Parrott Rifles of Forts Sumter and Moultrie
6.4 Inch Parrott Rifles in the casemates of Fort Sumter
Between them, Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie display fourteen heavy Parrott Rifles - more than a few bearing the markings of their inventor, Robert Parker Parrott, and the West Point Foundry where they were made. The Parrott, like the Confederate Brooke, is a cast iron rifled tube with a wrought iron reinforcing band at the breech. At Moultrie are an 8-inch (200 Pounder) and 10-inch (300 Pounder). At Fort Sumter are eleven 6.4 Inch (100 Pounder) Rifles and an 8-Inch rifle. All of these guns were placed at the forts after the Civil War when the US Army was rebuilding and upgrading the fortifications of Charleston. And all were buried in the forts as fill - or simply left where they were when portions of the forts were filled in - during the late 19th and early 20th century modernizations of the forts which added modern, steel breechloading rifles and mortars. Because these cannons had been too worthless or too difficult to bother removing, the US Army unintentionally preserved them for later discovery after the forts had become a National Historic Park operated by the National Park Service.
Photo captioned “Big Gun on Morris Island” - to me this looks like a 10-inch Parrott. Library of Congress photo: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2015648180/
Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie were not armed with Parrott Rifles during the war. (Though the Confederacy did manufacture 10-pounder, 20-pounder, and 30-pounder rifles in a style similar to Parrotts and certainly captured Union guns of these calibers, to my knowledge the Confederacy did not capture any of the heavier Parrott rifles.) Instead, the forts were targets of Parrott Rifles fired by the US Army on Morris Island and the US Navy as the United States forces attacked the defenses of Charleston.
6.4 Inch (100 Pounder) Parrott aboard USS Pawnee circa 1863. Note the 9-inch Dahlgrens mounted on the gun deck in the background of the photo. US Navy History and Heritage Command Photo: https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/NH-90000/NH-90536.html
The most famous of the Parrott Rifles used against Charleston was an 8-inch rifle placed on Morris Island in a specially built “Marsh Battery” and used to bombard the city and people of Charleston in August of 1863. This gun, nicknamed “The Swamp Angel”, burst on firing its 36th round.
Photo showing the burst “Swamp Angel” 8-Inch Parrott. Library of Congress photo: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2018667746/
My impression is that the failure of this particular famous Parrott on only the 36th round contributes to the general reputation of heavy Parrotts as being extremely unreliably and almost as much a danger to their operators as their targets. Mike Ryan’s excellent paper, “The Historic Guns of Forts Sumter and Moultrie” has a discussion on the dubious reputation for reliability of the heavy Parrotts. (The paper may be found here: http://npshistory.com/publications/fosu/guns.pdf See pages 59-61 for the discussion on bursting Parrott rifles). Ryan notes that the unequal endurance of these guns was the quality most unnerving to their gunners - “some bursting early in their use while others lasted in excess of 3,000 rounds.” In some quarters the Confederate Brooke Rifle (which was of similar construction with a cast-iron tube reinforced by wrought iron bands heat-shrunk onto the breach) has a sterling reputation while the Federal Parrott does not. I am not at all sure that is a fair summary of these two systems. Brookes also burst, and I would be curious to know whether any Brooke was successfully fired over 1,000 rounds like some of the US Army Parrotts were.
10-Inch (300 Pounder) Parrott on Morris Island. Note the rifle’s muzzle has been damaged by a premature detonation of a shell. Ripley notes that the “muzzle was trimmed smooth and firing continued.” (Ripley pg. 123).
For the defenders of Charleston, it was the Parrott which had the accuracy and range to reduce their fortifications to ruble and bombard the city from miles away. To quote Warren Ripley’s “Artillery and Ammunition of the Civil War”, the heavy Parrott “could be produced quickly and in quantity when the crying need was for rifles - not necessarily the best rifles - but rifles. The Parrott wasn’t the best, but it was good enough… few were the Southern commanders who wouldn’t have cheered had the North concentrated on making more expensive and better rifles - and fewer of them” (Ripley 109-110).
8 Inch (right) and 10 inch (left) Parrott Rifles on display at “Cannon Row” at Fort Moultrie"
Cannon Row at Fort Moultrie displays an 8-inch (called a “200-Pounder” by the US Army and a “150-Pounder” by the US Navy) and a giant 10-inch (called a “300-Pounder” by the US Army). Both bear pitting from being buried for decades in sand at Moultrie - particularly the 10-inch.
6.4 Inch Parrott at Fort Sumter - Note the “100 Pdr” marking on the trunnion
1864 Photo showing a 100-Pounder Parrott on an iron carriage similar to those at Fort Sumter. Caption: Fort Brady, Va. Battery of Parrott guns manned by Company C, 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery Library of Congress Photo: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2018666617/
Fort Sumter has eleven 6.4-inch Parrott Rifles mounted on iron casemate carriages. These were installed post-war. Ryan’s paper notes that the US Army struggled to keep these guns serviceable in the very wet, salty environment of Sumter’s remaining first-tier casemates. By the time the guns were left as part of the fill around the newly constructed Battery Huger, they were not worth the effort of removing them from the island fortification. Because of this, the eleven guns and carriages remained to be found during the 1957 excavations at the fort. Of the 100-pounders, two bear markings which show that they were produced for the US Navy. An 8-inch Rifle is also on display on the upper field in front of Battery Huger. And as Ryan mentions, it is thought possible that one or more other heavy Parrotts may continue to be buried at the fort.
8-Inch Parrott at Fort Sumter
Gallery - 8-Inch Parrot at Fort Moultrie
Gallery - 10-Inch Parrott at Fort Moultrie
Gallery - 6.4 Inch Parrotts at Fort Sumter - One Photo of Each of the 11 Parrott Rifles
As can be seen in the above gallery, the conservation of each of the 11 100-pounder Parrott rifles is an ongoing process - with one of the guns undergoing active restoration at the time of my visit. The sea air which plagued US Army efforts to keep these guns in service in the late 19th century continues to challenge the Park Service to this day.
