The 32-Pounder of 51 Hundredweight in Waseca, Minnesota
A 32-Pounder of 51 Hundredweight is displayed in front of the courthouse in Waseca, Minnesota. This photo and the six below are by Harley Davis.
Many thanks to Harley Davis for posting these photos on the “Civil War Artillery” Facebook group and for his help with Minnesota history. The photos are posted here with his permission.
A 32-Pounder of 51 Hundredweight (US Navy Registry Number 81) is displayed in front of the Waseca County Courthouse in Waseca, Minnesota. The cannon was manufactured at Tredegar Foundry in 1847. Its weight is marked in Hundredweight as “51.1.15” which would be 5,755 pounds.
According to The Big Guns by Olmstead, Stark, and Tucker, the 32-Pounder of 51 Hundredweight is an unchambered cannon which was intended to serve as a chase gun on large frigates and ships of the line. One hundred two of them were produced by Tredegar Foundry During 1846 and 1847 (pg. 38).
“Chase guns” or “bow chasers and stern chasers” were cannon mounted to be able to fire directly forward or astern on a sailing ship that had nearly all of its other guns mounted along the broadsides of the ship. They were most likely to be used when one ship was chasing another.
Thirteen survivors are listed in the registry published in The Big Guns - two sets in Massachusetts of four guns each accounting for eight of those preserved. The Waseca County gun is a well preserved and nicely displayed example of a relatively rare cannon of the pre-war US Navy. The cannon is mounted on a decorative pedestal which is designed to resemble (or at least evoke) a carriage. The pedestal has the following dedication cast into its sides: “Presented to Waseca County by Soldiers of War of 1861. Dedicated May 30th, 1898 to the United States Soldier.”
The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum in Portsmouth Virginia displays a naval carriage thought to be from a 32-Pounder of 51 Hundredweight. Note that though only two wheels on the carriage survive, the carriage would have originally been a 4-wheel (or 4-truck) carriage.
The shape of this cannon is very similar to the slightly heavier 32-Pounder of 57 Hundredweight which was meant for use on the broadsides of heavy frigates and ships of the line. In 1845-1846 the US Navy introduced a system of 32-Pounders in different weights including 27, 32, 42, 47, 51, and 57 hundredweight. The projectiles were common between the guns, but the lighter guns used lighter propellant charges. The deficiencies of this system inspired John Dahlgren to develop a new system of ordnance for the Navy.
Before leaving Waseca County, a different cannon should be mentioned. A local history (possibly repeating a period newspaper account) records reunion of Minnesota troops in 1879. “The line of march was through the principal streets to Oak Grove, just northeast of Turner Hall. The veterans bore the tattered remnants of their old colors, followed by one piece of artillery captured by the first Minnesota battery at Cheraw, South Carolina, and another gun presented by the United States minister to Belgium to the First Minnesota regiment for gallantry in the first Bull Run fight.” (History of Waseca County.)
According to a 19th Century history of the First Minnesota Light Artillery Battery in 1865: “The battery continued its march with our troops through the Carolinas, sharing in all their hardships and fightings, steadily driving Johnston's forces before them. They entered Columbia, and the battery won its last laurels at Cheraw, S. C., where it silenced a rebel battery so effectually that Gen. Frank P. Blair, commanding the Seventeenth Army Corps, presented it with one of the English Blakely guns belonging to that rebel battery; said gun was sent to the state arsenal at St. Paul and is yet in existence somewhere in our state, though badly neglected and used up.” (Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars, pg. 648). It does not seem like this Blakely has survived to the present.
Illustration of Confederate cannons captured at Cheraw, South Carolina on March 8th, 1865 by the 17th Corps. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. April 8th, 1865. (accessed via the Web Archive)
Remains of Naval Gun Carriage thought to be for a 32-Pounder of 51 Hundredweight. This would have originally been a four wheel carriage. The carriage was found during construction at the Norfolk Navy Yard in 1953. The carriage is displayed at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum.
A different view of the above carriage.
