The Gradual Increase 32-Pounder of USS Ohio at Boston National Historic Park
US Navy "Gradual Increase" 32-Pounder of 60 Hundredweight displayed at the Boston National Historic Park. In the background the frigate USS Constitution and the Fletcher class destroyer Cassin Young can be seen.
US Navy "Gradual Increase" 32-Pounder of 60 Hundredweight displayed at the Boston National Historic Park. In the background the frigate USS Constitution and the Fletcher class destroyer Cassin Young can be seen.
Among the many artifacts on display at the Boston National Historic Park - Charleston Navy Yard is a 32-Pounder of 60 Hundredweight manufactured at the West Point Foundry in 1820 for the United States Navy. Visitors to the National Historic Park may walk past this 32-Pounder seeing just another cannon - there are dozens of cannons aboard USS Constitution, after all. However, this particular cannon is a relic of the fleet built for the US Navy after the War of 1812, and unlike the reproductions aboard USS Constitution, this cannon saw service at sea with the US Navy in the decades before the American Civil War.
“An Act for the Gradual Increase of the Navy of the United States” was passed by Congress April 29th, 1816. The act authorized nine ships of the line and twelve frigates to be constructed for the navy. (Text of the Act on the Library of Congress Website) Though many of the ships were laid down in the first years after the act, construction proceeded slowly. Some of the ships entered service relatively quickly. USS North Carolina was laid down in 1816, launched in 1820, and commissioned in 1824. Others were kept under construction for decades: the frigate USS Santee being laid down in 1821, launched in 1855, and commissioned in 1861.
Drachinifel has produced a great video overviewing the building and history of these ships: The Forgotten Fleet - US Navy Fighting Sail 1815-1860
The cannon at Boston is a 32-Pounder of 60 Hundredweight cast at the West Point Foundry in 1820. It is marked as registry number 149 and as weighing 60-2-27 in hundredweight (6,803 pounds). According to the research of Wayne E. Stark, the cannon was carried aboard the ship of the line USS Ohio in the 1840s (The Big Guns, pg. 210). However, even though USS Ohio was laid down in 1817 and launched in 1820, the ship was not commissioned until about 1838. Therefore, it is possible that the cannon, which was cast in 1820, may have served on other ships of the US Navy.
USS Ohio was designed by Henry Eckford and built at his shipyard in Brooklyn. As noted above, she was launched in 1820, but she was kept in ordinary for nearly eighteen years. As Donald Canney notes in Sailing Warships of the US Navy, the Navy Department’s goal “seems to have been to allocate the ‘Gradual Increase’ funding incrementally to bring as many ships as possible to a point where they could be fitted out for active service in a short amount of time” (Canney pg. 98). Once commissioned, USS Ohio served in the Mediterranean before a short time serving as a receiving ship at Boston in the early 1840s. She was recommissioned for the Mexican War, and she ended up serving in the Pacific during the final years of the 1840s before returning to Boston as a receiving ship in 1851. She served in that capacity until 1875 and was sold in 1883 (Canney pg. 100-101).
A plaque mounted on the reproduction carriage of the 32-Pounder that the cannon was found during the rebuilding of pier 7 in 1957. It was thought to have been buried at the yard since 1900.
Several other historic cannons are hidden in plain sight at the old navy yard and serving as bollards around the docks. Most are 9-Inch Dahlgren guns buried breech down. A bar has been run through the muzzle, and many tourists likely pass these cannons by without noticing them. One of these 9-Inch Dahlgrens is pictured below. Two “Gradual Increase” 42-Pounders of similar vintage to the 32-Pounder are also still in use as bollards, though I did not photograph those guns.
A beautiful model of USS Ohio may be seen at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Building 92: https://navyhistory.org/2011/10/uss-ohio-model-at-brooklyn-navy-yard-center-at-building-92/
USS Ohio as a receiving ship at Boston in the 1870s. US Naval History and Heritage Command Photo: https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/NH-92000/NH-92940.html
Sterioscopic View of USS Ohio. Public domain image provided by the Getty Museum: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/106WDA
Detail from right panel of above image of USS Ohio. Note the iron stern walk, the small number of ports with gun muzzles showing, the awnings above the deck, and the laundry hanging in the rigging. Also note that no sails are bent on the yards.
USS Ohio circa 1875. US Naval 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-43000/NH-43860.html
Figurehead of USS Ohio representing Hercules displayed at Stony Brook, New York. By Iracaz at English Wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2786720
Plaque on the 32-Pounder's carriage.
9-Inch Dahlgren serving as a bollard at Boston. In the background are the destroyer Cassin Young and the Frigate USS Constitution.
Model of USS Delaware. Though built to a different though similar design than USS Ohio, this model gives an impression of a United States Navy ship of the line of the 1820s and 1830s. Model by P.C. Coker and photographed at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum.
