Correspondence, journals, order books, notebooks, subject files, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, and other papers relating primarily to Luce's naval career. Documents his service with the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the Civil War and aboard the USS Columbus (Ship of the line) of the U.S. Navy East India Squadron. Also documents his role in establishing the Naval War College (U.S.) and the Naval Historical Society (U.S.), his diplomatic role in the arbitration of the Canadian fisheries dispute (1887), service as head of the commission representing the U.S. at the Exposición Histórico-Americana in Madrid, Spain (1892), and work as an author. Subjects include the the seizure of the American steamer Haytien Republic, USS Monitor (Ironclad), naval bases, dry docks, legislation, naval songs and poetry, ordnance and gunnery, and naval strategy, tactics, and training. Correspondents include Nelson W. Aldrich, Philip R. Alger, William Bainbridge-Hoff, George E. Belknap, Charles J. Bonaparte, Charles A. Boutelle, William E. Chandler, George Dewey, Earl English, William Mayhew Folger, Albert Gleaves, Caspar F. Goodrich, Albert Bushnell Hart, Israel C. Jones, Henry Cabot Lodge, A.T. Mahan, John Bassett Moore, Robert E. Peary, Theodore Roosevelt, John Sherman, William Sowden Sims, E.A. Sophocles, John Austin Stevens, John Crittenden Watson, and William C. Whitney.