Blood on the Water

by Frederick Stonehouse

Book by Frederick Stonehouse

Genres: History

206 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2011

About the author

Frederick Stonehouse has authored over thirty books on maritime history, many of them focusing on the Great Lakes and contributed to several others. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and Great Lakes Lighthouse Tales are regional best sellers. Wreck Ashore, the U.S. Life-Saving Service on the Great Lakes, won a national publishing award and is the predominant work on the subject. Another book, Haunted Lakes, Great Lakes Maritime Ghost Stories, Superstitions and Sea Serpents, has opened an entirely new genre in Great Lakes study. His book, Final Voyage, is the first Great Lakes shipwreck book for children.

He has been a consultant for both the U.S. National Park Service and Parks Canada and has been an "on-air" expert for National Geographic, History Channel and Fox Family, as well as many regional media productions. Awards for contributions to Great Lakes maritime history have been received from Underwater Canada, Our World Underwater, Marquette Maritime Museum and Marquette County Historical Society. He is also the recipient of the 2006 Association For Great Lakes Maritime History Award for Historic Interpretation. The Award is presented annually in recognition of an individual making a major contribution over many years to the interpretation of Great Lakes maritime history in furtherance of the goals of the Association. In addition he was named the Marine Historical Society of Detroit’s “2007 Historian of the Year.” The award is the result of election by past MHSD Historians and recognizes persons who have actively contributed to the study of Great Lakes history. He holds a Master of Arts degree in History from Northern Michigan University, Marquette, Michigan.

Reviews

[Bill Tyroler · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Civil War was fought almost entirely on Southern soil -- at most, only 1% of the battles were waged in the North, says retired military officer and history professor Frederick Stonehouse. And he wonders, given the potential for wreaking havoc, coupled with porous borders, why the South didn't exploit the target-rich Great Lakes Basin. Thus “Blood on the Water," which explores Confederate plots in the region. Stonehouse is a prolific author of Great Lakes-related history (http://www.averycolorstudios.com/Book...), and this is a breezy, very readable overview. Stonehouse shows, in his telling of the outlandish attempts to raid prison camps at Camp Douglas (Chicago) and Johnson Island (Sandusky), just how desperate the South was for manpower. (Jack Schairer's book about the abortive raid on Point Lookout makes the same general point, that in the later phases of the war, desperation drove the South to undertake high-risk, high reward actions, https://www.facebook.com/bill.tyroler....)

Some quibbles. There was precious little aquatic combat -- the title is as much a misnomer as it is lurid -- and the inclusion of events unmoored to the Great Lakes, such as the raid on St. Albans, Vt. and a plot to burn down New York City, thus seems like filler. Interesting, but filler nonetheless (not to say familiar even to those casually conversant with Civil War histories).* Both an index and, to be blunt, more assiduous editing (the many typos and malapropisms are a bit distracting) would have benefited the reader. But these are quibbles, and it's a nice treatment of an obscure subject.

*Stonehouse discusses, almost as an afterthought, the sinking of the Lady Elgin, which he describes as a "precursor to war." In his view, the staunchly abolitionist Gov. Alexander Randall seriously considered the possibility of secession to advance the ati-slavery cause. Randall, in this telling, thus dismissed the local militia, the Union Guard, because it was, if anti-slavery, staunchly anti-secessionist. It was the Guard that filled the Lady Elgin, on a fund-raising mission to Chicago, so it could buy its own equipment; they went down with the ship. That Randall dismissed the guard because it refused to hop on board his secessionist bandwagon strikes me as unlikely, not to say implausible.

[Brett Brothers · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little too hypothetical and pie in the sky for me