Our Navy in the War — Reading Notes

Voice Between Official Report and Anecdote

Perry's prose oscillates between two registers. One is the detached, almost bureaucratic tone of a naval report: he notes that the British policy of withholding submarine sinkings "was devised by the British at the very outset, the purpose being to make the waging of submarine warfare doubly objectionable to the men of the German Navy." The other is a conversational, even wry voice, as when he remarks that submarine service became "one of the penalties for sailors who have offended against the German naval regulations." This duality is not accidental; Perry was a journalist who dedicated the book to Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, praising his "far-seeing vision" and "freedom from all bias." The dedication hints at the book's dual purpose: to inform the public and to honor the Navy's leadership. Readers should watch how Perry shifts between these voices, sometimes within a single paragraph, as when he follows a dry policy statement with the image of submarines leaving port "decked with flowers."

Pacing Through Action and Reflection

The book's pacing is uneven in a deliberate way. Action sequences—such as the sinking of a German submarine by the destroyer Fanning—are compressed into a few paragraphs, with Perry focusing on the aftermath (the burial at sea, the prisoners' cheers) rather than the combat itself. In contrast, reflective passages on submarine warfare's psychology stretch over pages, as when he discusses mutinies in German ports and the "sinister element" of the British secrecy policy. This rhythm suggests Perry is less interested in tactical detail than in the human and moral dimensions of naval war. The excerpts show that he lingers on the words of German prisoners—their relief at capture, their complaints about canned food and cramped quarters—while glossing over ship movements. Readers attuned to pace will notice that the narrative slows whenever Perry can draw a moral or emotional lesson from events.

Recurring Details: Life Belts, Flowers, and the Word 'Sinister'

Certain details recur across the excerpts, forming a pattern of imagery. Life belts on the captured submarine were marked "on one side 'Kaiser,' and on the other 'Gott'"—a detail Perry uses to underscore German fatalism. Submarines leaving port "decked with flowers" appear as a symbol of doomed crews. The word "sinister" appears twice in close proximity: first to describe the "sinister element" of the secrecy policy, then to characterize submarine service as "sufficiently sinister in all its details." Perry also returns to the theme of German morale, citing mutinies and the storekeeper's regret at not staying in America. These recurring elements are not merely decorative; they build a cumulative argument about the psychological toll of undersea warfare. Readers should note how Perry weaves these details into different chapters, using them to connect discrete events into a broader commentary on the war's human cost.

Perry's book rewards attention to its narrative seams—the places where a policy explanation gives way to a sailor's anecdote, or where a battle scene yields to reflection. The excerpts suggest that Our Navy in the War is as much about the experience of writing naval history in wartime as about the events themselves. Readers may find it useful to compare Perry's treatment of the same incident in different chapters, noting how he adjusts emphasis. The book's dedication to Secretary Daniels also invites scrutiny: does Perry's admiration color his reporting? These questions make the work a valuable document of how the U.S. Navy's story was told to the American public in 1918.

That rainy afternoon, Perry’s account of destroyermen scanning grey seas left me with the odd, lingering sense of men waiting in cramped metal spaces, listening for what they couldn’t see. Later, that same quiet tension surfaced unexpectedly in In the Russian Ranks: A Soldier's Account of the Fighting in Poland — Inside the Classic, though the trenches were mud instead of steel. One war’s dread, it seems, simply changes uniform.