Charting new courses: Larrie Ferreiro's naval expertise sets sail at George Mason

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Like many George Mason adjunct faculty, Larrie Ferreiro had a successful career before entering academe. He worked in both France and England, where he earned his PhD in History of Engineering, Science, and Technology Studies from Imperial College London and became a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

He appreciates that he can apply his background to teaching. “What I enjoy about Mason is what I’ll call ‘opening the aperture.’ That’s part of the culture and ethos here,” he said. “As an adjunct, I was able to propose—and have accepted—the idea of a minor called STEM in Society. I developed curricula around this idea that you can look at science, engineering, and technology through a social and historical lens, and vice-versa.” 

Ferreiro has authored several books, one of which, Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It, published in 2016, was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist in History and was named Journal of the American Revolution Book of the Year. 

The cover of the book, "Brothers at Arms"
Ferreiro's book was the culmination of several years of naval history research. Image provided 

Ferreiro noticed his kids’ textbooks had no information about the American colonies’ collaboration with France, and Spain during the American Revolution. “I had looked at the knowledge sharing between France and Spain, and they were trying to create a combined navy to defeat the British and the Americans were relying on that.” He found very little written about this aid and said, “That was when I realized I had a book.”  

His combined knowledge of warship engineering and Industrial Revolution-era navies is nearly unmatched. Ferreiro is a naval architect and designed warships for more than 30 years, after being hand-picked to train overseas as a British naval constructor. He also spent time working in France in the early 90’s. “The Cold War ended in 1991 and the U.S. Navy was going to downsize,” he said. “My question was, ‘What does a future U.S. Navy look like that’s smaller?’ The French Navy was the only navy with every single capability the U.S. Navy had but at a smaller scale.” While working there, he found himself researching various aspects of ship design from the late 1700s.

For the book, he recalled, “I dragged my family up and down the East Coast, going to battlefields from Vermont to New York to Savannah. I had already researched the European archives and Brothers in Arms was a culmination of all of that. I took a different view of how the Americans asked for help from these two nations. The Americans wrote a document that was intended as a call to arms. We call it the Declaration of Independence, but it was specifically to tell the kings of France and Spain: If you come in on our side you will fight alongside a sovereign ally.”

When he learned he was named a Pulitzer finalist, he said, “The first words out of my wife’s mouth when I told her were, ‘I told you so.’ This is one of the many times I’ve heard this and as usual, she was right.”