Triple banded Brooke Rifle on display at Fort Moultrie

Part of the extraordinary collection of sea coast artillery at Fort Moultrie on Sullivans Island outside of Charleston, the Seven-Inch Triple-Banded Brooke Rifle is the only surviving example of its type and perhaps one of only three made.

John Mercer Brooke’s first rifles (such as those mounted on CSS Virginia and CSS Atlanta) were reinforced with a single wrought iron band. Double Banded Brookes followed. The reinforcing was to allow for heavier propellant charges and heavier projectiles to be used than would have otherwise been possible.

In October of 1864, Brooke advised that Charges of VII Inch Brooke Rifles, Double banded be:

8 to 10 pounds with Shell, Shrapnel, grape, or canister
10 to 12 pounds with wrought iron bolts
13 to 14 pounds with wrought iron bolts, only to be used in close action with Monitors.

The Triple Banded Brooke was created to enable a 7-Inch Rifle to be fired with even heavier charges. The triple banding of wrought iron loops over the cast iron tube provided strength for heavier powder charges and/or heavier ammunition for the piece compared to its double-banded cousins. However, the design also prevented the trunnions from being part of the cast portion. As the two photos from the Library of Congress included with this post show, the Brooke originally had a trunnions as part of an additional band which is now lost. Markings on the Brooke give the original weight as 21,290 pounds. The trunnion band is now missing, and it likely has been since the 19th century. As the trunnion band seems to have been made of brass, it may have broken off during or after its post war moves, or it may have been removed by someone seeking to salvage the brass.

On February 25th, 1863 Brooke wrote in his journal of a test conducted using the first Triple Banded 7-Inch Brooke against a target made of four layers of 2x8 inch iron bars bolted onto 22 inches of wood (8 inches of iron armor). With a 120 pound wrought iron projectile using a 25 pound charge of powder the Brooke managed to penetrate the target (Ironclads and Big Guns of the Confederacy: The Journal and Letters of John M. Brooke, pp. 126-127).

Brooke wrote to General Beauregard in August of 1863, “The treble-banded gun with a wrought iron bolt and 20 pounds charge will penetrate a turret eight or nine inches thick, at four or five hundred yards, perhaps at greater distances. In such case, one might reasonably anticipate disabling the vessel. The treble banded gun although vastly stronger than the other rifles is proportionally strained by the very high charges which it is proposed to use at the decisive moment, when the distance warrants accuracy and penetration, viz: 20 lbs with wrought iron ball of 120lbs. It is not possible with our limited means of experiment to say what number of rounds with such charges may be fired; we only know, that the probability is largely in favor of disabling the enemy, if engaged as proposed, before the gun yields. In this matter we have no choice. We take the risk or decline the combat” (Brooke, pg 141).

One of the Triple Banded 7-Inch Brookes sent to Charleston eventually burst, and the report on the burst noted that “20 pounds of powder and the gun being fired at an elevation with a wrought iron ball, weighing 118 pounds must be considered a heavy charge and only to be sustained by a careful manufacture of the gun in all its parts” (Brooke, pg. 168). The Triple Banded Brooke which burst was one which had been damaged in a fire at Tredegar Foundry prior to being sent to Charleston. The Triple Banded Brooke Rifle now at Fort Moultrie was sent to Charleston in the fall of 1863 and mounted at Battery Marion, about 200 yards west of Fort Moultrie (Ryan, pg 12.)

Warren Ripley's excellent book "Artillery and Ammunition of the Civil War" tells an entertaining story of the post-war history of the Brooke. Following the war it was moved to the site of the old US Arsenal in Charleston. The arsenal, after serving as a collection point for abandoned Confederate ordnance, was sold by the Federal Government and became the site of Porter Military Academy. Over time, the Brooke ended up half-buried, and it was dug out and moved "by sheer boy-power" across the campus for display by the class of 1913 (Ripley, pg. 135). It has been displayed at Fort Moultrie since 1963.

Read further in:

Brooke, George M. Jr. ed. Ironclads and Big Guns of the Confederacy: The Journal and Letters of John M. Brooke. University of South Carolina Press, 2002.

Ripley, Warren, Artillery and Ammunition of the Civil War (4th Edition). The Battery Press, 1984.

Ryan, Mike. “The Historic Guns of Forts Sumter and Moultrie”. National Park Service Article. http://npshistory.com/publications/fosu/guns.pdf