Two months after the boat was lost, Captain M. M. Gray, in charge of torpedoes at Charleston, answered a question from General Maury at Mobile about Dixon and his men. He had not known what orders Dixon was under, only that he had asked Flag-Officer Tucker for men and been given them: “Arnold Becker, C. Simkins, James A. Wicks, F. Collins, and —— Ridgeway, all of the Navy, and Corporal C. F. Carlsen, of Captain Wagener’s company of artillery.” Alexander’s account adds that two men came from the German Artillery in February to replace him; Gray names one. That is the whole of the contemporary record of who was aboard. The rest comes from the excavation of 2001, the forensic examination led by Douglas Owsley of the Smithsonian Institution, the archaeological work of Maria Jacobsen and the genealogy of Linda Abrams, as the Friends of the Hunley have published it. Everything below that is not in Gray’s letter rests on their work.

George E. Dixon, forward, at the steering wheel and the diving lever, with his head in the forward hatch. First lieutenant, Company E, 21st Alabama Volunteers. His remains were found under the forward conning tower. He was in his middle twenties and five feet nine, with gold fillings, a diamond ring and brooch, a gold watch and binoculars. He was not Southern born; Owsley thought him most likely from the Midwest, long away from home. He can be traced to 1860 as a steamboat engineer on the Mississippi between St. Louis and Cincinnati. He was in Mobile when the war began, joined a lodge there, enlisted in October 1861, and at Shiloh on 6 April 1862 was shot in the left thigh, the ball striking a twenty-dollar gold piece of 1860 in his pocket. The coin, bent, was found beside him on 23 May 2001, engraved “Shiloh April 6, 1862 My life Preserver G. E. D.” Jacobsen: “We found a healed gun shot wound in Dixon’s left upper thigh, with minute lead fragments embedded in the bone.” The one letter of his that survives, to Henry Willey of Mobile on 31 January 1864, is quoted in the entry.

Arnold Becker, the first crank, directly behind Dixon, the third in command. About twenty, five feet five, the smallest and youngest, born in Europe and not long in America. He joined the Confederate Navy on 19 October 1861, served on the river gunboat General Polk until her crew burned her in June 1862, then on the Chicora at Charleston as captain’s cook, and from the autumn of 1863 on the receiving ship Indian Chief, where Dixon found him.

C. Lumpkin, the second crank. Only the surname is known, and Gray’s letter has it as Simkins; Abrams found a C. Lumpkins on a navy pay roster of October 1863 and a note in Alexander’s hand naming a Lumpkin in the boat. European born, long away, perhaps 37 to 44, five feet ten, with arthritis, a slouch, old breaks in the nose, cheek and foot, and notches in his teeth where he held a pipe. The pipe was aboard, with a sewing kit and a pocketknife.

Frank Collins, the third crank. Born in Virginia, raised by his grandparents in Fredericksburg after his mother died, a day labourer in the census of 1860, a seaman in the Confederate Navy by 1863, and over six feet tall, the largest man in the boat. His teeth had tailor’s notches from biting thread, not pipe notches; his grandfather and uncle were cobblers.

J. F. Carlsen, the fourth crank. European born, about 20 to 23, five feet ten. He was helmsman of the Charleston privateer Jefferson Davis in 1861, survived the loss of the ship near St. Augustine that August, and signed witness statements in the treason trial of the captured prisoners who had tried to take her. He then joined the German Artillery, Captain Wagener’s company, and was cited for bravery. He was one of the two artillerymen who replaced Alexander.

Miller, the fifth crank, the least known. European born, in America only a short time, 40 to 45, five feet eight, with old fractures of a rib, a leg and the skull, a heavy smoker with a pipe aboard, and two infantry buttons beside him consistent with the German Artillery. A Samuel Miller served with Carlsen on the Jefferson Davis and was captured and released in 1862; Abrams was still trying to connect them.

James A. Wicks, the sixth crank. Born in North Carolina about 1819, the oldest man aboard and one of three Southerners. He joined the United States Navy in 1850, married in Brooklyn the same year and had four daughters, and served as seaman and quartermaster in the Braziliera and the Congress. He was in the Congress on 8 March 1862 when the Virginia destroyed her at Hampton Roads. On 7 April 1862 he crossed the lines, enlisted in the Confederate Navy at Richmond, was assigned to the Indian Chief and rose to boatswain’s mate. His family was living in Florida. Five feet ten, a heavy tobacco user.

Joseph Ridgaway, the seventh crank, at the after hatch, in charge of the after tank, the pump, the sea cock and the flywheel: the second in command after Alexander left in February. Born late in 1833 in Talbot County, Maryland, the son of a sea captain with several merchant vessels; rated an experienced seaman at sixteen; joined the Confederate Navy at Richmond on 29 August 1862 and was on the Indian Chief’s rolls from early 1863. Five feet ten, a broken nose, shoulder injuries that may have come from the crank. He was found with a slouch hat, a pencil, a wooden pipe, and round his neck the identity tag of a Union soldier, Ezra Chamberlin of Connecticut, killed on Morris Island in 1863, where men from the Indian Chief did picket duty. He was the one man positively identified by DNA, in September 2004.

Four of the eight were born in Europe. Five had served on the Indian Chief. Two had been in the United States Navy or on a privateer that preyed on its merchantmen. None of the seven at the cranks has a photograph; the faces used at their burial on 17 April 2004 were reconstructed in clay over casts of their skulls, with the hair colour, where it could be had, from hair found in the boat.

Sources

• Letter from Captain M. M. Gray, C. S. Army, to Major-General Dabney H. Maury, Office of Submarine Defenses, Charleston, 29 April 1864, in Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies, series I, volume 15, pp. 337–338. archive.org
• W. A. Alexander, “Work of Submarine Boats,” Southern Historical Society Papers, volume 30 (1902), pp. 172–173, on the two men from the German Artillery and Ridgaway’s promotion. archive.org
• Friends of the Hunley, crew profiles: “Lt. George E. Dixon,” “Arnold Becker,” “C. Lumpkin,” “Frank Collins,” “Corporal J. F. Carlsen,” “Miller,” “James A. Wicks,” “Joseph Ridgaway”; “Hunley Crew Burial”; “Facial Reconstruction”; “Scientific Timeline.” Dixon, Becker, Lumpkin, Collins, Carlsen, Miller, Wicks, Ridgaway, burial