When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
The Salemite: The U.S.S. Salem CA-139, 1954
Published by the U.S.S. Salem (CA-139), 1954. Very good hardcover, no dust jacket. Good cover, tight binding, solid spine, clean unmarked text, illustrated. Oblong 4to, 116 pages.
The Salemite is the 1954 cruise journal of the USS Salem (CA-139), a 17,000-ton Des Moines-class heavy cruiser built at Quincy, Massachusetts and commissioned in 1949, which spent her decade-long career alternating between Atlantic service and deployment to the Mediterranean as flagship of the Sixth Fleet. This oblong, illustrated volume chronicles in words and photographs the ship's 1954 Mediterranean deployment, one of the annual Sixth Fleet cruises that defined Salem's operational identity throughout the 1950s, documenting the officers and crew, ports of call, and shipboard life of a major Cold War-era flagship.
USS Salem holds a distinctive place in naval history as the last heavy cruiser ever commissioned into any navy and the sole surviving example of her type, now preserved as a museum ship at the former Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts. During her active years she hosted an array of international dignitaries, and cruise journals such as this one, produced by and for the ship's company, serve as firsthand records of a warship whose seagoing career has since been permanently retired to dockside preservation.
Illustrated ship's yearbooks of this kind are produced in limited numbers for crew distribution and rarely surface outside private collections, making them of particular interest to naval historians, Cold War researchers, and collectors focused on U.S. Navy cruiser operations, Sixth Fleet deployments, and the material culture of mid-century shipboard life. For institutions and collectors connected to the Salem's ongoing preservation as a museum ship, a surviving crew-produced record from her active Mediterranean service adds tangible documentary depth to the ship's history.
LOC: GL2-1
