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THE COLONEL HENRY RYERSON CIVIL WAR ROUND TABLE
Next Meeting will be held on Oct. 16, 2018 at 7:30 PM, at Bristol Glen,
Methodist Communities, Rt 206, South of Newton, N.J. 07860.
Our speaker will be Mr. Chuck Veit, his topic will be "How the US Navy Won the
Civil War"
Received wisdom tells us that the Navy played a minor role in the War of the
Rebellion -- occasionally spectacular but ultimately moot. Using period data
and quotes, this talk questions that assumption, and demonstrates how
devastatingly effective were the contributions of "Lincoln's webbed feet." The
blockade, the many tactical and major strategic battles fought by the fleet, and
the fact that Union conquests were maintained from the gunboats all point to a
very different conclusion at odds with what we believe we know
Chuck is author of a growing number of original research books, including A
Dog Before a Soldier: Almost-lost Episodes in the Navy’s Civil War; Sea Miner:
Major E. B. Hunt’s Rocket Torpedo; Natural Genius: Brutus de Villeroi and the
U.S. Navy’s First Submarine; and two books focusing on the salvage exploits
of Massachusetts native, John E. Gowen: Raising Missouri and The Yankee
Expedition to Sebastopol. Sea Miner claimed the 2016 award for Narrative Non-
fiction from the Independent Publishers of New England, and Yankee
Expedition won awards in both the Perennial Seller category and Book of the
Year in 2017. For the recent sesquicentennial, Chuck transcribed newspaper
articles from the War of the Rebellion and published a four-volume
compendium, Upon the Best Authority. A sixth research book (currently in
progress), The Paymaster, tells the story of John Stevenson, whose exploits
along the Rappahannock and Mississippi rivers rival those of William Cushing.
He is a frequent speaker on 19th century naval topics at area historical
societies and Civil War roundtables, as well as at the Naval War College in
Newport, RI. Other venues have included the NOAA Maritime Heritage
Education Conference, Mariners’ Museum Civil War Navy Conference, the
Naval Order of the United States in St. Petersburg, FL, the 10th Maritime
Heritage Conference, and the Portsmouth Navy Yard’s 238th Anniversary Ball.
Chuck has also had numerous articles in Naval History magazine, American
Historical Print Collector Society’s Newsletter, Historical Diving Times, Civil
War Navy, and the Company of Military Historians’ Journal.
Chuck is President of the Navy & Marine Living History Association, an
organization dedicated to sharing America’s naval history with the modern
public through the medium of in-the-field events, where he speaks with several
thousand visitors annually. Despite his intense focus on Navy history, he
remains happily married after 37 years to his best friend, Lori.