A young Virginia boatman navigates the Civil War

Scott Nelson

George Randolph Wood filled several journal books with personal remembrances of life in nineteenth-century Hampton, Virginia, particularly of his experiences aboard river and canal boats transporting supplies for Confederate troops along the James River during the Civil War. Wood wrote about his experience because he thought it might interest his family, but his writing is of interest to a more general audience because of the scarcity of information about those who worked on river boats and supply barges during the war. His writing lacks the sentimentality often found in reminiscences, and his terse, non-flowery style is interspersed with wit and honest observations of wartime spent on the James River, its tributaries, and the canal above Richmond. --from publisher description