Cruise Books of the United States Navy in World War II; A Bibliography
Illustrations by John Charles Roach, and Cover by Washington DC: Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center, 1993. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Trade paperback. xvii, [1], 144, [2] pages. Decorative cover. Inscribed by the author on the half-title page. Cruise books are typically a pictorial history documenting the daily life and voyages of a ship's crew. This work includes explanatory notes and references. It covers Ship Books, Naval Aviation Unit Books, Naval Construction Battalion Books, and other Naval Command Books. It has an index of Naval Commands. This is Naval History Bibliographies, No. 2. Dr. Mawdsley served in the Navy during WWII, became a physician after the war, and served as a Doctor in the U.S. army before leaving the service and entering private practice. He has throughout his career been an active researcher and writer, with a number of published works to his credit. The illustrator, John Charles Roach, was a Navy artist whose training began with three years of study in Paris at the National Academy of Fine Arts and culminated in a Master’s Degree from the American University. He served in Vietnam and the 7th Fleet as an official Navy Artist to document naval activities in-country and offshore. On active duty in the Naval Reserve he has completed artist assignments depicting the submarine force of the 1980s, Desert Shield and Storm, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Among his private commissions, he designed and sculpted elements of the Navy Memorial in Washington, DC and completed a mural for USS Arizona Visitors Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. A cruise book is a yearbook-style publication often produced by ships of the United States Navy upon completion of a long deployment (typically six months or more). The books typically contain photos of all the people who were aboard during the cruise, usually grouped by their division or department. There are often candid photos as well, showing the people at work aboard the ship. Often there is a map or a description of the ship's travels during the cruise, and there are almost always pictures taken at the various ports of call. On large ships, the books are produced on board by the ship's Morale, Welfare and Recreation department and Public Affairs staff, and are then printed ashore by printing companies that specialize in such services. The cruise book of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier typically reaches over 600 pages in length, as it includes portraits of the more than 5,000 sailors and U.S. Marines assigned to the ship's company and embarked carrier air wing. Cruise books of smaller ships are typically much smaller, often 50–100 pages, and are produced informally by volunteers. They are printed ashore by the same companies that specialize in cruise book publication firms that also handle the larger ships. USMC units also have a long-standing tradition of doing cruise books for deployments. Many units do so remotely from their deployed location, allowing them to proof the books prior to final printing. This is usually done by allowing the publisher to maintain a website where the pages are displayed to be viewed by anyone in the unit and then giving feedback. The Navy Department Library has a collection of over 8,000 cruise books and similar Navy yearbooks, dating from the Spanish–American War to the present. Private collectors exist throughout the world, with an example being a site run by Retired Command Master Chief Dillard. He has been collecting these books since the 1970s and is attempting to document every USN/USCG ship cruise book ever published. So far, he has determined that there have been at least 7,844 ship cruise books published. He has managed to have documented 3,965 of them and collected scans of the front covers of 5,797 of these cruise books. Condition: Very good.
Keywords: United States Navy, Naval History, Bibliography, Reference Works, Research Aids, Cruise Books, Naval Construction Battalions, Seebees, Naval Aviation, Naval Commands, Amphibious Forces, Officer Training
ISBN: 0945274130
[Book #84739]
Price: $125.00