[4] His academic education at Loyola College was interrupted by enlistment in the United States Navy on July 1, 1943.
Footner began writing articles about the degradation of the estuaries of the Chesapeake Bay, and promoting sustainable agriculture to stem the deterioration.
[8][9] Footner's second book, Tidewater Triumph: The Development and Worldwide Success of the Chesapeake Bay Pilot Schooner., concerns a small 18th Century wooden ferry and pilot boat which grew into a family of sailing vessels at the close of the age of commercial wooden sailing vessels, including private armed cruisers and naval brigs and schooners for the American, British, French, Swedish and Danish navies, merchant, slave and opium schooners.
Footner relates finding the plans of USS Enterprise at the Arsenal (shipyard) in Venice where it underwent an overhaul in 1805.
It follows the growth of Fell's Point, the harbor of the city of Baltimore, into a prominent port and the development of the Chesapeake pilot schooner used by its merchants.