On December 19, 1870 a small boat arrived off the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Caught in the breakers, the vessel capsized, and its crew of five men were thrown into the ocean. Three drowned, one died of his injuries, and just one man, described as a starved, emaciated skeleton, crippled by a splinter in his leg, was found alive by an island local. That man, Coxswain William Halford, USN, told an incredible story of survival, and of an urgent mission.
In August of 1918, as the armies of Europe neared exhaustion, American troops of the 28th “Keystone” division were thrown into a nearly forgotten battle that fully represented the horrors of the War to End All Wars.
Of the vaunted ironclad warships of the US Civil War perhaps the mightiest and most terrifying was the confederate ram Tennessee. On August 5, 1864, she would be put to the test in the largest naval engagement of the war, an engagement that defined the divided loyalties of the War of the Rebellion.