At first glance it would seem an author looking to set tales of the "wooden walls and iron men" era of naval fiction in the United States Navy wouldn't have many opportunities. After the War of 1812 ended the era of the steamship began and the next time warships bearing the stars and stripes engaged in action against the enemy was during the Civil War. But while many of the conflicts the new nation took on between 1815 and 1860 were on land, they did have some seagoing elements -- some of them clearly the word of the USN and other perhaps clandestinely so.
James L. Haley gives Capt. Bliven Putnam one such clandestine opportunity when the hero of three previous works finds himself under secret orders to aid the rebellious Republic of Texas as it tries to secede from Mexico in Captain Putnam for the Republic of Texas. An independent U.S.-leaning Texas serves the national interests as President Andrew Jackson sees it, but commercial U.S. interests in Mexico are willing to side against their former fellow countrymen in order to continue doing business with the military dictatorship of General Santa Anna. Santa Anna will be able to acquire all of the weaponry he needs to make his army of conscripts more than the equal of the Texas volunteers unless some of the shipments can be stopped from reaching their buyers. Jackson's scheme assigns Putnam to operate a surplus U.S. warship as a blockader. Texas military commander Sam Houston commissions Putnam and his old friend Sam Bandy as officers in the Republic of Texas Navy as a cover for their actions, in order that the U.S. not be seen to officially take sides in the conflict.
Haley has both a biography of Sam Houston and a history of Texas as a Spanish province, independent republic and part of the U.S. on his résumé so he is on familiar ground as he sets the stage for Putnam's exploits on behalf of the "Texians" seeking to throw off the dictatorial yoke of Santa Anna. He also throws some light on the nooks and crannies of the U.S.'s growing pains as a nation in the generations after the centers of power left the East Coast and migrated westward. New Englander Putnam is too young to have participated in the Revolutionary War but he would have fit in with that generation of men quite well.
The ascendancy of "westerners" like Andrew Jackson provides a new element to federal politics he doesn't much care for, but even among his own New England peers a kind of populist mob rule makes inroads as Protestant preachers rage against Catholics and their "papistry." From our perspective centuries later the different names and labels that people took during the time seem to all run together and we overlook that the U.S. of the early and middle 1800's had a number of pressures acting on it other than the dispute over slavery. Haley does a good job of showing how Putnam feels divided loyalties towards his friend, the southern slave-owning Bandy and also towards his duty to his nation and antipathy about the motives and actions of the crude and demagoguing Jackson.
But he does less well in getting Captain Putnam to hang together as a narrative; there seems to have just been not enough naval activity during the Texas war for independence to make a full story so we have a few digressions with Bandy as our viewpoint character interacting with Sam Houston at the climactic Battle of San Jacinto. At the beginning of the novel Putnam contracts malaria, which mostly serves as a way for him to pass out at junctures where it's good to fast-forward and let another character recap events for him. Haley's good at exposing the logistical and policy failures that were a part of government decisions then as well as now, and at making Putnam observe them from the outside without turning into a know-it-all visitor from the 21st century.
There aren't a lot more chances for Captain Putnam to take sail from Haley's pages; by the time of the Mexican-American war he'll be in his late 50s and into his 70s by the time of the Civil War. Haley may have in mind Putnam as a mirror of the real-life Admiral David Farragut, whose service stretched from fighting against the Barbary Pirates to damning torpedoes at the Battle of Mobile Bay. His website suggests that this fourth volume is the halfway point of the series; maybe some more clearly defined theaters of war and action might offer the remaining volumes a clearer focus and more well-defined narrative.
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