History of the U.S.S. Leviathan, cruiser and transport forces, United States Atlantic fleet Compiled from the ship's log and data gathered by the history committee — Story, Setting & Ideas

From Lyric to Log: The Opening Voice

The book’s first voice is not that of a naval historian but a poet. Adele M. Marshall’s verses cast the Leviathan as a near-mythical figure, “Queen of the ocean’s vast domain,” while also acknowledging the human cost: “The prayers and sobs from broken hearts / Will follow as thy course is run.” This emotional register is immediately succeeded by the foreword’s clipped, official tone, which describes the ship’s seizure from German ownership and its commissioning “as a Naval vessel.” The juxtaposition is jarring: the reader moves from a plea for safe passage to a dry recitation of administrative dates. This shift in voice—from the elevated to the bureaucratic—establishes a pattern that recurs throughout the text, as the committee interleaves personal accounts, official memos, and statistical summaries.

The Language of Performance: Target Practice Reports

One of the most distinctive features of the History is its inclusion of detailed gunnery scores and commendations. The report of the first target practice, held November 27, 1917, notes “a choppy sea with a stiff wind blowing and an overcast sky,” conditions that made it “difficult to pick up the targets.” The language here is precise and observational, avoiding drama. The resulting score—78 shots fired, 63 hits, 75.42 percent—is presented without embellishment. Yet the memo from the Gunnery Officer that follows introduces a different tone: “The Gunnery Officer is highly pleased… Such accurate firing in action would almost surely put a submarine out of action in short order.” This is the voice of command, blending praise with operational confidence. Later practices show declining percentages (70.62 and 51.66), and the text attributes the drop to “unfavorable conditions as to weather and visibility” and a “high wind and a large swell.” The committee lets the numbers speak, but the shift from commendation to explanation marks a subtle change in narrative pace—from celebration to sober assessment.

Technical Challenges and the Pace of Preparation

The section on the electric plant reveals a different kind of narrative: the slow, frustrating work of making a seized German liner ready for war. The text notes that “there were absolutely no plans of circuits nor any descriptive matter of electrical apparatus,” forcing electricians to “trace out and locate circuits” from scratch. The language here is procedural, listing dates and personnel: “On August 13, 1917, the first Navy electrician reported for duty.” The pace is deliberate, mirroring the gradual takeover of the plant from civilian to Navy hands. This section contrasts with the brisk, event-driven accounts of submarine attacks (referenced only by date in Part II) and the terse target-practice scores. The committee’s decision to include such technical detail—and to let it unfold in a step-by-step chronology—gives the reader a sense of the ship’s transformation from a static vessel to a functioning warship, a process that required not just courage but methodical labor.

Readers should pay attention to how the committee handles transitions between different types of evidence: the poem, the log entries, the memos, and the technical reports. Each brings a distinct rhythm and vocabulary, and the book’s interest lies partly in how these voices coexist without editorial smoothing. The History is not a single narrative but a collage of documents, and its shifts in pace—from the slow crawl of electrical work to the sudden urgency of a submarine alarm—are worth noting as deliberate choices by the compilers.

That afternoon, rain drummed against the window while the Leviathan’s log grew taut with coded urgency, its machinery suddenly human. The same jolt of wartime tension surfaced later, almost by chance, in The Fighting Retreat To Paris — Inside the Classic, where the retreat’s chaos carries that identical breathless precision. I set one book down and simply picked up the other, as if both shared one quiet heartbeat.