High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! USS Dictator was a single-turreted ironclad monitor. Originally to be named the Protector, the Navy Department preferred a more aggressive name. On 1 April 1862, John Ericsson proposed to Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Gustavus Fox, Dictator "a name which I respectfully request for the new Ocean Monarch." The vessel was to be originally armed with two 20-inch (510 mm) caliber smoothbores.