Abstract
American juvenile military fiction between the Spanish-American and First World wars reflects an age swept up in imperialist aspiration and rapid technological innovation. Its defining theme was the rise of the navy as a world-class fighting force.2 The technology that enabled this projection of American power across the seas was also, paradoxically, a source of anxiety. While sublimated into fascination with technology itself, anxiety remains a text beneath every page, no matter how much steam, electricity and machinery are praised.3 American ships and men now criss-crossed the globe; her technological prowess propelled her to the forefront of nations. She was powerful — yet vulnerable — as never before.
I thank Professors Wade Shaffer and Peter Petersen of West Taxas A&M University for valuable comments and to Zeta-Upsilon chapter of Phi Alpha Theta for the opportunity to present an earlier version of this study. I also thank Mr. Michelle Moore for an early introduction to the Dreadnought Boys series. I thank Ms Melynda Seaton for the preparation of the illustrations.
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Notes
An overview of the genre is provided by Peter A. Sonderbergh, ‘The Dark Mirror: War Ethos in Juvenile Fiction, 1865–1919’, University of Dayton Review, 10 (1973), 13–24, who briefly considers the books’ messages of racial and patriotic stereotypes, which will also be considered in this essay. There is, however, no emphasis on the role of military technology as a key element in these works.
See, for example, John R. Clark, ‘The Machine Prevails: a Modern Technological Theme’, Journal of Popular Culture, 12 (1978), 118–26.
I. F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War, 2nd edn (Oxford and London: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Carol Billman, ‘McGuffey’s Readers and Alger’s Fiction: the Gospel of Virtue According to Popular Children’s Literature’, Journal of Popular Culture, 11 (1977), 614–19.
Popular excitement about the war can be found in many forms, on which see W. K. McNeil, ‘“We’ll Make the Spanish Grunt”: Popular Songs about the Sinking of the Maine’, Journal of Popular Culture, 2 (1969), 537–51
and Peggy and Harold Samuels, Remembering the Maine (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995).
Elbridge S. Brooks, In Defence of the Flag (Boston: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 1900), p. 357: The Story of the Nineteenth Century, by Elbridge S. Brooks, the story of the ‘wonderful century’ — its progress, its achievements and its results — is here presented in a connected, simple, straightforward narrative, showing, as its main purpose, the progress of the people out of limitation to enlightenment, out of serfdom to independence, out of selfishness to nationality, out of absolutism to liberty. Chapter by chapter, it is an absorbing and often dramatic story, told by one who has made a study of popularising history.
A position urged, for example, by Alfred Thayer Mahan in numerous speeches and articles, on which see Robert Seager II, Alfred Thayer Mahan. The Man and his Letters (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1977).
Racial stereotypes passed to younger readers are examined by J. Frederick MacDonald, ‘“The Foreigner” in Juvenile Series Fiction 1900–1945’, Journal of Popular Culture, 8 (1974), 541–2. A good example is found in Brooks’s preface to In Defence of the Flag, p. vi: Tf also this book, as did the opening volume of the series, “With Lawson and Roberts”, shall be found to have used the cordial relations between England and America to equal advantage, the author will feel that something more than mere story-telling has been affected.’
This image was reinforced by various first-hand accounts of the war, one of the most popular being Richmond Pearson Hobson, The Sinking of the Merri-mac (1899; Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1987); see pp. 94–5 for his portrait of Cevera.
Benjamin Lowe and Mark H. Payne, ‘To Be a Red-Blooded American Boy’, Journal of Popular Culture, 8 (1974), 393–401.
John D. Alden, The American Steel Navy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1972), p. 206.
Edward Stratemeyer, Fighting in Cuban Waters (Boston: Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard, 1899), p. 296.
H. W. Wilson, Battleships in Action, 2 vols (1926; London: Conway Press, 1995), vol. 1, p. 120.
On the serials, see Peter A. Sonderbergh, ‘The Stratemeyer Strain: Educators and the Juvenile Series Book, 1900–1973’, Journal of Popular History, 7 (1974), 864–72. Professional educators laboured in vain for decades to get their young charges to prefer ‘good’ literature to the action stories provided by Stratemeyer’s team of authors.
See the frontispiece to Frank Gee Patchin, The Battleship Boys at Sea (Akron: Saalfield, 1910).
Frank Gee Patchin, The Battleship Boys in Foreign Service (Akron: Saalfield, 1911), pp. 7–14.
Frank Gee Patchin, The Battleship Boys: First Step Upward (Akron: Saalfield, 1911), p. 99.
Wilbur Lawton, The Dreadnought Boys Aboard a Destroyer (New York: Hurst and Company, 1911), p. 15.
MacDonald, “The Foreigner”, pp. 542–4. On American views towards the Japanese in this period in light of the growing naval rivalry, see James R. Reckner, Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1988), especially pp. 5–9.
Yates Stirling, Jr, A United States Midshipman in Japan (Philadelphia: Penn Publishing Company, 1911), p. 359.
A. J. A. Morris, The Scaremongers. The Advocacy of War and Rearmament 1896–1914 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), pp. 148–9.
Wilbur Lawton, The Dreadnought Boys on a Submarine (New York: Hurst and Company, 1911).
Robert L. Drake, The Boy Allies with the Terror of the Seas (New York: A. L. Burt, 1916).
Robert L. Drake, The Boy Allies in the Baltic (New York: A. L. Burt, 1916).
Francis Rolt-Wheeler, The Wonder of War at Sea (Boston: Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard, 1919).
George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers. Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
Frank Gee Patchin, The Battleship Boys with the Adriatic Chasers (Philadelphia: Altemus Company, 1918), p.
Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 335.
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Brasington, B. (2000). Boys, Battleships, Books: the Cult of the Navy in US Juvenile Fiction, 1898–1919. In: Sandison, A., Dingley, R. (eds) Histories of the Future. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-1929-8_6
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