Three intertwined stories that reveal the challenges faced by the US Navy in its evolution between the Civil War and the First World War

Hard Aground brings together three intertwined stories documenting the US Navy’s strategic and matériel evolution from the end of Civil War through the First World War. These incidents had lasting consequences for how the navy would modernize itself throughout the rest of the twentieth century.

The first story focuses on the reconstruction of the US Navy following the swift and near-total dismantling of the Union Navy infrastructure after the Civil War. This reconstruction began with barely enough time for the navy’s campaigns in the Spanish-American War, and for its role in the First World War. Jampoler argues that the federal government discovered that the fleet requested by the navy, and paid for by Congress, was the wrong fleet. Focus was on battleships and cruisers rather than destroyers and other small combat vessels needed to hunt submarines and serve as convoy escorts.

The second story relates the short, tragic life of the USS Tennessee (later renamed Memphis), one of the steel-hulled ships of the new Armored Cruiser Squadron that was a centerpiece of the navy’s modernization effort. The USS Tennessee was ordered on two unusual missions in the early months of the First World War, long before the United States formally entered the war. These little-known missions and the ship's shocking destruction in a storm surge in the Caribbean serve as the centerpiece of the story. Threaded through the narrative are biographical sketches of the principal players in the drama that unfolded following the ship’s demise, including two of Tennessee’s commanding officers: Vice Admiral Sims, who commanded the US Navy squadrons deployed to Europe in support of the Royal Navy; Rear Admiral William Caperton, who commanded the Caribbean squadron before the Memphis (formerly the Tennessee) was lost; Charles Pond, squadron commander during the wreck; and the American ambassador to the Ottoman court, President Wilson’s enthusiastic supporter, Henry Morgenthau.

Jampoler rounds out this fascinating account with the story of how the USS Tennessee’s destruction prompted fierce deliberations about the US Navy’s operations and chains of command for the remainder of the First World War and the high-level political wrangling inside the Department of the Navy immediately after the war, as civilian appointees and senior officers wrestled to reshape the department in their image.

Andrew C. A. Jampoler retired from the US Navy in 1986 after a twenty-four-year career, which included serving as an officer in the Strategic Plans and Policy Division of the US Navy staff and service on the personal staffs of the chief of naval operations, the secretary of defense, and the commander in chief of the US Pacific Fleet. He is author of seven other nonfiction books about incidents in maritime history, including Embassy to the Eastern Courts: America’s Secret First Pivot Toward Asia, 1832–37 and Congo, the Miserable Expeditions and Dreadful Death of Lt. Emory Taunt, USN.
 

". . .Jampoler's unique focus on an era that changed the United States Navy deserves close attention during this latest era of Great Power competition at sea and on land, as well as in the air, in space, and in cyber space."  —John Grady, Sea History Magazine

“Glancing at the cover, one might think Captain Andy Jampoler, U.S. Navy (Ret.) had written a book about a single ship, the armored cruiser USS Memphis (originally named the USS Tennessee). But through meticulous research and gifted storytelling, he has delivered much more. Jampoler brilliantly weaves the ship’s plotline together with a fascinating period of U.S. Navy and broader American history that is little known, even among naval officers… I was awed by Captain Jampoler’s ability to tell Memphis’s story—from keel laying in Philadelphia to horrific demise at Santo Domingo—against the backdrop of history spanning from post-Civil War through World War I … Like a vintage wine or scotch, the elements blend together sublimely.”
—Captain Bill Hamblet, US Navy (retired) Editor-in-Chief, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings

 “Captain Jampoler’s vivid writing and eye for telling details capture the excitement of this seminal era in US naval history. Meticulous research underpins his judgements on its personages and events.  And his colorful tales within tales make for a most enjoyable read.”
—Peter M. Swartz, CNA strategy analyst and retired U.S. Navy captain
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 “Andrew Jampoler’s Hard Aground is an extremely enjoyable but deeply researched accounting of the early tumultuous years of 20th century European history, seen through the eyes of a neutral, and later participant, in the conflagration of the Great War… A not-to-be-missed read.”
—Nicholas Jellicoe, author of Jutland: The Unfinished Battle

"Enhanced informatively for the reader with the inclusion of illustrations, a ten page Epilogue, an eight page Bibliography, and a sixteen page Index, "Hard Aground: The Wreck of the USS Tennessee and the Rise of the US Navy" is an exceptionally well researched, written, organized and presented historical study of the American navy and key figures involved in shaping what it into the force it would become today."
—Midwest Book Review— -