BuOrd 32-Pounders of 4,500 Pounds in Townsend, Massachusetts

Jan 5

Note: These two cannons are the subject of a previous post using photos kindly donated by another photographer. This post uses my own photos.

Two US Navy Bureau of Ordnance 32-Pounders of 4,500 Pounds are displayed outside of Memorial Hall in Townsend, Massachusetts. While this type of cannon may frequently be found alongside Civil War Memorials in New England, one of the cannons has a firing hammer still attached to the lug at the breech. Having a hammer still attached is very unusual among displayed ordnance. I would be interested to know whether or not the hammer is brass, but the hammer as well as the cannons and pedestals are covered in thick layers of paint.

The two cannons are:

32-Pounder of 4,500 Pounds Number 108 manufactured at Builders Foundry in 1865. The weight as originally manufactured is 4,473 pounds. Number 108 has the hammer attached.
32-Pounder of 4,500 Pounds Number 109 manufactured at Builders Foundry in 1865. The weight as originally manufactured is 4,478 pounds.

The two cannons are displayed alongside what appear to be 11-Inch shells.

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 47-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. The four cannon in Stark Park were manufactured after the end of the war.

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.