This final work of the late author, a civilian naval architect and Civil War novelist, is the first full-length biography of a remarkable yet relatively unknown nineteenth-century American naval officer, Winfield Scott Schley (1838–1911). A favorite son of Maryland, whose statue still adorns the State House in Annapolis, and a gifted raconteur popular with fellow “Old Salts” and the public, Schley is an obscurity in the twenty-first century. There are primarily two reasons, the first being the inevitable overshadowing by the epic world and cold wars, especially World War II, reducing fame for classic naval heroes to little beyond John Paul Jones and David Farragut. Second, which Jones credibly addresses, was the long-term fallout from the embarrassing public airing of the navy’s dirty laundry disputing which officer was really in command of the stupendous victory over the Spanish fleet on July 3, 1898, at Santiago de Cuba as public and press sided with Schley against trumped up charges of incompetence and cowardice by the government and naval brass in support of rival William T. Sampson (1840–1902).Schley (pronounced “schlie”) has been studied previously and portrayed favorably in shorter academic works by historians Richard S. West as one of four subjects in his multibiographical Admirals of American Empire: The Combined Story of George Dewey, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Winfield Scott Schley, and William Thomas Sampson (1948) and Harold D. Langley in a chapter of James Bradford’s Admirals of the New Steel Navy: Makers of the American Naval Tradition, 1880–1930 (1990). In his own time, Schley authored the widely read autobiographical The Rescue of Greely (1885), Forty-Five Year Under the Flag (1904), and a series of posthumous articles for Cosmopolitan magazine. He also coauthored, along with eyewitness war correspondent George Graham, Schley and Santiago (1902), defending his record in a controversy that would enmesh his retirement years. Finally, he was even featured in Edward Stratemeyer’s Fighting in Cuban Waters, Or, Under Schley on the Brooklyn (1899), part of a juvenile fiction “Old Glory Series” in the mold of a “Boy’s Own” adventure by famed English author G. A. Henty.1Jones observes that Schley, born near Frederick, Maryland, and proud of his German and Scotch-Irish ancestors, was a family man with a deep love of the sea. His forty-five years in the US Navy placed him at the center of the monumental transition from the end of wooden sailing ships to the rise of steel- and armored coal-fired battleships. As a young man, he was greatly influenced by Frederick Marryat’s nautical novel Mr. Midshipman Easy (1836) and became an acting midshipman himself at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, where he became proficient in Spanish and graduated in 1860.2 Thereafter, he embarked on the steam and sail frigate USS Niagara, with an epic cruise to Japan to return a diplomatic delegation. It also resulted in the most longstanding if not infamous of Schley anecdotes, concerning a troublesome monkey, a pet of one of the Japanese dignitaries, who constantly harassed the crew yet mysteriously went overboard during Schley’s watch. When called to task about the incident, both the Captain and the Japanese accepted Schley’s cheeky explanation that said monkey was depressed and committed suicide!Jones proceeds to adeptly chronicle Schley’s remarkable career serving in various roles on various types of ships as he rises in rank, becoming a Lt. Commander in 1865, Commander in 1875, Captain in 1888, Commodore and Rear Admiral, both in 1898. Along this journey, where he showed intelligence, good humor, and hard work, he acquired combat experience in the Civil War under the celebrated David G. Farragut and an 1871 punitive expedition to Korea where he shot and killed an enemy at point blank range, explorer status by leading a famed rescue expedition to the Arctic in 1884, and diplomatic skill in carefully handling several challenging global incidents, especially in avoiding war with Chile in 1891. In 1898, in Cuba the visiting and relatively new American battleship USS Maine was suddenly destroyed in a shock to the nation, comparable to Pearl Harbor in 1941 and 9/11 in 2001. Although the exact cause remains unclear, public outrage led to war and a stupendous victory for America on the world stage. Part of this was Schley’s destruction of the Spanish fleet, what should have been his crowning achievement, and that in his words should also have provided “glory enough for all” (229), but instead led to nearly endless, bitter, and unresolved controversy from Sampson and his cronies. While Schley was never formally court martialed, John Davis Long, former governor of Massachusetts and Secretary of the Navy, 1897–1902, stacked various naval inquiries against him and the latter’s appeal to President Theodore Roosevelt had no result, though Schley was heartened by the strong support of his fellow Rear Admiral, George Dewey, the victor over the Spanish fleet at Manilla Bay. Jones also effectively documents the baleful influence of Sampson’s chief of staff, French Chadwick, whose vendetta against Schley continued long after the latter’s death.Jones has given Schley his vindication in a wonderfully written biography providing detailed accounts of nautical routes, wind, and weather, based upon exhaustive research using ships logs and other records from both the US Navy and the National Archives. This work is augmented with endnotes, bibliography, index, appendices, and ninety black and white captioned photographs, mostly from the US Naval Heritage and History Command records, which are strategically interspersed throughout the text. There are a few date and factual errors; for example, the correct date for the arrival of his ship, the USS Essex, in Hampton Roads, Virginia, was 1877 not 1872 (82), and it was Rear Admiral Sampson, not Secretary Long, who redesignated his North Atlantic Squadron and Schley’s Flying Squadron the 1st and 2nd Squadrons, respectively (176). Despite these minor detriments, this will surely be the standard biography of Read Admiral Winfield Scott Schley for the foreseeable future and is highly recommended.
William John Shepherd (Thu,) studied this question.