Sailors in the Holy Land: The 1848 American Expedition to the Dead Sea and the Search for Sodom and Gomorrah

By Andrew C.A. Jampoler

Following the success of his first book about a U.S. Navy flight crew's desperate battle to survive a 1978 ditching in the icy north Pacific, Andrew Jampoler has turned to an equally exciting Navy adventure set in the desert of Ottoman Syria more than one hundred fifty years ago. Ordered to fix the exact elevation of the Dead Sea and to collect scientific specimens, the expedition was the Navy's first and last to the storied salt lake of the Old Testament. The expedition's leader, Lt. William Lynch, was at once a coolly scientific and a devoutly religious man who hoped to find the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah and sustain the Book of Genesis account of the cities' destruction. Drawing on his extensive research in Turkey, Jordan, and Israel, the author presents not only first-time details of the expedition but also sets the expedition into a colorful context of biblical story and of the great events of the mid-nineteenth century that included global epidemic disease, political revolution in Europe, the collapse of Ottoman imperial rule, and the secularization of America. He also offers a taste of Navy life at sea during a decade when sail began to give way to steam. Readers join Lynch and his men as they launch two small boats on the Sea of Galilee at Tiberias to run the Jordan rapids and then plumb the depths of the Dead Sea while members of the shore party and their Arab escorts follow along on camels and horseback. Officers and sailors alike believed that every previous expedition had been stricken by killing disease or assaulted by murderous desert tribes, but specially selected volunteers were prepared to suffer on a mission as much about religion as science. A sea story of unusual dimensions, their adventure has secured a permanent place in history thanks to Jampoler's skillful recounting of events large and small.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591144132
• ISBN13: 9781591144137
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
• Length: 270 Pages
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.8"

Customer Reviews

U.S. Navy to the Dead Sea

On 31 July 1847, four months after the capture of the port of Veracruz during the Mexican war, an expedition proposed by Lt. William Lynch to circumnavigate the Dead Sea was approved by the Navy. The specific goal of the expedition was to establish the elevation of the Dead Sea. He also intended to collect mineral and other specimens. What he really wanted to do was to find the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah. Traven in these days was not nearly as easy as it is now. Lynch had a 'metallic' boat which he proposed to travel. But the horses that were to pull the boat were broken to the saddle, not harness. That was just the beginning. This book tells the story of this expedition, but more than that puts it into place as a story of the time as well. This is a little known episode in the history of the U.S. Navy.