Hard Aground brings together three intertwined stories documenting the US Navy’s strategic and matériel evolution from the end of the Civil War through the First World War. These incidents had lasting consequences for how the navy modernized itself throughout the twentieth century. The first story focuses on the reconstruction of the US Navy following the swift and near-total dismantling of the Union Navy after the Civil War. The second story relates the short, tragic life of the USS Tennessee (later renamed Memphis), one of the steel-hulled ships of the new Armored Cruiser Squadron, a centerpiece of the navy’s modernization effort. The USS Tennessee was ordered on two unusual missions in the early months of WWI, long before the United States formally entered the war. These little-known missions and the ship's shocking destruction in a storm surge in the Caribbean serve as the centerpiece of the story. Threaded through the narrative are biographical sketches of principal players in the drama that unfolded following the ship’s demise. Jampoler rounds out this account with the story of how the USS Tennessee’s destruction prompted fierce deliberations about the US Navy’s operations and chains of command for the remainder of WWI and the high-level political wrangling inside the Department of the Navy immediately after the war as civilian appointees and senior officers wrestled to reshape the department in their image.

Andrew Jampoler, who has been writing full time for more than twenty years, is an amazing storyteller who has given illustrated presentations on his books and magazine articles, and expeditions and adventures at sea, to audiences at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, in museums and embassies, at libraries and bookstores, aboard cruise ships around the world and virtually during COVID. He is an alumnus of Columbia College, the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, and of the US State Department Foreign Service Institute’s School of Language Study. During more than twenty years on active duty with the US Navy, Jampoler, a naval aviator who flew Lockheed P-3 airplanes in search of submarines, also commanded a land-based maritime patrol aircraft squadron and an air station. Later, he was a senior sales and marketing executive in the international aerospace industry.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents