The Delaware Bay At War

The Delaware Bay at War! The Coastal Defenses of the Delaware Bay during World War II The defense of America's seacoast has been one of the key concerns since the earliest years of the Republic. American coast defense steadily evolved through the age of muzzle loading cannon, ever larger breech loading weapons, and finally the culmination of the large, long range guns capable of targeting the largest and most heavily armed warships of their age. By the end of World War Two, the United States had some of the strongest coast defenses in the world. Given the importance of the military-industrial complex along the banks of the Delaware River, including the large Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and explosive factories of the E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, the defense of the Delaware River had a prominent role in America's military planning from the American Revolution to the end of World War Two. This book tells the story of the American coastal defenses of the Delaware Bay during World War Two. While the Delaware River has been defended and fought over since colonial times, in the years approaching the World War Two its defenses were either obsolete or lacking. Starting in 1930's the US Army and Navy developed plans for new defenses at the Delaware Capes which led to an intense construction and manning period from 1941 to 1944. While assaulted by German U-Boats, the surface attacks did not reach Delaware Bay so after 1944 the soldiers and sailors manning these defenses were mobilized overseas. By 1946 most of these defenses were abandoned, although new Cold War defenses in the coming years used this infrastructure to defend the United States against new threats. Over one hundred rare black & white US Army photographs and plans help document our nation's extensive effort to defend against possible naval attacks and raids from Nazi Germany. A collection of over 50 recent color photographs are also included allowing the reader to survey the surviving elements of these mighty defenses. A product of extensive research, this book brings together for the first time rare images and the little known military history of the Delaware Bay.

This book seeks to discover when, why, and how Delaware Valley communities, between 1621, when the Dutch West India Company issued instructions for the security and defense of the Delaware River until 1815, as the region abandoned its Committee of Defense of the Delaware at the end of the War of 1812, first used military force to repel invasion in times of war and suppress insurrection in peacetime. It traces how these mid-Atlantic communities confronted constant threats from real or imagined enemies, invasion and insurrection from earliest seventeenth-century settlement, and articulated ideas and built institutions for security, defense, and war. It argues that from the beginning these Delaware Valley communities failed to differentiate between their concert for defense against external attacks or invasion in wartime with that of providing security for their home communities against internal enemies durins peacetime. Though conflicted about using force both to defend against invasion and suppress insurrection, over time as the Delaware Valley communities moved to the center of colonial wars, revolution, and establishment of a republic and constitutional government, their long experience with security, defense, and war that blurred the lines between military defense in wartime and preserving peacetime security eventually fused into Article 1, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution to "empower the congress to use the militia to repel invasion and suppress insurrection." Jeffery M. Dorwart is professor of military, naval, and New Jersey history at Rutgers University.

The Delaware Bay area was a pivotal battleground during the Revolutionary War. Follow along with this history of the Cape May Navy and its part in the War for Independence. The Delaware Bay during the Revolutionary War was vital for trade and home to a host of armed conflicts between British vessels and American privateers. Cape May County captains in their light, fast vessels captured dozens of British merchant ships off the Atlantic coast. At the Battle of Delaware Bay, Lieutenant Joshua Barney aboard the Hyder Ally overcame massive odds and defeated the British warship General Monk. Colonel Elijah Hand, local hero of the skirmish at Quinton's Bridge, took his military talents to the seas, where he dueled with Tory privateers. Still in his twenties, Yelverton Taylor captured the Triton with hundreds of Hessian soldiers on board. Authors James P. Hand and Daniel P. Stites chart the exciting history of the Cape May Navy in the War for Independence.

Within weeks of Pearl Harbor, German U-boats arrived off the Delaware coast and attacked numerous ships along the vital shipping lanes to Philadelphia and Wilmington. On February 28, 1942, two German torpedoes hit the destroyer Jacob Jones, which was carrying more than one hundred American sailors. It sank in less than an hour. A center for military activity, Lewes became a refuge for many survivors from such attacks. The dunes along Cape Henlopen hid the massive artillery batteries of Fort Miles. Residents of the beachfront communities rallied amid the blackout regulations and air raid drills with rationing and scrap drives. Spotters watched for enemy warships in concrete towers that still line the coast. Author Michael Morgan tells the remarkable story of a coast at war.

Life Along the Delaware Bay focuses on the area as an ecosystem, the horseshoe crab as a keystone species within that system, and the crucial role that the bay plays in the migratory ecology of shorebirds. Lawrence Niles, Joanna Burger, and Amanda Dey examine current efforts to protect the bay and identify new efforts that must take place to ensure it remains an intact ecological system. Over three hundred stunning color photographs and maps capture the beauty and majesty of this unique treasure, one that must be protected for generations to come.

Illicit commerce was key to the survival of the mid-Atlantic colonies from the Golden Age of piracy to the battles of the American Revolution. Out of this exciting time came beloved villains like Captain William Kidd and Black Sam Bellamy as well as inspiring locals like Captain Shelley and James Forten. Learn of the legend of Sadie the Goat and her Charlton Street Gang as piracy was ending in the region in the 19th century. From the shores of New York to the oceans of the East Indies, from Delaware Bay to the islands of the West Indies, author Jamie L.H. Goodall illuminates the height of piratical depredations in the mid-Atlantic in the 17th and 18th centuries.