the Dismal Coast
2013
Overview
Today the twenty-gun sloop USS Constellation is a floating
museum in Baltimore Harbor; in 1859 it was an emblem of the global
power of the American sailing navy. When young William E. Leonard
boarded the Constellation as a seaman for what proved to
be a twenty-month voyage to the African coast, he began to compose
a remarkable journal.
Sailing from Boston, the Constellation, flagship of the
U.S. African Squadron, was charged with the interception and
capture of slave-trading vessels illegally en route from Africa to
the Americas. During the Constellation's deployment, the
squadron captured a record number of these ships, liberating their
human cargo and holding the captains and crews for criminal
prosecution. At the same time, tensions at home and in the squadron
increased as the American Civil War approached and erupted in April
1861.
Leonard recorded not only historic events but also fascinating
details about his daily life as one of the nearly 400-member crew.
He saw himself as not just a diarist, but a reporter, making
special efforts to seek out and record information about individual
crewmen, shipboard practices, recreation and daily routine-from
deck swabbing and standing watch to courts martial and dramatic
performances by the Constellation Dramatic Society.
This good-humored gaze into the lives and fortunes of so many
men stationed aboard a distinguished American warship makes
Gilliland's edition of Willie Leonard's journal a significant work
of maritime history.
Publisher
University of South Carolina Press
Subject
ISBN
9781611172898, 1611172896, 9781611172904, 161117290X
