The books in this section are usually hardcover and in decent condition, though we'll sometimes offer hard-to-find books in lesser condition at a reduced price. Though we often put images of the book with their original dust jackets, the copies here won't always (or even often) have them. If that is important to you, please call ahead or say so in the order comments!
On 20 September 1818, the USS Macedonian sailed from Boston under orders "to shape your course for the Brazil Coast, and thence round Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean." Encountering a full gale one week later, the little man-o'-war barely escaped foundering. She limped into Norfolk for repairs, and then again headed to the southward, rounded the Horn, and arrived on "Pacific Station."
For the next hundred years, this Station was maintained by ships of the U.S. Navy – until the Pacific became the cruising ground of the U.S. Fleet following World War I. Ranging over the broad expanses of this ocean, the men-o'-war called at ports along the coasts of both American continents and cruised far to the west touching at islands along the way.
These ships were on hand when California, Alaska, and the Hawaiian Islands came under the Stars and Stripes. They were in San Francisco Bay in the hurly-burly days of the gold rush and in the desperate days following the "great fire" of 1906.
The men who sailed in the ships – and the changing moods of the sea itself – come alive again for us through the vivid chronicling of these historical events.
– From the dust jacket
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