Midwatch in Verse: New Year’s Deck Log Poetry of the United States Navy, 1941-1946

Naval deck logs require young officers to record mundane details of a ship’s condition every few hours. According to a U.S. Navy tradition, the New Year’s midwatch log–covering midnight to early morning of January 1–can be entered as poetry. Each chapter of this first book-length examination of midwatch poems presents verses written 1941-1946 aboard a ship engaged in combat during World War II, including celebrated warships like the USS Enterprise and nameless vessels like PC 1264. Historical overviews of the ships’ operations, along with biographical sketches of the author(s), relate each poem to its moment in history.