10-Inch Columbiad, Model 1844, Banded and Rifled at Fort Moultrie

Jun 26

10-Inch Columbiad, Model 1844, Banded and Rifled with a Bronze Trunnion Band on display at Fort Moultrie near Charleston, South Carolina.

This cannon was previously covered as a part of this post: The Columbiads of Charleston

The Monitors of Rear Admiral John Dahlgren’s South Atlantic Blockading Squadron were not invulnerable to the Cannons of the Confederate defenses of Charleston. When the turreted ironclads engaged large portions of the fortifications all at once, as they had during Admiral Du Pont’s failed attack of April 7th, 1863, the sheer weight of fire could and did break things, injure crewmen, and gradually incapacitate the ships, but neither the 10-Inch Columbiad nor the 7-Inch Brooke Rifle, the most powerful armament Richmond could supply to Charleston, were able to penetrate the armor of a monitor. (And may I just take a moment to salute the bravery and fortitude of the US Navy monitor sailor who endured wretched conditions in the South Carolina heat. I am only half-joking when I suggest that the US Navy should retroactively award all monitor crewmen with “Dolphins”.)

Warren Ripley in “Artillery and Ammunition of the Civil War” tells the story of General Beauregard’s efforts to create a more powerful cannon for Charleston which resulted in the unique banded and rifled Columbiad with the bronze trunnion band preserved at Fort Moultrie near Charleston, South Carolina. By all means, acquire your own copy of Ripley’s book, but to summarize the story told there (pages 72-75):

Beauregard wanted to take his heaviest smoothbores (10-Inch Columbiads) and band and rifle them to create a weapon capable of firing a projectile nearly twice as heavy. Richmond did not want to pay the expense of such a conversion and did not want to ruin a functional cannon with a conversion that might prove unsuccessful. To sidestep the objection about ruining a cannon, Beauregard selected a Columbiad which had a damaged trunnion (possibly as a result of damage received during the 1861 Battle of Fort Sumter). Whatever remained of the damaged trunnion and the undamaged one were both removed. Two wrought iron reinforcing bands were heat shrunk over the breech. To replace the missing trunnions, a bronze trunnion band was cast, and the trunnion band and reinforcing bands connected by heavy bolts.

The result was a 10-Inch rifle capable of firing projectiles weighing up to 250 pounds with a 12 to 16-pound charge of powder.

The cannon was orignally a 10-Inch Columbiad, Model 1844 cast by Cyrus Alger and Co. in Massachusetts. It bears the number 7 on it’s muzzle and the initials JWR (US Army Ordnance Inspector James Wolfe Ripley). The breech is stamped “15,210” - the original weight in pounds. (As converted the piece weighs approximately 22,000 pounds.)

The muzzle shows the same test scar as the Model of 1819 24-Pounder also preserved at the fort. As I mentioned in the post about the 24-Pounder, this scar dates from the effort to test the strength of US ordnance following the explosion of the “Peacemaker” aboard USS Princeton.

The left bronze trunnion is stamped “J.M. Eason & Bro., 1863, Charleston, SC. (The firm that did the conversion work. Their initials are stamped on the upper rear of the piece as well.) The top of the trunnion band bears a stamped “CS” and a crudely scratched “US”. The piece has been rifled with 15x15 straight bands.

As far as evaluating the piece: it was converted in 1863 and survived without bursting until the end of the war (not exactly a given in cast iron rifled ordnance). Beauregard had at least one more Model 1844 10-Inch Columbiad banded and rifled. That cannon may be seen at Fort Sumter. On the other hand, the Model 1844 was not known for it’s strength to begin with. The weakness of the tube when firing the 128 pound round shot was one of the factors that led US Army officer Thomas Jackson Rodman to begin the expermiments in casting that led to the Model 1861 Columbiads (The “Rodman” guns). The Confederates converted an somewhat weak and obsolescent cannon which resulted in a piece that weighed nearly as much as the US Army 10-Inch Parrott rifle but was only able to use 1/2 to 2/3 the propellant charge. Still, this conversion was available to the Confederates. The Parrotts were not.

An 1865 image in Ripley’s book shows this bronze trunnion Columbiad mounted near Fort Sumter in Battery Bee (also on Sullivan’s Island).

It is preserved on Cannon Row at Fort Moultrie as part of the fascinating collection of 19th Century American Ordnance on display there. It is a unique piece and inevitably a favorite among cannon enthusiasts. Whether it is an example of Confederate ingenuity or resource poverty, I will leave to the reader.

And again, Happy Carolina Day to you all on June 28th! (Commemorating the Victory of the defenders of Fort Moultrie - then called Fort Sullivan - over the British fleet on that day in 1776.)