 Griffith Baily
Coale
The picture is of my grandfather Griffith Baily Coale. During World War
Two he was a Navy combat artist. This site contains that story in his words.
He not only painted the war but wrote two books about it. North Atlantic Patrol was about his experiences on a destroyer
to Iceland just prior to the start of the war. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he went to
Pearl and, the day after the Battle of Midway was over, he was on an airplane to Midway to
sketch and interview the participants. He wrote about his experiences at Pearl and Midway
in Victory at Midway.
I have all of North Atlantic Patrol and Victory at Midway up on this site.
Griff also was working on a third book that was never published. It
currently is in the form of very detailed reports he made to the Navy
in 1943-1944 as he went around the world from New York to England,
Cairo, India, Ceylon, and Perth. I have started this section I
call War around the World.
I will be
continually adding new material so I have two forms below. One is an e-mail list. If you
sign up I will send you notification when I add more material to this site. The second
form is a guest book for you to add your comments about this project.
Start at the Introduction and experience
another time and another world.
Where did the guestbook go?
I used to have a guest book until the spammers started
leaving comments with links to things I wouldn't want to go to. You
can't put entries in anymore but you can see some very
interesting comments in the old guestbook. I you have something
you would like to add, please email
me the comments and I will put them in the guestbook. Many
apologies to anyone that may have sent the guestbook before I removed
the spam.
Changes
| March 15, 2004
Report No. 8 is
up. Many thanks to Jenny's friend, Andy Acord, for doing the bulk
of the typing on this one. Griff travels a little more around
Delhi and then flies down to Columbo, in Ceylon. They are working
on Report No. 9. Number 9, number 9, number 9...
March 10, 2004
I have been putting scans, from the books, of Griff's paintings
on this website. Color reproduction from the 1940s isn't the
quality I would like, but that is all that I have. There are
a number of paintings that I only have black and white
electro-static copies. They were in the package that Gale Munro,
of the Naval Historical Center, sent to my sister, Madelane,
almost 10 years ago. Madelane and I are planning a trip back to
the wrong Washington (D.C.) to see the paintings and make copy
negs. I figured that the Naval Historical Center already has some,
so I called them. I just got of the phone with Gale Munro and they
have made 4x5 copy negs of many of his paintings (there are 53)
and have scanned the negs. She is sending me a CD with what they
have. That should, at least, give me some improved pictures to put
up. The long term goal is to be able to make high quality inkjet
prints available. I'm excited.
Andy and Jenny have finished Report 8 and I will be proofing it
and getting it up soon.
February 29,2004
Report 7 is up.
Be sure to check out the date links in the report. They go to
pages with pictures of some of the amazing places he visited
around New Delhi. Jenny and Andy have Report 8 almost done.
January 7, 2004
It's been awhile! Jenny, who's been typing this, has been going
to school and she had two hard drive crashes. This is the third
time she typed it. Check out Report
6. This was an amazing journey from Cairo, through Palestine
and Syria in an open jeep. I've change the format a little. I've
added additional pages with maps and pictures. You'll figure it
out. Now I have to go back and do the same with the rest of it.
Jenny is working on Report 7.
January 21, 2003
Jenny (my oldest daughter) has been helping with typing. The
copies of Griff's reports weren't good enough for the scanner to
convert. I've added to the War
Around the World section with his sailing
to England and flying
to North Africa and Cairo.
July 6, 2002
I received a request to be put on the mailing list, for this
site, by the niece of a survivor of the sinking of the Reuben
James. Her uncle was mentioned in North Atlantic Patrol.
I mention it in detail on a page
in my weblog.
I've added the beginning section of War Around the World
-- Preparing to Leave
June 5, 2002
I'm baaaack! I have started the War
Around the World section which why I started this web site.
North Atlantic Patrol and Victory at Midway are introductions to
the about 150,000 words he wrote on his trip around the world
during war time. |
|
| February 4, 2002
I finally got a new scanner. I have been without since last
summer. I finished off Victory at Midway with chapters 8, 9, 10,
and 11. Since the new scanner is so good, I will be rescanning all
the older sections and adding large images like I have done in the
last chapters. |
Griff Links
These are the web sites on Griff that I have found. If you know of others let me know.
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