Booknotes: An Officer of Six Navies

New Arrival:

• An Officer of Six Navies: The Life of Confederate Commander Hunter Davidson by John M. Coski & Charles T. Jacobs (Savas Beatie, 2026).

Born at Georgetown in the District of Columbia but possessing Virginia family roots, Hunter Davidson (1826-1913) lived a long life that included a long and eventful naval career. Even though Confederate naval officers and their Civil War activities have received increased attention of late, Davidson remains an obscure figure. Awareness should increase with the publication of his biography An Officer of Six Navies: The Life of Confederate Commander Hunter Davidson by John Coski and Charles Jacobs.

Three of nine chapters discuss Davidson's Confederate naval assignments. From the description: "Davidson earned his fifteen minutes of fame in May 1864 when he and his Confederate Submarine Battery Service became the first force to destroy an enemy warship using an electrically detonated torpedo. Davidson also makes the history books as the commander of two gun sections on CSS Virginia in her epic battle against USS Monitor."

Coski and Jacobs cover their subject's two decade-long antebellum U.S. Navy career in the two preceding chapters. More from the description: "Before he fought against the U.S. Navy, he served in that navy for nearly two decades, spending time in the Caribbean, the Pacific, the coast of Lower California during the Mexican War, the new Naval School, the Coast Survey, the Africa Squadron, and aboard the exploring vessel HMS Resolute. Considered an intelligent and promising, albeit contentious, young officer, Davidson was an instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1861 when he resigned to join the Virginia State Navy."

Like so many other career military officers who fought with the Confederacy, Davidson, barred from returning to the U.S. Navy, had difficulty finding fitting postwar employment. While suitable domestic opportunities did not come Davidson's way, his experience in conducting torpedo warfare caught the attention of foreign navies. More: "The Chilean Navy recruited him and his torpedo expertise to help repel a threatened Spanish invasion. He went on to spend four years as the first commander of the Maryland State Oyster Police before finding a new home in Argentina as commander of that nation’s Torpedo and Hydrographic departments. An “unreconstructed” Confederate, Davidson did not return to his family in Maryland but retired to Paraguay, where he started a second family and endeavored to defend from afar his place in Civil War history." Part of what would be a forty-year exile from his homeland, these activities are explored in four chapters.

Coski and Jacobs insist that Davidson's military life "was virtually unique." Indeed, "(h)is Confederate career alone made him an important and fascinating figure, but his service in or with six different navies gives his life an epic quality." Confederate mine warfare and its key role in countering Union naval superiority has been heavily explored in the recent literature, and this biography of a major figure involved with it should strongly contribute to that ongoing reappraisal.