Booknotes: This Great Contest Afloat

New Arrival:

• This Great Contest Afloat: The Civil War on the Seas, Coastline, Rivers, and Oceans by Neil P. Chatelain (Savas Beatie, 2026).

From the description: During the Civil War, "(t)housands of ships took part, fighting battles alongside the armies and patrolling the globe. The actions of more than 100,000 sailors on both sides impacted military, naval, economic, and diplomatic aspects, all while providing the tools to realize the Anaconda Plan of isolating and splitting the Confederacy."

The enormity of the Civil War's naval component is not lost on any experienced reader, but you can make an argument that it still occupies second fiddle status to the land forces when explaining Union victory and Confederate defeat. Neil Chatelain's new overview of the subject, This Great Contest Afloat: The Civil War on the Seas, Coastline, Rivers, and Oceans, serves as a strong reminder of the "extent and impact of Civil War naval activity."

More from the description: Chatelain's discussion of the naval war divides the waterborne conflict into "four distinct theaters of conflict."

"(1)The offshore blockade was an economic and logistical campaign waged to determine whether Southern armies would remain properly supplied. (2) Sailors enacting that blockade worked in tandem with armies to assault cities and coastal areas to deny the Confederacy its ports and coastal infrastructure, while Confederate sailors fought to both break the blockade and keep control of its ports. (3) Meanwhile, fleets on both sides battled for control over the Mississippi River Valley in an effort to cleave off the Trans-Mississippi Theater from the rest of the Confederacy. (4) Finally, an economic and diplomatic war was waged across the oceans, where Southern privateers and commerce raiders prowled for Federal merchant ships."

As the author "unpacks each of these naval theaters," he is aided by numerous maps (17), photographs, and period illustrations. Additional topics—the role of black men in the war's naval activity (both aboard ship and ashore), the naval organization of each side, and prominent naval war sites to visit today—are briefly explored in the appendix section. Books included in the Suggested Reading section, part of every Emerging Civil War series title, are well selected.