Author & Navy Vet Dennis Ringle to be Hosted at U.S. Navy Memorial

Marine Engineer will Read and Sign New Book Life in Mr. Lincoln’s Navy

Thursday, March 26, 2009, 12:00 NOON
Free and open to the public.

Part of the Navy Memorial’s “Authors on Deck” Series of Navy-related Book Lectures. As part of the Navy Memorial’s contribution to the Lincoln Bicentennial, Dennis Ringle will read excerpts from his groundbreaking book, Life in Mr. Lincoln’s Navy, followed by Q&A and book signing.

In Life in Mr. Lincoln’s Navy, Dennis Ringle, a marine engineer with more than twenty years of naval experience, describes the lives of the steam engineers whose work later proved critical to the success of the ironclad monitors and the development of the powerful pre-dreadnought warships. To reconstruct daily life, he draws on a large number of published and unpublished diaries, journals, and letters.

Every aspect of the common sailor’s life in the Union navy—recruiting, clothing, training, shipboard routine, entertainment, wages, diet, health, and combat experience—is addressed in this study, the first to examine the subject in such detail. The wealth of facts provided here offers a unique look at nineteenth-century social history, including such issues as racial integration in the military. As he examines daily life in the Union navy, Dennis Ringle also calls attention to the enlisted sailor’s enormous but often overlooked contributions to the development of the U.S. Navy as it moved from wood and sail to steam and iron.