American Historical Ephemera & Photography

5 5/8 x 3 in. stereoview on yellow mount. (Light stains.) Outdoor showing a pair of sailing ships of the line (probably Delaware -class) from the stern-quarters, riding at anchor somewhere on the eastern seaboard. Although the US navy completed ten of the sailing behemoths intermittently during the decades leading up to the Civil War, none of the warships ever saw action and served primarily as receiving ships assigned to the major port cities. The advent of steam power and rifled ordnance had rendered the line of massed battleships obsolete by 1850.

[With:] No. 320 Monitors, Navy Yard, Washington D. C. Littleton, NH: Kilburn Brothers, n.d. 6 x 2 7/8 in. stereoview on yellow mount. (Soiling, spotting, toned.) Captioned to recto, photographers' imprint to verso. Post-war, two decommissioned vessels appear in the foreground with another three tied up closer to shore.  The monitor closest to the camera features a temporary wooden shed to accommodate a skeleton crew assigned to the nearly derelict vessel.  A handful of the war-built monitors were retained 'in ordinary' during the latter half of the 19th century and were actually re-commissioned for coastal defense during the Spanish-American War in 1898.

[With:] 5 3/4 x 3 in. stereoview on peach mount. (Overexposed, toned, occasional spotting; wear to rounded edges.) "Stereoscopic Studies / American Scenery" imprint at either end, and the location "Navy Yard / Charleston" penciled on verso. Seen through the haze of overexposure is a row of dismounted naval Dahlgren guns and seacoast mortars with a three-masted screw frigate at anchor in the distance.

[With:] No. 327 Harpers Ferry. Littleton, NH: Kilburn Brothers, n.d. 6 1/8 x 3 in. stereoview on yellow mount. (Spotting, toned.) Caption to mount recto, photographers' imprint to verso. The view depicts the massive iron railroad bridge over the Potomac River with the city built into the elevation of hills.

[Also with:] Confederate Shot in Union Gun. 6 3/8 x 2 3/4 in. stereoview on orange mount. Period ink inscribed caption to verso, repeated in the same hand on verso: "Union gun with Confederate shot in mouth."  The affected army field piece is standing watch over a row of obsolete gun tubes. 

Together, 5 stereoviews.