Christine Friesel

The Boys of Bath: The Civil War Diary of Pvt. Charles Brother, USMC Christine Friesel

When poet Fannie Toyne talked about her father, Charles Brother, which was hardly ever, she said her earliest
memory was being thrown out a window.

When Civil War Marine Charles Brother talked about "the boys," which was often, he talked of the pursuit of that prize ship and the Battle of Mobile Bay when Admiral Farragut reportedly cried out, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"

Drenched in history and sea salt, The Boys of Bath is a saga of sacrifice and loyalty, exhibiting the
few and proud men of rare, high spirit: the first to go in, not flinching for canon, shipwreck, or mines.

Charles Brother wrote of life in Bath, New York, and in the barracks in Boston and Brooklyn, the New York Draft Riots, gunnery, targets, storms, and drilling with terrific shipmates-men who were agile and ready to fly in the ropes and through life-his fraternity. His story is about the bloody correction of the nineteenth century, made by grandsons of slave owners, a story relevant only to those who know well this business of being wrong about all of it-the true cost of sin against a race and the exit strategy, the unspoken promise to be silent, the pursuit of a prize, and the torpedo mines primed to give way to that switch, even those only in your head.