Samuel Eliot Morison (1887–1976)

A good, old-fashioned account of Christopher Columbus's life and voyages. Written in the 1940s by a historian of the old school, and a seaman to boot, it is chock full of nautical references, terminology, and description. If you're bored easily by tacks and compass points and knots and winds and currents and sails and such, you'll find this boring. Morison and a group of scholars from Harvard sailed Columbus's routes in sailing ships in an attempt to identify his exact sailing route and show more ports of call. So there is much jumping back and forth from the 1490s/1500s to the 1930s/1940s. Which could be disappointing for those looking for a straight biography of Columbus (read Morison's abridgment of an abridgment Christopher Columbus, Mariner for a short account). Written at a time when Columbus was considered a hero, not the slaving, religious-maniac, white supremacist he is often depicted as today, Morison presents a heroesque picture of the Admiral. He is a brave man, a smart man, and one of the finest dead-reckoning sailors ever. And, Morison contends he wanted better relations with the Indians than eventually played out. Perhaps. It is a jarring portrait for those who have grown up on the "Columbus was evil" trope. Any serious scholar of Columbus must contend with Morison's biography (either this one-volume abridgment, or the two-volume behemoth), especially Morison's contentions on routes and landfalls (especially the first landfall in 1492). However, as a work of pure scholarship, Fernandez-Armesto's biography of Columbus is probably better and up-to-date, but this one has a certain novelistic quality that won it (the two-volume version, that is) the Pulitzer. show less

As others have noted, this is a single-volume distillation of Morison's definitive multi-volume account. Even though it still clocks in at just under 600 pages it can still feel condensed, riding a sometimes awkward line between breadth of detail and narrative depth. Morison is a classically-informed military historian, so casual readers might find his attention to the minute particulars of each engagement frustrating. However, he occasionally finds room to spark the imagination with an show more evocative detail (sailors' pet names for their ship, a German copy of "Murders in the Rue Morgue" bubbling up from the wreckage of a submarine).

As a reader, I'm usually more interested in the human stories behind the grand narratives of battle. So, I sometimes found myself struggling through Morison's litanies of tonnage and displacement, contact reports, bomb hits, kill counts, casualties, degrees of list, and so on (the chapters on submarine warfare suffered especially in this regard). Indeed, readers should expect a semi-specialized text with a good deal of jargon (including plenty of terms outside its own glossary) that presumes a fair bit of naval familiarity on the part of the reader, or willingness to answer one's own questions through further research.

Not that I take any of these to be deficiencies of Morison or the book per se, just some of the hazards of reading hard military history. I found that Morison was at his best in the heat of battle, where he does an excellent job of following the action minute by minute and infusing his pages with a palpable sense of the tone and tenor of each operation.

Readers should also not expect a particularly critical point of view. As a retired sailor himself, Morison is more or less straightforward in his militarism. He sees America's inter-war pacifism as unmitigated folly, and also occasionally is heard to mourn the passing of the pre-20th century period of colonial expansion. Writing in the depths of the Cold War, he expresses an unrepentant belief in the importance of American strategic dominance. He will sometimes preface a chapter with some comments on the political background of the operation at hand, often to bemoan the loss of tactical advantage through diplomatic sluggishness (Churchill comes off especially poorly in these passages).

In conclusion, I think this book could be a worthwhile jumping-off point for a detailed study of the topic, and useful as a quick reference when investigating this or that incident of the war. Scholars and other readers of intense interest will no doubt want to tackle this volume's mother-work. Readers more interested in the human face of the war, the political maneuvers behind it, the cultural impact on the nations that endured it, and other not-strictly-military topics, will probably want to look elsewhere. show less

By Samuel Eliot Morrison. Never read anything by Morrison before, although I knew his reputation. This biography manages to be both scholarly and entertaining; part of that, of course, is due to the subject. Morrison portrays Jones “warts and all” and the man must have handled a lot of toads in his time.


As the only successful captain in the Continental Navy, Jones was the subject of a lot of hagiography; Morrison has to sift through all this and devotes a whole appendix to debunking show more various claims about him – that he was the illegitimate son of a Scottish lord, that he served in the Royal Navy, that Napoleon planned to use him in the war against England, and numerous others (Morrison goes so far as to say that a biography of Jones that was once on the required reading list for Annapolis student is a “complete fabrication”.


The truths about Jones are interesting enough. He did serve on a slaver, although he left quickly (Morrison points out that Jones wasn’t interested in anything but naval affairs; he traveled all over Russia and lived in Revolutionary France without ever writing a word about conditions in either place. But he did express his disgust with slavery). He had an eye for the ladies, and this was frequently reciprocated; one French noblewoman wrote offering to leave her husband and stow away on his ship. Although he was usually solicitous for the welfare of his crews there was a lot of grumbling because Jones was frequently away enjoying himself while his ships were in port. His career in Catherine the Great’s navy came to an abrupt end when Jones was accused of raping a 12-year-old girl. Morrison goes into some detail on this, and it’s pretty damning by modern standards. The girl apparently was a prostitute, pimped by her mother. Jones had engaged in what he called ”badinage” with her twice before; the third time, according to Jones’ testimony, she tore her clothes and fled, screaming “RAPE!”. After the police questioned her and her mother – and one expects the police at the time could be fairly persuasive – it was determined that Jones had been set up by his enemies in the Russian navy; someone had hired the girl to seduce Jones and make the accusation. Nevertheless, Jones got himself in the position where the plot would work and Catherine the Great “granted” him an unlimited leave of absence.


For a citizen of the American republic, Jones was quite jealous of rank and title, petitioning Congress to allow him to accept the title “Chevalier” from the King of France and pestering the Navy to promote him to Admiral (there were no admirals in the US Navy until the Civil War). As a self-imposed exile in France at the end of his life he kept proposing grandiose schemes – the conquest of India or the invasion of England, for example – with himself as the focus.


That being said, Morrison allows Jones was an excellent sailor and fighting captain. He won victories over stronger ships – USS Ranger vs HMS Drake and USS Bon Homme Richard vs HMS Serapis. He raided the Scottish coast in the Ranger; a second attempt to raid in the Bon Homme Richard was foiled by a wind shift. His service in the Russian navy was problematical; Morrison argues that Jones’ battle plans were good but were handicapped by internecine warfare between other Russian commanders (he notes that all of the other admirals Jones worked with were foreigners in Russian service as well). Nevertheless, the Russians won the battles (Morrison calls these “The First Battle of Liman” and the “Second Battle of Liman”; Лиман is a Russian word meaning “estuary”, not a place name by itself. The battles are probably more correctly known as the First and Second Naval Battles of Ochakov).


Morrison’s narrative is detailed but straightforward and eminently readable. Illustrations are contemporary paintings or engravings plus photographs of various Jones-related locations. The maps of naval actions are excellent; I’ve noted before how older books that employed professional cartographers get much better maps than modern ones where the authors do their own graphics. The bibliography is extensive; Morrison notes there are a couple of periods during Jones’ life that are unaccounted for – where he didn’t write any letters or get mentioned elsewhere – and expresses hope that something will eventually turn up. show less

The second volume of Adm. Samuel Eliot Morison’s brilliant “The European Discovery of America” covers the southern voyages-those to what is today the Caribbean and South America. One can almost taste the salt air and have an almost visceral experience of what it was like for these early explorers. As in the first, Adm. Morison has either sailed or flown over the routes of Columbus, Cabral, Magellan and Drake, and his unique standing enabled him to have the cooperation of the US Navy show more and Coast Guard (they gave him a cutter to follow Drake’s route in California), along with the Brazilian, Argentine, Chilean and Royal Navies. It reminds one of an earlier era where gentleman historians (many of them amateurs in the strictest sense), were able to call upon their familial connections or use their positions to get to see things ordinary academics can’t see and go places ordinary academics can’t go.

In the first third of the book Morison returns to his favorite subject, Christopher Columbus, (having written a Pulitzer Prize winning biography of him in the 1940s), adding to and modifying his prior works. Morison’s admiration for Columbus as a pure mariner comes through again and again. As a leader Columbus was a martinet, but as a navigator and seaman, Morison feels that Columbus had few equals. His portrait of Columbus, drawn from relatives and contemporaries is that of an affable but driven and fantastically stubborn man, completely confident in his God-given mission and role in life. This contrasts with more recent biographies of Columbus, who focus more on his actions on Hispaniola. Interspaced in this section are chapters on the daily life of a mariner of this time in the service of Portugal and Spain, and the background of the maritime power of those two countries. He is careful not to repeat himself as aspects common to all were covered in the first volume which he intended to be read with this one as a single whole.

Morison covers less famous voyages by Vespucci etc, and even gives brief accounts of land journeys by some of the more exploration-oriented Conquistadores, like DeSoto, Ponce DeLeon, Balboa and Cabaza de Vaca. The accounts are pithy but thorough. The remaining two-thirds of the book are on Magellan and Drake. Morison follows their routes, where yet again his love for the sea is first and foremost, but he gives quite a bit of space over to surveys of the historiography of controversial subjects like Drake’s Plate of Brass.

Another remarkable work of history. And again, my only regret is that Adm. Morison did not live to complete his hoped for third volume on the Northern voyages of Henry Hudson, John Smith and others. show less