Maverick Navy

About this book

"Maverick Navy" is an engaging account of a U.S. Naval Reserve officers adventures while in command of a subchaser in World War I. With the patriotic but nave innocence which so characterized the period and "with experience only in small sailing yachts in coastwise cruising " Alexander W. Moffat was quickly catapulted in 1917 into the real Navy - the real and earnest blue water fighting Navy. His command was a subchaser - a small almost experimental vessel newly devised to meet a new menace. She was U.S. Subchaser No. 143 110 long and only 155" in beam drawing less than six feet. First crossing the Atlantic in the winter of 1917-18 having to follow other ships in the convoy to which she was assigned because no one aboard had any knowledge of navigation S.C. No. 143 ultimately served in a squadron operating out of Plymouth England to keep the sea lanes off southern Britain free of enemy intrusion. In a series of anecdotes sometimes comic and often moving Moffat describes the activities of this Maverick unit up to the Armistice - and his own frustrating attempts to get home again - home to his Sally home to the civilian life of which the Navy would always be a part. This then is the story of a nonprofessional pragmatic sailor - a born story-teller - serving within the system but with all the resourcefulness and ingenuity and leadership that typify the best of the American character when called upon to don the nations uniform.