The Ira Dye Collection comprises: 149 obscure or rare books; 49 modern research books; 60 manuscripts and pamphlets, including an historically important set of 16 letters from Admiral Sir J. Borlase Warren, who commanded British forces in American waters during the War of 1812, and a handwritten British Naval Order book from 1814; 218 microfilm reels (including duplicates), mostly from the U.S. Naval Archives and U.K. National Archives; 14 microfiche film from the New York Public Library; a database on more than 17,000 American seafarers compiled by Ira Dye; and Ira Dye’s personal research materials, including photocopies, notes, correspondence, and photographs. See finding aid for more information.

The collection is particularly strong in three topics:

• The social history of American seafarers of the period 1796 to 1818, with heavy emphasis on 1812 to 1815,
• The operational history of the War of 1812,
• British naval history covering the period 1793 to 1815, i.e. naval history of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars

Arrangement

Series I: Manuscript Material, 1799-1862

Series II: Printed Documents, 1797-1830

Series III: Rare Books

Series IV: Research Books

Series V: Microfilm

Series VI: Microfiche

Series VII: Database*

Series VIII: Research Material

*In the course of his research, Ira Dye compiled a database of more than 17,000 prisoners of war taken during the War of 1812. Data includes individual prisoners’ identities, their physical description, the ships they were captured from and by, the prisons and other facilities prisoners were sent to, and the nature and date of prisoners’ release or death in captivity. Dye’s original electronic files and updated conversions of them to modern database software are now part of the USS Constitution Museum’s collections.  If you would like access to the information contained in this database, please contact the museum’s Curatorial Department.