"It was a very costly war to both sides. The Germans reckon that they lost 32,000 submariners from 781 U-boats. They and the Italian submarines sank 2828 Allied and neutral merchant ships of 14,687,231 tons, together with 158 British Commonwealth and 29 American warships, several warships of other nations, and a very large number of aircraft. The loss of life at sea that the U-boats and Luftwaffe inflicted on the Allies has only been computed for the British merchant marine, which alone lost 29,994 men to enemy action. Hardly less than 40,000 men, and several hundred women and children, went down into the depths as a result of enemy submarine and aircraft attacks. The Atlantic, which since the dawn of history has been taking the lives of brave and adventurous men, must have received more human bodies into its ocean graveyard during the years 1939-1945 than in all other naval wars since the fleets of Blake and Van Tromp grappled in the Narrow Seas. Sailormen all, and passengers too, we salute you!"
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Pulitzer Prize winnersNon-fiction authors from the United StatesUnited States Navy peopleHarvard University alumniHarvard University faculty
Original Language: English
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https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_Eliot_Morison
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Samuel Eliot Morison
Samuel Eliot Morison (July 9, 1887 – May 15, 1976) was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history and American history that were both authoritative and popular. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years. He won Pulitzer Prizes for Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942), a biography of Christopher Columbus, and John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959). In 1942, he was commissioned to write a history of United States na
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