Ulric ‘Ric’ Dahlgren IV
The longtime Annapolis harbor master oversaw two decades of changes at City Dock
Ulric “Ric” Dahlgren IV, a former Annapolis harbor master who modernized the job and oversaw two decades of changes at City Dock, died Oct. 29 at Luminis Health Anne Arundel County Medical Center. He was 81.
The cause of death was metastatic cancer, said his wife of 15 years, Joanne Hilton Dahlgren.
The couple had been visiting their second home in Bradenton, Florida, when Mr. Dahlgren, who went by “Ric,” suddenly became ill in September, and his condition deteriorated rapidly. “We thought we had many more years together,” Mrs. Dahlgren said.
Mr. Dahlgren was appointed harbor master in 1988, at a time when the city’s waterways were mostly controlled by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Police. During his 22-year tenure, the last working fishermen left City Dock, their slips assumed by water taxis and pleasure boats. Working with other city leaders, including former Mayor Ellen Moyer, Mr. Dahlgren helped the port gain autonomy and enforcement power for boating safety issues and environmental concerns.
“He elevated the harbor master’s job to the important post that is today,” said Mr. Moyer, a Democrat who served from 2001 to 2009.
Mr. Dahlgren also oversaw expansion of the city’s mooring system, renovations to the U.S. Naval Academy sea wall and watched the annual boat shows become a North American maritime destination.
Celebrity guests who asked Mr. Dahlgren for a place to dock in Annapolis included Walter Cronkite, Eric Clapton and Steve Forbes. But John Dahlgren, one of Mr. Dahlgren’s two sons, said his father would just as soon give an available spot to a dinghy than Mr. Forbes’ legendary party yacht, The Highlander.
“The city was first-come, first-served,” John Dahlgren said. “My dad had a tough side. Maybe that’s because he had been a Marine Corps captain, but he was always fair with everybody. People would tell him that they had political connections or were a member of the such-and-such yacht club. That didn’t matter to my dad, and I think that ruffled a few feathers. He didn’t care if you had a million-dollar boat.”
Mr. Moyer concurred. “He was very fairminded,” the former mayor said. “It was part of his character.”
And of course, Mr. Dahlgren was rarely far from his modest Dreadnought, a 32-foot sailboat called La Paloma (“The Dove”), which he brought with him to Annapolis from California.
“He was a true mariner,” John Dahlgren said.
Dahlgren family history in the U.S. dates to 1809, when Rear Adm. John Adolphus Dahlgren was born in Philadelphia to a Swedish merchant. The rear admiral founded the Naval Ordnance Department and invented a series of large-caliber weapons, including the Dahlgren gun. The academy’s Dahlgren Hall, home to the Dry Dock Restaurant, is named in his honor.
During the Civil War, John Adolphus Dahlgren served as commander of the Washington Naval Yard and was a military confidant of President Abraham Lincoln. One of the rear admiral’s three sons, Col. Ulric Dahlgren, became something of a mythic Union Army hero. He lost a leg fighting near Gettysburg, and after recovering from a 19th century amputation, co-led an unsuccessful raid on Richmond, Virginia. Confederate newspapers trumpeted his death. In 2019, the Smithsonian Channel released a documentary called “Targeting Jefferson Davis” that featured Ric Dahlgren and his two sons following in their ancestor’s ill-fated footsteps.
“He was certainly proud of his family history,” Mr. Moyer said.
Mr. Dahlgren was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, to Joseph Francis Dahlgren Sr. and Bertha Mae Singleton on Sept. 9, 1941. His family soon moved to California, where Ms. Singleton’s brother, the defense contracting mogul and Teledyne founder Henry Singleton, was then working for Howard Hughes. After graduating from University of California, Santa Barbara with a degree in English, Mr. Dahlgren enlisted in the Marines and served in Vietnam as an air traffic controller. During the 1970s, he worked in California as an air traffic controller, harbor patrolman and professional abalone diver.
Despite his family ties back East, it was actually Mr. Dahlgren’s former wife, Sharon Dahlgren Voros, and her professorship at the U.S. Naval Academy, that brought him to Annapolis in 1981. Their twin sons, John and Ulric V, were toddlers when they moved, but Ms. Dahlgren, who taught French and Spanish, would become the language department chair at the academy.
Before they divorced, the couple bought several acres on Bestgate Road, where Mr. Dahlgren raised chickens, ducks and goats, and adopted more than a dozen stray cats. (At the time of his death, the menagerie included six cats and about a dozen named chickens.) When he wasn’t at the farm, he was on the water, joining the harbor master’s office as a deputy in 1987 and assuming the top post a year later. His work included modernizing the bulkheads at City Dock “so they would stand the test of time,” son John Dahlgren said.
The September boat shows, Mr. Dahlgren told The Washington Post in 2000, were his favorite time of year. The boat show “is bigger than Christmas, bigger even than the Fourth of July,” he said. “I think it’s actually the best time of the year to be harbor master.”
With show organizers in charge of port traffic, Mr. Dahlgren left his perch in the harbor master’s office to mingle with the maritime masses. It was at the boat show that he met adventurous Alaskan state legislator Chuck Sassara. The two became fast friends who enjoyed sailing on the Chesapeake Bay and flying in the Alaskan backcountry. Mr. Dahlgren maintained his pilot’s license, flying out of Lee Airport in Edgewater.
“My dad had nine or 10 lives,” John Dahlgren said. “Between being a pilot and a Marine and an air traffic controller and a harbor master and all these different things.”
Both sons continue to work in environmental and maritime pursuits. John, who lives in Deale with his partner Elisa Pellegrini, is the director of submersible systems for the Baltimore firm SubCom. Ulric V, who lives in Lothian, serves as a planning and zoning administrator for Anne Arundel County. He and his wife, Nasrin, have two children, Nadia and Ulric VI.
Additional survivors include a brother, Joseph Francis Dahlgren Jr. of Squaw Valley, California; a daughter, Susan Dahlgren; and grandson Val Harms, granddaughter Hallie Harms, and three great-granddaughters, all of Colorado.
A public gathering is scheduled at Hardesty Funeral Home on Dec. 2 at 10:30 a.m. Interment will be private at the Crownsville Veterans Cemetery. A celebration of life will be held outdoors in the spring, Joanne Dahlgren said. Somewhere outside, she said. Or maybe even on the water.