11-Inch Dahlgren Number 215 is displayed at City Park in Denver, Colorado

Many thanks to my friend, Richard, for visiting City Park to photograph the three cannons.

Two Civil War United States Navy cannons, an 11-Inch Dahlgren and a 6.4-Inch Parrott Rifle, are preserved at City Park in Denver, Colorado alongside a 13-Inch mortar (which may have been used by the US Army or US Navy). The three cannons were placed in the park in 1897 by the Grand Army of the Republic - becoming some of the first monuments in the park. Judging from a photo taken soon after the cannons were placed, they remain at or very near the site of their original location. The three cannons now surround a statue of Scottish poet Robert Burns.

The website of the City Park Alliance states “Burns Garden, originally designed by Reinhard Schuetze in 1896, consists of a small formal flower garden surrounded by evergreen and deciduous trees. Three cannons, dedicated in 1897, began a long-standing tradition of commemorating events and people through monumentation and sculpture placed strategically within City Park. In 1904 a bronze statue of Robert Burns, a Scottish poet, was placed in the center of the garden. The Burns Statue and Flower Garden is located just northwest of the City Park Pavilion.”

The three cannons are as follows:

11-Inch Dahlgren - Registry Number 215 - manufactured by Cyrus Alger & Company in 1862. Weight as manufactured: 15,750 Pounds. The appendix in The Big Guns states that this piece was carried aboard USS Canandaigua.
6.4-Inch Parrott Rifle - Registry Number 331 - manufactured by West Point Foundry for the US Navy in 1864. Weight as manufactured: 9,747 pounds.
13-Inch Mortar - Registry Number 1022 - manufactured by Fort Pitt Foundry in 1862. Weight as manufactured 17,196 pounds.

The types:

11-Inch Dahlgrens (Additional posts about 11-Inch Dahlgrens) were designed by John A. Dahlgren for the US Navy in the 1850s. As Dahlgren originally envisioned, his similar looking 9-Inch smoothbores would be the main broadside armament of US Navy ships and would be carried on the gun deck. The larger 11-Inch smoothbores would be mounted in small numbers on the highest deck on pivot mountings. At first, the leadership of the US Navy was skeptical that such massive guns could be used effectively aboard ships (at 16,000 pounds they were considerably heavier than any cannons previously carried to sea by the US Navy). The 11-Inch Dahlgren would eventually see widespread use. USS Monitor and other US Navy ironclads carried this type. It was also carried by many wooden ships. Famously, USS Kearsarge’s two 11-Inch Dahlgrens were responsible for sinking CSS Alabama in a battle of Cherbourg, France. This 11-Inch Dahlgren was one of two carried aboard USS Canandaigua. That ship was present as part of the US Navy blockade of Charleston, South Carolina when the submersible H.L. Hunley sank USS Housatonic.

6.4-Inch Parrott Rifles (also called 100 Pounder Parrott Rifles - additional posts about the type) were manufactured for both the US Army and the US Navy. (The Army and Navy types differ only by their markings.) A rifled cast-iron cannon with a wrought iron reinforcing band around the breech, the type suffered a mixed reputation for reliability. While some examples fired well over 1,000 rounds without incident, others burst very early in their service. These bursts posed a great danger to the crews serving them. The Parrott at City Park is marked “Water Core” on the bore. This likely refers to the cast iron portion of the tube being manufactured using Thomas J. Rodman’s hollow casting technique.

13-Inch Mortars (additional posts about the type) were used by the US Army and US Navy during the American Civil War. The were designed to fire heavy, exploding shells on high trajectories over the walls of fortifications and into vulnerable areas. They could also be mounted in coastal fortifications for use against ships.

Though the Robert Burns statue has little directly to do with the cannons, I think the lines from his poem “Scots Wha Hae”, originally written in 1793 about the Battle of Bannockburn, speak the the cause of liberty for all for which the old salts of the United States Navy fought during the hard years of 1861-1865:

By Oppression's woes and pains,

By your sons in servile chains!

We will drain our dearest veins,

But they shall be free.

Lay the proud usurpers low,

Tyrants fa in every foe,

Libertie's in every blow!—

Let us do or dee.