"Loaded with previously unavailable information about the Confederate Navy's effort to supply its fledgling forces, the wartime diaries and letters of John M. Brooke (1826-1906) tell the story of the Confederate naval ordnance office, its innovations, and its strategic vision.

As Confederate commander of ordnance and hydrography in Richmond, Virginia, during the Civil War, Brooke numbered among the military officers who resigned their U.S. commissions and "went South" to join the Confederate forces at the onset of the conflict. A twenty-year veteran of the United States Navy who had been appointed a midshipman at the age of fourteen, Brooke was largely a self-taught military scientist whose inventions included the Brooke Deep-Sea Sounding Lead. In addition to his achievments as an inventor, Brookes was a draftsman, diarist, and inveterate letter-writer.

His copious correspondence about military and personal matters from the war yields detailed and often unexpected insights into the Confederacy's naval operations."--BOOK JACKET.