Sailors in the Holy Land; The 1848 American Expedition to the Dead Sea and the Search for Sodom and Gomorrah

Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2005. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xvii, [1], 312, [4] pages. Illustrations. Maps. Appendix 1: The Crew of United States Store Ship Supply. Appendix 2: Members of the Expedition. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index. Signed by the author on the title page and inscribed and dated by the author on page facing the title page. Andrew C. A. Jampoler spent nearly twenty-five years as an active duty naval aviator including a year on the ground in Vietnam, command of a squadron and a naval air station, and service on several high level staffs. He is the author of six other Naval Institute Press books, beginning with Adak in 2003 and most recently Congo. Jampoler has turned out an exciting Navy adventure set in the desert of Ottoman Syria more than 150 years ago. Ordered to fix the exact elevation of the Dead Sea and to collect scientific specimens, the expedition was the Navy's first and last to the storied salt lake of the Old Testament. The author presents first-time details of the expedition but also sets the expedition in context of biblical story and of the great events of the mid-nineteenth century that included global epidemic disease, political revolution in Europe, the collapse of Ottoman imperial rule, and the secularization of America. He offers a taste of Navy life during a decade when sail began to give way to steam. Lynch and his men launch two small boats on the Sea of Galilee at Tiberias to run the Jordan rapids and then plumb the depths of the Dead Sea while members of the shore party and their Arab escorts follow along on camels and horseback. Their adventure has secured a permanent place in history thanks to Jampoler's skillful recounting of events.