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NavSource Online: Battleship Photo Archive

USS PURITAN

Info courtesy of hazegray.org.
Dictator Class Monitor: Design Specifications Only: Displacement: 4,912 tons. Dimensions: 340 x 50 x 20 feet/103.62 x 15.24 x 6.1 meters. Propulsion: Ericsson VL engines, 6 boilers, 2 shafts, probably 3,500 ihp and ~ 11 knots. Crew: 175. Armor: Iron: 2-6 inch sides, 2 inch deck, 15 inch turret. Armament:1 dual turret with 2x20 inch Dahlgren smoothbore.

Concept/Program: Intended as a "seagoing high speed monitor". Ultimately would have been an enlarged version of Dictator, carrying the largest diameter guns ever fitted in a ship.
Design: A compromise design between Ericsson and the Navy. The original design was for a dual turreted ship with four 10 inch Dahlgren smoothbores, but this was altered to the single turreted design listed above. Ericsson favored a single turret and single shaft; the Navy wanted dual turrets and dual shafts. There were problems in producing the 20 inch guns, and only one was ever cast. Design speed was 15 knots, but it is believed that horsepower and speed would have been similar to Dictator.

Operational and Building Data: Originally designed as a double-turreted ironclad monitor the plans were altered to the specifications of John Ericsson, Puritan's builder, following a long debate with the Navy; she was built with a single turret. Contracted 28 July 1862 to Ericsson, who in turn subcontracted the hull to Continental Iron Works of Greenpoint, N.Y., and the machinery to Allaire Works of New York, N.Y., she was launched 2 July 1864. However, due to delays in construction and the casting of the 15-inch smoothbores she was never completed, her construction being suspended in 1865. The ship went through a complete redesign prior to construction, and was never completed.
Fate: The ship was nominally "repaired" as a "New Navy" monitor, but in fact was sold to the shipbuilder as partial payment for a new ship, and was scrapped.

Size	Image Description	Contributed By And/Or Copyright
156k	Shiphouse at the Continental Iron Works, Greenpoint, New York, in which the original *Monitor* was constructed during the winter of 1861-62. Right, U.S. monitor *Puritan* on the building ways.	Photo & text courtesy of"Monitors of the U.S. Navy, 1861-1937", pg 4, by Lt. Richard H. Webber, USNR-R. (LOC) Library of Congress, Catalog Card No. 77-603596.
95k	Line engraving by Harley, published during the 19th Century, depicting the *Puritan* as she would have looked had she been completed to her final design, with one gun turret.	U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph # NH 42278.
376k	A guest studies a painting depicting the history of battleships. The artwork was painted by George Skybeck and presented to the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association during their annual banquet at Honolulu, Hawaii, on 8 Dec 1991.	USN photo # DN-SC-92-05391, by PHC Carolyn Harris, from the Department of Defense Still Media Collection, courtesy of dodmedia.osd.mil.

USS PURITAN History
View This Vessels DANFS History Entry
(Located On The Hazegray & Underway Web Site, This Is The Main Archive For The DANFS Online Project.)

Crew Contact And Reunion Information
Not Applicable To This Ship

Additional Resources
Hazegray & Underway Battleship Pages By Andrew Toppan.
Monitor National Marine Santuary, NOAA.
Tour the Wreck of the Monitor.

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