The Author
With the benefit of thirty-five years' service, active and reserve, as a U.S. Navy SEAL officer (two hot wars, one cold), Crossland has found projecting his grasp of naval intrigue into the past a welcome challenge. Captain Crossland has written internationally on the subject of maritime unconventional warfare and includes U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings and the New York Times among his credits. His first book, Red Ice, was well received and his historical crime novel, Jade Rooster, received the Admiral David Glasgow Farragut Book Award in 2008. His newest work, The Abalone Ukulele, was released on June 29, 2021.
In the early 20th Century, a battleship was the greatest mobile convergence of technology on the face of the earth. The sailor was regarded by the public worldwide as something between a rock star, a cowboy, and an astronaut. Most boys had sailor suits and most girls, middy dresses. Little boys played with tin-plate battleships, not trucks.
Throughout Asia school boys and school girls wore uniforms best described as "naval."Candy boxes and tinned oyster cans capitalized on the good will of a sailor in uniform.
A common sailor, and few else, dared to cruise to most exotic places at the ends of the earth and return to tell the tale. He was the personification of wonderous technology, roaming courage, and exotic adventure.
The world was his oyster, and the world knew it.