Clash of Eagles: America's Forgotten Expedition To Ottoman Palestine

In the middle of the Mexican-American War, the secretary of the Navy authorized Lt. William Francis Lynch to command an unusual expedition, not south to the war zone, but east to Ottoman Palestine, now Israel and Jordan, to map the Dead Sea. Traversing this backwater of a dying empire, Lynch forged life-saving alliances with a Bedouin sheik and a Hashemite Sharif. Horses weren’t strong enough, so he improvised with foul-tempered camels to haul metal boats overland from the Mediterranean to ...