32-Pounders of 57 hundredweight in Defiance, Ohio
32-Pounder of 57 hundredweight at Fort Defiance in Ohio. Photo courtesy of William Bechmann.
Two US Navy 32-Pounders of 57 hundredweight overlook the Maumee and Auglaize Rivers at Old Fort Defiance Park in Defiance, Ohio. The Fort Defiance site was built in 1794 - to quote the Wikipedia article: “Fort Defiance was built by General "Mad" Anthony Wayne in the second week of August 1794 at the confluence of the Auglaize and Maumee rivers. It was one of a line of defenses constructed by American forces in the campaign leading to the Northwest Indian War's Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794”
Both the 32-pounder cannon were cast for the US Navy in 1847 as part of the 1845 system of US Navy rearmament. An accompanying plaque states that the two cannons were captured at Fort Fisher near Wilmington, NC. If this is the case, the guns almost certainly would have been part of the nearly 1,000 cannon captured when the Confederates took the Gosport Navy Yard in 1861. Fort Fisher currently displays two 32-Pounders of 57 hundredweight which were rifled and banded by the Confederates during the war which can be seen in this post. The two Fort Defiance 32-pounders show examples of well preserved unbanded guns.
The 32-Pounder of 57 hundredweight was a common part of the armament of Confederate seacoast defenses due to the huge number taken at Gosport. Some were rifled (and some of those reenforced with a wrought iron band) while others were left as smoothbores. The Big Guns notes that 102 of these guns survive (Olmstead et al. pg. 38).
John Dahlgren spent much of the late 1840s testing and creating range tables for these guns. He found them deficient in terms of accuracy and hitting power, and his frustrations with them led to his design of the famous 9-inch shell gun.
The plaque at Fort Defiance also notes that the two guns were given by the US Government in 1896 to be part of a Grand Army of the Republic monument in Defiance, but they were moved in 1936 to their present location.
32-Pounder of 57 hundredweight at Fort Defiance in Ohio. Photo courtesy of William Bechmann.
Plaque describing the cannons. Photo courtesy of William Bechmann.
Fort Defiance viewed from across the river. Photo courtesy of William Bechmann.
Plan of the 1790s fortress. Photo courtesy of William Bechmann.
32-Pounder at Fort Defiance in 2021. Photo by Wikimedia User WMrapids and released as Public Domain under the Creative Commons 0 Public Domain Declaration.
