10/13/2026
We at Blue and Gray Education Society are saddened to learn of the passing of Dr. Craig L. Symonds earlier today. Dr. Symonds was born December 31, 1946.
Dr. Symonds was Professor Emeritus of History at the United States Naval Academy, where he taught for thirty years, including serving a four-year term as History Department Chair. He was the first person to win both the Academy’s Teacher of the Year award (1988) and its Researcher of the Year award (1998). He received the Navy Meritorious Service Award in 1989, and the Superior Civilian Service medal in 1994, 1998, 2005, and 2020. In 1994-95, he was Professor of Strategy at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, England. He returned to the Naval Academy in 2012 as The Class of 1957 Distinguished Professor of Naval History. From 2017 to 2020 he was The Ernest J. King Distinguished Professor of Maritime History at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, for which he received his fourth Superior Civilian Service Medal (2020).
Symonds was the author of seventeen books. They include biographies of Civil War figures Joseph E. Johnston (1992), Patrick Cleburne (1997), and Franklin Buchanan (1999), as well as books on the Second World War, including The Battle of Midway (2011), Operation Neptune (2014), and World War II at Sea (2018). His 2005 book, Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History, won the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Prize for Naval History, and his 2008 book, Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Civil War, won the prestigious Lincoln Prize. His books have been translated into six foreign languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Dudley Knox medal for lifetime achievement. His newest book is a wartime biography of Admiral Chester Nimitz entitled Nimitz at War, released in 2022. (biographical sketch provided by The Society for Military History.)
Dr. Symonds was 79.
