USS Dictator
Civil War Union Naval Ship

USS Dictator (1864-1883)

USS Dictator , a 4438-ton single-turret seagoing monitor built at New York City, was commissioned in November 1864. Construction problems with her powerplant kept her initial service relatively brief and inactive, and she was decommissioned in September 1865 at the League Island Navy Yard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dictator was recommissioned in July 1869 for service with the North Atlantic Fleet, but was again laid up in June 1871. Her final period of commissioned service service lasted from January 1874 until June 1877 and was also spent in the Atlantic coast area. After six years "in ordinary" at League Island, USS Dictator was sold for scrapping in September 1883.

Watercolor by Oscar Parkes.
Courtesy of Dr. Oscar Parkes, London, England, 1936

Line engraving, published in "The Soldier in Our Civil War"

Engraving published in "Harper's Weekly", 3 February 1866 as part of a larger print entitled "The Iron-clad Navy of the United States.

View on deck, looking aft on the starboard side, while the ship was off an east coast Navy yard, circa the 1870s.
Note the elevated wooden wheelhouse atop the turret.
The original photograph is the right side of a stereograph pair published by the Littleton View Company, Littleton, New Hampshire, under the title "Man of War"

View on deck, looking forward on the starboard side, while the ship was off an east coast Navy yard, circa the 1870s.
Note the lightweight "flying deck" and bridge wings, wooden pilothouse mounted atop the gun turret, muzzle of a XV-inch Dahlgren gun visible in the turret gunport, davits, stanchions, and wooden boxes on deck.

Engraved plan of the ship's transverse section amidships, through the center of her gun turret.
Published in "The Artizan", 1 October 1867.
Note the XV" Dahlgren smoothbore gun in the turret, turret training gears, and the laminated iron armor on Dictator 's hull, turret and conning tower.



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DVD DVD Book Book

Quest for the Monitor
The first group of non-governmental divers to dive the Monitor. All diving operations were conducted under the close supervision of NOAA.This was beautifully photographed by veteran lensman Ric O'Donnell and narrated and written by Jackie Stone. The video shows a lot of action both on the deck of the dive boat as well as wonderfully clear underwater views of the Monitor
Raise the Alabama
Known as "the ghost ship." During the Civil War, the CSS Alabama sailed over 75,000 miles and captured more than 60 Union vessels. But her career came to an end in June of 1864 when she was sunk by the USS Kearsarge off the coast of Northern France, where the Alabama had gone for repairs.RAISE THE ALABAMA! descends into the murky depths of the English Channel with the marine archeology team led by the renowned Gordon Watts. 200 feet beneath these foreign waters, the legendary Confederate ship is surrendering her secrets, despite weather conditions that make it safe to dive only a few days a year. The program also documents the Alabama's extraordinary career, from her construction in Liverpool to the surprise attacks that made her the scourge of Union shipping and the valiant, 90-minute battle with the Kearsarge
War, Technology, and Experience aboard the USS Monitor
David Mindell has combined a sensitive and incisive reading of the documentary evidence with insightful historical analysis to illuminate not only his central theme, the experience of battle in an emerging machine age, but also the process of invention, negotiation, and politics that brought the Monitor into existence and the quite different process of narration, memory, and imagination that invested the ship and its exploits so heavily with symbolic meaning.
Life in Mr. Lincoln's Navy
Ringle is among the first to examine the many aspects of sailors' lives during the American Civil War. He examines topics such as the recruiting efforts of the U.S. Navy, compensation and promotion, training, entertainment, and disease to name but a few. The extensive research and sheer fact that this is one of the first books to examine this aspect of CW naval history makes it a must for any American naval library

 

The Complete DVD History of U.S. Wars (1700-2004)
War has always been part of the American experience. From the time the first colonists set foot upon North America's shores, they were in conflict with the Native inhabitants. One hundred years later the colonies suddenly found themselves an extension of the conflicts in Europe. Less than a century later, the Revolutionary War freed the fledgling United States from its British overlords and European entanglements. Born and nurtured in war, America grew in strength and power until at the beginning of the 21st century it was the foremost military power in the world.

 

Sources:
U.S. National Park Service
U.S. Library of Congress
US Naval Archives