32-Pounders of 4,500 Pounds in Peterborough, New Hampshire
US Navy Bureau of Ordnance 32-Pounder of 4,500 Pounds Number 53 at Peterborough, New Hampshire
US Navy Bureau of Ordnance 32-Pounder of 4,500 Pounds Number 56 at Peterborough, New Hampshire
Two US Navy Bureau of Ordnance 32-Pounders of 4,500 Pounds are displayed in front of the old Grand Army of the Republic Hall in Peterborough, New Hampshire. (At the time of my visit in August of 2024, the old GAR hall was in use as Post and Beam Brewing. Only my need to drive another hour that evening prevented me from wanting to visit that establishment!)
The type is well represented in monuments to soldiers and sailors in the Northeastern United States. When Congress passed legislation in the 1890s allowing the government to give obsolete surplus ordnance to communities for use with monuments, the BuOrd 32-Pounder of 4,500 Pounds seems to have been a commonly supplied cannon. There are about 20 displayed in New Hampshire alone. Like many of the other BuOrd 32-Pounders, these are displayed alongside stacks of what appear to by 11-Inch shells.
The two in Peterborough stand out for two reasons:
Where most of this type are mounted on decorative iron pedestals, the two Peterborough 32-Pounders are displayed on US Navy iron carriages for use on the broadsides of ships.
These two cannons are among the very few of the type to have been manufactured in 1864. The appendix in The Big Guns lists only one other which was cast in 1864. All the other surviving examples were manufactured in 1865-1867.
The two Peterborough BuOrd 32-Pounders are:
Registry Number 53 manufactured at Fort Pitt Foundry in 1864. It is marked as originally weighing 4,480 pounds.
Registry Number 56 manufactured at Fort Pitt Foundry in 1865. It is marked as originally weighing 4,438 pounds.
Again, the carriages are also of interest. One of the photos of Number 53’s trunnions show a weight of 891 pounds marked on the carriage. This is similiar to the 815 pounds marked on the carriage of the BuOrd 8-Inch of 6,500 pounds at Burlington, Vermont. I wonder if these are identical carriages - perhaps only modified to account for the 6.4-inch diameter trunnions of the 32-Pounder vs the 7-Inch trunnions of the BuOrd 8-Inch Shell gun.
I photographed these cannons at dusk, which my phone handled reasonably well. Some of the markings are not clear in the photos, and I am not sure whether that is due to the low light or layers of paint or both.
This type of cannon was designed by the Bureau of Ordnance in 1864 due to a perceived need for lightweight 32-Pounders. In the 1840s and 1850s, relatively light weight 32-Pounders of 27-Hundredweight, 33-Hundredweight, and 46-Hundredweight had been designed to equip the upper decks of US Navy ships. During the Civil War, these lighter 32-Pounders had been used to equip the many merchant ships which had been taken into service and had not been designed for heavy cannon.
The resulting 32-Pounder of 4,500 Pounds borrowed the general shape from Admiral Dahlgren’s 9-Inch, 10-Inch, and 11-Inch cannons. However, the 32-Pounders, like the similar 8-Inch Shell guns of 6,500 Pounds, had a simplified ring cascabel. Few if any of this type of cannon would have seen any service during the Civil War. Having been manufactured in 1864, the two at Peterborough could have been mounted aboard ships prior to the end of the war, though the list in The Big Guns does not list any such service.
The two BuOrd 32-Pounders of 4,500 Pounds displayed in Peterborough, New Hampshire
