In a high-tempo series of operations throughout the Black Sea, Aegean Sea and eastern Mediterranean, a small American fleet of destroyers and other naval vessels responded ably to several major international crises including the last days of the Russian Revolution and the 1920-1922 Turkish Nationalist Revolution.

Drawing heavily on previously unknown sources, Robert Shenk offers a revealing portrait of America's small Black Sea Fleet in the years following World War I. Home-ported in Constantinople, navy ships sped to the Crimea to help evacuate some 150,000 White Russians, and then coordinated the grain shipments that ended a terrible Russian famine. The fleet's successes in evacuating nearly 200,000 ethnic Armenian and Greek refugees from Smyrna and in rescuing tens of thousands from mainland Turkey are also detailed in full. Shenk's incisive depiction of Admiral Mark Bristol as both head of U.S. naval forces and America's chief diplomat in the region William Leahy, Thomas Kinkaid, Julian Wheeler, and diplomat Allen Dulles served under him help to make this book the first-ever comprehensive account of a vital, but little-known naval undertaking.