Namesake:
Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison
Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, USNR (1887 - 1976) was one of the
nation's most distinguished naval historians. His legacy to his country
comprises over forty books and more than a hundred articles, including
The Oxford History of the United States (1927); Growth of the American
Republic (with) Commander (1930); The European Discovery of America
(Southern and Northern voyages 1971, 1974). Born in Boston, and a
faculty member of Harvard University for more than half a century, he
was the recipient of many honors. The American Academy of Arts and
Sciences awarded him the Emerson-Thoreau Medal in 1961 for
distinguished literary achievement, and he received the Presidential
Medal of Freedom in 1964 as one of the great Americans whose life and
works have made freedom stronger for all of us in our time.
But he was, first and always, a Sailor. Before he wrote the biography
of Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea in 1942, he and
several friends purchased and fitted out the barkentine "Capitana" to
sail the ocean in Columbus' wake, and view island and coasts as he must
have seen them. This book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
The way was now clear for another seagoing project that was to become
the most extensive and difficult of any in Morison's career - The
History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II (fifteen
volumes). President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had a lifelong taste for
naval history, after reading some of "Admiral of the Ocean Sea,"
accepted Morison's request to be the Navy's Historian. In May 1942, the
professor was commissioned a Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserve,
and given a set of orders that permitted him to move about the world at
will. But having such a set of orders is one thing, and getting to a
good vantage point to observe an action whose planning has been cloaked
in deep secrecy is another. That he was invariably in the right place
at the right time for the next three and a half years, was due more to
his qualities as a man and a Sailor, than to his formal credentials. He
later recalled the problem thus:
"As my position in the Navy was unprecedented, I had to move warily and
gingerly in order to obtain cooperation from those who were doing the
fighting. Amusingly enough, their initial suspicions of a 'long-haired
professor in uniform' were dissolved by a perusal of my "Admiral of the
Ocean Sea," which told them that I was a Sailor before I became a
professor, and thus exorcised the academic curse. So, thanks to
Columbus, the Navy accepted me, and with many of its members I made
warm friendships, which even survived when I felt obliged to write
about some of their mistakes."
After his death in 1976, one of his daughters, Emily Morison Beck,
edited a highly readable treasury of the best and most representative
of his writings. She says, "I was fortunate that my father lived long
enough to examine and approve the final choices, after discarding a
number of pieces as 'old hat,' 'hackneyed,' or 'of little interest to
the general reader.'" Therefore, "Sailor-Historian" is aimed to give
pleasure to the general reader, who will find chapters from favorite
books and prized articles, as well as forgotten pieces never before
printed in a book.
President Lyndon B. Johnson remarked: "Scholar and Sailor, this
amphibious historian has combined a life of action and literary
craftsmanship to lead two generations of Americans on countless voyages
of discovery." As a naval historian on active duty in World War II, he
earned seven engagement stars and a Legion of Merit, while serving in
combat areas of the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Pacific.
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