After 1776, Americans struggled to gain recognition of their new republic and their rights as citizens. None had to fight harder than the nation’s seamen, whose labor took them deep into the Atlantic world. Nathan Perl-Rosenthal tells the story of how their efforts created the first national, racially inclusive model of U.S. citizenship.

This commemorative volume records a special kind of dual citizenship: Canadians exercising the profession of the sea in their nation's service, while also living out their civilian occupations in their home communities. The perspectives of these citizen sailors provide an interesting, valuable, and timely alternative history of the Canadian Navy.

In the decades after the United States formally declared its independence in 1776, Americans struggled to gain recognition of their new republic and their rights as citizens. None had to fight harder than the nation’s seamen, whose labor took them far from home and deep into the Atlantic world. Citizen Sailors tells the story of how their efforts to become American at sea in the midst of war and revolution created the first national, racially inclusive model of United States citizenship. Nathan Perl-Rosenthal immerses us in sailors’ pursuit of safe passage through the ocean world during the turbulent age of revolution. Challenged by British press-gangs and French privateersmen, who considered them Britons and rejected their citizenship claims, American seamen demanded that the U.S. government take action to protect them. In response, federal leaders created a system of national identification documents for sailors and issued them to tens of thousands of mariners of all races—nearly a century before such credentials came into wider use. Citizenship for American sailors was strikingly ahead of its time: it marked the federal government’s most extensive foray into defining the boundaries of national belonging until the Civil War era, and the government’s most explicit recognition of black Americans’ equal membership as well. This remarkable system succeeded in safeguarding seafarers, but it fell victim to rising racism and nativism after 1815. Not until the twentieth century would the United States again embrace such an inclusive vision of American nationhood.

During the Antebellum era, thousands of free black sailors were arrested for violating the Negro Seamen Acts. In retelling the harrowing experiences of free black sailors, Moral Contagion highlights the central roles that race and international diplomacy played in the development of American citizenship.

From the Battle of Dunkirk to the sinking of the Bismark and Scharnhorst, "Citizen Sailors" is the first definitive history of the Royal Navy in WWII. Drawing on hundreds of contemporary diaries and letters, along with memoirs, oral history and official documents, Glyn Prysor paints a vivid human panorama of the war at sea: nerve-wracking convoys, epic gun battles, devastating aerial bombardment and swashbuckling amphibious landings. Seen through the eyes of sailors themselves, it is a compelling account of daily humanity, horror, triumph and tragedy, and shows how the Royal Navy fought in every conceivable vessel from vast aircraft carriers and cramped corvettes, to fast motor boats, rickety minesweepers, Swordfish biplanes and aging submarines.

Ready Then, Ready Now, Ready Always: More than a Century of Service by Citizen Sailors coincides with the centennial anniversary of the U.S. Navy Reserve on March 3, 2015. However, as the title indicates, American's have been leaving their civilian occupations since the birth of the Navy in 1775 to serve the nation at sea during times of crises. This well illustrated narrative aims to tell about the contributions of those civilians to the nation's defense and security. Besides providing a broad chronology covering how citizen Sailors served as privateers, naval militiamen, National Naval Volunteers, Naval Reservists, and finally simply as Sailors as part of a one Navy concept, the author elected to follow numerous individuals on their journeys in the Navy Reserve as representative stories of the millions of Americans who once wore Navy blue part-time. By highlighting the contributions of these individuals, the intent is to honor all who served in the USNR as well as salute their families for their service to country.