Series 21. Caspar F. Goodrich (1862-1933)

The subseries consists mainly of official correspondence received, including orders to report to ships, permissions for leave, administration of the Torpedo Board, service on various courts martial, and assignments to lecture at the Naval War College. The letters sent are mostly typescript carbons with some letterpress copies, and include official reports filed on operations and cruises, providing details of the responsibilities of a ship's commander in this period. John Meigs's January 1909 letters discuss the formation of a naval historical society and in that year John Sanford Barnes sends draft bylaws of the Naval Historical Society, comparing it to Britain's Naval Records Society. The last document was found in the original Correspondence box and is not in Goodrich's handwriting; it may have been written by New-York Historical Society librarian Dorothy Barck.

The subseries includes notes, handwritten drafts, and final versions (mostly carbon typescripts) of lectures Goodrich presented at the Naval War College, as well as notes on other topics. Also included are a newspaper clipping and a list of personal items, perhaps from the Goodrich residence, found with the lecture materials. "The Problem of 96" is one of the annual examinations by College cadets of a challenge in coastal defense: the 1896 one looked at a specific part of nearby Narragansett Bay. This is an early precursor of the theoretical "war games" the College famously initiated.

The numbered lectures were delivered in order as part of a series on famous international naval encounters, from the Battle of Sluys in 1340 to Drake's destruction of King Phillip's fleet in Cadiz Harbor in 1587, Napoleon's Nile Campaign of 1798, and the 1827 Battle of Navarino during the Greek War of Independence. These form the backdrop for Goodrich's final multipart lecture on Dewey's engagement in Manila during the Spanish-American War, which had occurred only three years before these lectures. It is unclear if the material on the Army's landing in Cuba formed part of this presentation.

Arrangement

The lecture notes are arranged chronologically and the numbered lectures in order as noted on them and their original packaging. Some lectures' accompanying graphic materials (maps and photoreproductions probably used in the preparation of lantern slides) were pinned to the lecture text; these have been separated, numbered by page on which they appeared, and housed by lecture. The notes' original envelopes are in separate folders; they may date any time from the lectures in 1901 to the collection's donation to the Naval History Society in 1933.

The subseries includes notes and final versions of Goodrich's writings, apart from the lectures he delivered at the Naval War College, including various topics in naval warfare, an address on establishing a naval training facility in San Diego, and his 1924 memoirs. The latter includes a typescript with handwritten emendations probably by James Barnes, who edited the work for publication by the Naval History Society ("Rope yarns from the old navy," published by J.J. Little & Ives Co., as the eleventh volume of the Society's publications), and a final clean version incorporating those changes. The memoirs are an affectionate look at his early service in the Navy, which he describes as "coincident with the great changes from sail to steam; from wooden frigates to steel dreadnoughts; from smooth bore muzzle loaders to breech loading rifled cannon; from man power to electricity."

The subseries consists of undated notes in Goodrich's hand, and a typed transcript, from the logs of Captain James Goodrich (dated 1796-1853) aboard various vessels, including Confederacy. These may be related to the publication in Journal of American History (IV, II, pp. 273-280, 1910) of "First Commerce Under American Flag," by William Goodrich (grandson of James and brother of Caspar F.), which documents James Goodrich's claims against the French government for restitution of goods seized on a voyage.

The subseries consists of a scrapbook of newspaper clippings on the Spanish-American War.