This Hardcover Book item from Crown was reviewed on 30-Aug-2008.
Search ISBN:0307236552 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship Reference Book. Classifications : General United States Americas History Subjects Books General Civil War United States Americas History Subjects Books Naval Operations Civil War United States Americas History Subjects Books Naval Mil . Click the following link to view the cover of Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship. Related topics: General. United States. Americas. History. Subjects. Books. General. Civil War. United States. Americas. requestid: 54496999-4f75-471b-beef-9cbad5a4e2f0
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1) Hardcover Book Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship by Crown. This book should have been advertised more as the biography of the executive officer of the ship, Conway Whittle. The author is in fact one of his descendants and he wrote this book mostly from Mr. Whittle´s log book and perspective and the book shows this bias from start to finish. The author also includes many analogies and speculative reasoning throughout much of this book which for me created a distraction as the reader (-1 star).
I found this book hard to stay engaged with. I could easily put it down and pick back up days later. For me, it wasn´t a "page turner". (-1 star)
One of the things that I did like was that it´s written from the Southern perspective, and did not fall into the more modern diatribe of anti-southern, racist bias that most current Civil War writings are featuring.
¤ 2) Hardcover Book Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship by Crown. Good read but a very much "slanted" perspective......to be expected I suppose - since the author is a direct descendent of the "hero" of his tale - the ship´s XO.........but not the "co-commander" as he contends.
The captain of the ship was Waddell.......not Mr. Whittle.
While the book is interesting, I found Schooler´s "The Last Shot" to be a much more balanced historical account.......since he did not "have a dog in the fight".¤ 3) Hardcover Book Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship by Crown. The book is historical non-fiction about the Civil War exploits of the Confederate raider, Shenandoah and its crew. The Shenandoah was sent on a mission to disrupt Union merchant commerce, primarily whaling ships near the Aleutian Islands. To that end the ship sailed around the world, in nearly a year long voyage, plotting an easterly course from its beginnings in the Atlantic Ocean, around the tip of Africa, stopping in Australia before reaching very near the Arctic Circle, raiding and burning unarmed Union merchant vessels along the way. It should be noted the text is based almost entirely on the log book entries of Lt. Conway Whittle, the executive officer of the ship. Much of the text details ship board life in the mid-19th century; the need for ship supplies, navigation, maintenance of the deck and rigging, crew discipline, weather and such. And from that I found it to be an interesting read. The book opens with a bit of cloak and dagger as the ship is outfitted and then sails from Liverpool, England in secret. After the initial success of the first capture and destruction of a Union merchant ship, this same process of; firing a blank shot across the enemy ship´s bow, running them down, boarding the ship and asking for papers of ownership, confiscating the cargo, taking the prisoners and then burning the ship the action varied very little and was simply repeated over and over again. There were no engagements with Union warships exchanging cannon broadsides at any point in the voyage and not a single shot was fired (save for the warning shot) at any time. In the end I found I was getting weary, not only for myself reading the documentary like text, but for the crew to just get to the end of this seemingly non-ending voyage. It was what I would consider fairly "dry" read as the simple log book recording of events is recited. I honestly think this story would play much better as a movie where the drama of the life and death struggle fighting gale force winds with waves crashing over the decking and the compelling drama of shipmates in conflict would have a much more visceral impact. I couldn´t help but think of the movie, Master and Commander with Russell Crowe. The book however brings closure nicely, with a bit of a twist, on this footnote of Civil War history with an epilogue of the key figures. I would recommend this book for any general Civil War historian or one who simply enjoys reading about 19th century sailing and all its perils.¤ 4) Hardcover Book Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship by Crown. LAST FLAG DOWN is a deeply moving, multilayered account of one of the most extraordinary voyages in sailing history. It is both beautifully detailed and vividly exciting. The authors bring to life the officers, the crew, and the era; one has the experience of living the voyage with its sailors, both physically and psychologically. The authors go beyond this magnificently told story, however, and evoke the poignant complexity of man´s struggle to make meaning in a morally turbulent and physically dangerous world. This marvelous portrait of a war long past is an inspiring reminder that decency and honor are timeless beacons of hope that can light our way today through these very dark times. It has already been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in literature, which is no surprise. If you have not read this yet, please do.¤ 5) Hardcover Book Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship by Crown. The dust jacket of LAST FLAG DOWN contains what should be an embarrassing error. It portrays a Confederate army battle flag in the water, not the Confederate naval flag, even though the latter is clearly described late in the book. This is, of course, the sort of mistake that occurs when the artist who designs the dust jacket for its marketing appeal has little knowledge of the history contained in the book itself. It is, however, the sort of mistake that should have been caught and corrected by the publisher, for it reflects poorly on the quality of the product. A minor gaff? No, it is not minor, not in a history book that proclaims itself to be "true."
Fortunately, the content of the book is better than the artwork on the dust jacket. That said, the reader must still bear in mind that the history within this volume is that which was seen through the eyes of only one man, William Conway Whittle, the executive officer aboard the Confederate States Ship Shenandoah. Were it not for Whittle´s journal, the book LAST FLAG DOWN would not exist. One is well into the book, however, before it becomes clear that he is reading Whittle´s attitudes and prejudices and likes and dislikes, not that doing so is necessarily bad, but a more honest author (or publisher) might have made this fact clear in a preface or on the dust jacket. Not to have done so strikes me as almost dishonest, as if the book were displayed as an objective history when it is actually one man´s perception of that history. For example was Captain Waddell as unstable and arbitrary as Whittle makes him out to be? Perhaps, but we have only Whittle´s word for that. An unsuspecting reader may be led to unjust conclusions when he does not realize that we are seeing history through only one man´s eyes.
Finally by way of criticism, I am not at all certain that any need exists for this book. According to its bibliography, other histories of the Shenandoah´s voyage have been published in 1948 (and reprinted in 1995), 1960, 2005, and 2006. Do we actually need another one? I leave this an open question, for I have not read the others and cannot judge to what extent LAST FLAG DOWN may duplicate them. Suffice it to say, however, that this is by no means the first and possibly not the definitive book on the subject.
Still, despite these criticisms, I found the book to be quite readable throughout. It conjures vivid images in the reader´s mind and enables him to come along on the deck of a fast raider and to experience, vicariously at least, many of the trials and the victories, as well as the excitement and the boredom, of shipboard life in the mid-19th century. I also came away with a much better appreciation of the extent to which the North and the South fielded spies and operatives in European ports during the War Between the States, and I learned much more of the naval operations conducted by the Confederacy than I ever picked up in high school or even college history textbooks.
The history that we learn from LAST FLAG DOWN is not all enjoyable or praise-worthy by any means. The entire voyage of the Shenandoah was aimed at hurting the Union economically through the destruction of civilian vessels of commerce. She was never intended to engage other warships, and she preyed solely on defenseless whalers and merchantmen. The great irony of her many "victories," of course, is that the war which she supported was all but over before she even began her globe-encircling odyssey, and that her country was defeated before many of her final attacks on Yankee ships were undertaken, not that she had any way of knowing that at the time.
Despite its faults, LAST FLAG DOWN is an intriguing and valuable read for anyone wishing to expand his grasp of American naval history. It certainly opened my eyes to the fact that the Union and the Confederacy were both active in their respective causes throughout the world and that hostilities extended far out to sea, well beyond the coastal blockades of Confederate shores by Union ships. This account should be welcomed by every reader who is interested in Union, Confederate, and naval history. It is, I believe, well worth the few days from one´s life span that are required to read it.
¤ 6) Hardcover Book Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship by Crown. As the Confederacy felt itself slipping beneath the Union juggernaut in late 1864, the South launched a desperate counteroffensive to shatter the U.S. economy and force a standoff. Its secret weapon? A state-of-the-art raiding ship whose mission was to prowl the world’s oceans and sink the U.S. merchant fleet. The raider’s name was Shenandoah, and her executive officer was Conway Whittle, a twenty-four-year-old warrior who might have stepped from the pages of Arthurian legend. Whittle would share command with a dark and brooding veteran of the seas, Capt. James Waddell, and together with a crew of strays, misfits, and strangers, they would spend nearly a year sailing two-thirds of the way around the globe, destroying dozens of Union ships and taking more than a thousand prisoners, all while continually dodging the enemy.
Then, in August of 1865, a British ship revealed the shocking truth to the men of Shenandoah: The war had been over for months, and they were now being hunted as pirates.
What ensued was an incredible 15,000-mile journey to the one place the crew hoped to find sanctuary, only to discover that their fate would depend on how they answered a single question. Wondrously evocative and filled with drama and poignancy, Last Flag Down is a riveting story of courage, nobility, and rare comradeship forged in the quest to achieve the impossible.¤ Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 27-Sep-2008, 03072365529780307236555, 520-170-2X0-710-030-941-251-8 
Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship, Book, Image © Crown
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