Model 1845 42-Pounders at Fort Sumter
The author’s father photographed at Fort Sumter in the summer of 1950 by the Rifled and Banded Model 1845 42-Pounder still displayed at the fort.
In the summer of 1950, my grandparents took a picture of my father sitting beside a battered and pitted ancient cannon at Fort Sumter. At the time, that cannon would have been one of the very few visible at the fort. Visitors today can see twenty historic cannon. In 1950, only a handful (maybe 3?) were visible and above ground. The others, buried as fill around Battery Huger in the late 19th or early 20th century, would not be uncovered until major excavations at the fort in 1959.
Model 1845 42-Pounder, Rifled and Banded
The cannon that my father was pictured with, a Model 1845 42-pounder, was banded and rifled during the war by the Confederates. Today it is mounted on a casemate carriage in the casemate just to the right of the sally port as visitors enter. On the other side of the sally port is an unmodified Model 1845 42-pounder, also mounted on a casemate carriage. This cannon was one of those uncovered during the excavations in 1959. And given that it was never among the cannon documented by the US Army after the war, it is likely that it was buried, intentionally or unintentionally during the war. The near century below ground left the smoothbore gun in somewhat better shape - most of it’s markings were legible.
Model 1845 42-Pounder which was discovered during the 1950s excavations.
For the visitor to Fort Sumter interested in artillery of the era, these two cannon demonstrate the type of gun for which the fort was designed in the 1830s and 1840s. The banded rifle shows an effort to update an obsolete piece to meet the threat of armored warships and be able to engage more distant targets. However, the two massive 15-inch Rodman guns and the smaller yet still powerful Parrott rifles on display just a few yards away show the huge technological developments in artillery between the 1840s and 1860s.
For far more information about these two cannon as well as all the other guns on display at Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie, see Mike Ryan’s excellent paper “The Historic Guns of Forts Sumter and Moultrie.”
