On second thought ...

... Paul Davis, who reviewed for me when I was still a review editor, and who still sends me links, sent me an email yesterday about a review a couple of years ago. He feels he was unfair and wants to clear matters up. I asked him if I could post his email and he said yes. So here it is:

Frank:

I think a correction is in order, and perhaps your blog is the proper place to offer one at this late date.

Back in April of 2006 I reviewed "A Carrier At War" for you.

I gave the book a favorable review, but I had one small criticism, which was the author's annoying habit of referring to the USS Kitty Hawk - an 80,000 ton aircraft carrier - as a "boat."

When I served as a teenage seaman on the USS Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War in 1970-1971, one did not call the carrier a boat.

If you were dumb enough to do so, several chiefs, petty officers, and officers would yell and curse at you, and tell you that the carrier was a SHIP! Not a boat!

Like a good writer and reporter, I checked this out with sources. I asked a chief and an officer at the Navy base where I worked prior to retiring from the Defense Department if the Navy now called carriers and other ships boats. No way, both of them said. They are ships.

I learned in my day that the Navy was fussy about names - this was a deck, not a floor, a bulkhead, not a wall, this was an overhead, not a ceiling, and this was a ladder, not a stairway.

After you published the review, I received a good number of e-mails, and some of the senders said that their son or daughter served on carriers and they called their ship a boat. I assumed their offsprings were young and inexperienced sailors who didn't know any better, and at some point they would be not-so-gently corrected by a crusty, old chief.

But, after watching the very fine 10-hour PBS special "Carrier" (www.pbs.org/weta/carrier), I have to admit that several sailors - including older, experienced ones - did in fact call the ship a boat.

I stand corrected. My apologies to the author, Richard F. Miller, and to the readers who e-mailed me.

Paul

The review is attached.
I guess I'm now considered to be "Old Navy."


And here is the review.

Update: By the way, I hope everybody realizes what a classy thing this was for Paul to do.