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Author Topic: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before  (Read 1494 times)

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Offline cannonmn

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Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« on: January 02, 2009, 04:27:46 AM »
OK, what is it?  I really don't know.

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Offline seacoastartillery

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Re: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« Reply #1 on: January 02, 2009, 04:39:12 AM »
     John,   What you have right there are a couple 9" Blakely Seacoast Rifles.  Fawcett Preston & Co of Liverpool were the only Makers that we are aware of.  Glad to help out.

Regards,

Mike and Tracy
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Smokin' my pipe on the mountings, sniffin' the mornin'-cool,
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Offline cannonmn

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Re: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« Reply #2 on: January 02, 2009, 05:02:08 AM »
Thanks, will send this to my friend who is a serious student of Brit arty.  He won't come here to look, he's one of the "blogophobes."  Considers all discussion boards to be blogs and hates them all.  Personally I think some folks who can't stand discussion boards are essentially control freaks and since they can't control what other people write on the board, it scares the s__ out of them.  Whatever!
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Offline BoomLover

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Re: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« Reply #3 on: January 02, 2009, 07:30:16 AM »
Blakely 9" Rifles..unique and interesting, I think a model of one of these would be a fun and different addition to any collection! Thanks for posting the pic, and for the additional info. Any of these left "in the flesh", so to speak? Thanks, BoomLover
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Offline seacoastartillery

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Re: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« Reply #4 on: January 02, 2009, 11:00:06 AM »
     Boomlover,    Unfortunately there is only one in the US and it is privately owned on Lake Oneida, north east of Syracuse, New York.  It was one of four made in England for Confederate cruisers toward the end of the war and was never delivered. These rifles numbered 83, 84, 95 and 96 were off loaded from the USS Worcester at the Boston Navy Yard in 1871.  All were 9 inchers and dated 1864. following a sale in April of 1888, No. 95 was shipped to the Justin Projectile Company at Hall's Point in Jewel, New York which is on Lake Oneida.  When the firm failed in 1897, after using the Lake as an artillery range, No. 95 went to a salvage yard where the long cylindrical steel tube was salvaged, but the heavy cast iron breech and trunnion portion was sold privately and a sheet of galvanized iron was fashioned into a fairly accurate facsimile of the original steel chase and painted.

     There may be some of these in Canada, but we do not know for sure.  FYI

Regards,

Tracy and Mike
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Smokin' my pipe on the mountings, sniffin' the mornin'-cool,
I walks in my old brown gaiters along o' my old brown mule,
With seventy gunners be'ind me, an' never a beggar forgets
It's only the pick of the Army that handles the dear little pets - 'Tss! 'Tss!

From the poem  Screw-Guns  by Rudyard Kipling

Offline Terry C.

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Re: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« Reply #5 on: January 02, 2009, 12:08:21 PM »
Quote from: seacoastartillery on January 02, 2009, 11:00:06 AM
No. 95 went to a salvage yard where the long cylindrical steel tube was salvaged, but the heavy cast iron breech and trunnion portion was sold privately and a sheet of galvanized iron was fashioned into a fairly accurate facsimile of the original steel chase and painted.

From cwartillery.org:





The Charleston Navy Yard gun in John's post is the only I've seen with the actual barrel intact. I wonder what ever happened to the gun in the stereograph?
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Offline and7barton

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Re: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« Reply #6 on: January 02, 2009, 12:43:35 PM »
I wonder how the hell they managed to seperate those components without actually sawing them apart.
Isn't that breech reinforce shrunk on over a ridge ?
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Offline cannonmn

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Re: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« Reply #7 on: January 02, 2009, 01:28:51 PM »
Quote
I wonder how the hell they managed to seperate those components without actually sawing them apart.
Isn't that breech reinforce shrunk on over a ridge ?

I'd suspect what actually happened was that the "straight" part of the gun, namely the barrel that sticks out of the reinforced part, was simply sawn off.
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Offline seacoastartillery

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Re: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« Reply #8 on: January 02, 2009, 02:27:10 PM »
     That's the way I heard it, and7barton.  Like John says, it was "Simply sawn off".  The only place in the United States where the salvors actually took large cast iron cannon apart, that we know of, was at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, about thirty miles north-east of San Fransisco, CA, established by the U.S. Navy in 1854 with Commander Dahlgren in charge.  After the Civil War they had the older, used up and obsolete naval tubes hauled there where huge steam powered gang drills bored 30 to 40 holes simultaneously, from muzzle to breech, in preparation for spliting with wedges, just like so much cordwood.  A large bunch of the never used 13" Dahlgren naval guns were split into six equal pieces and hauled off to be melted down and used for bridge parts or some other use.  Paul Barnet of South Bend replicas posted a photo of that operation and a description years ago in the Artilleryman Magazine.  Don't ask me which issue!  I have no idea, I just remember that startling photo and story.

Regards,

Mike and Tracy

P.S.  For those not familiar with the Charlestown Navy Yard, it's the same as today's, "Boston Navy Yard".  It's located on the Mystic River where it enters the Atlantic Ocean at Boston, MA.
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Smokin' my pipe on the mountings, sniffin' the mornin'-cool,
I walks in my old brown gaiters along o' my old brown mule,
With seventy gunners be'ind me, an' never a beggar forgets
It's only the pick of the Army that handles the dear little pets - 'Tss! 'Tss!

From the poem  Screw-Guns  by Rudyard Kipling

Offline GGaskill

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Re: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« Reply #9 on: January 06, 2009, 03:20:25 PM »
Paul Barnet of South Bend replicas posted a photo of that operation and a description years ago in the Artilleryman Magazine.

It is in his catalog but not among the catalog pages on their website.

Here is a version of those pictures showing cannon scrapping at Mare Island.  It's interesting to note that last sentence, "Some of these guns had never been fired, and these were much more difficult to break up than others."  I infer that there was concealed damage in the fired ones that made them easier to split.

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Offline Cannoneer

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Re: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« Reply #10 on: January 07, 2009, 03:27:05 AM »
Quote from: GGaskill on January 06, 2009, 03:20:25 PM
Paul Barnet of South Bend replicas posted a photo of that operation and a description years ago in the Artilleryman Magazine.

It is in his catalog but not among the catalog pages on their website.

Here is a version of those pictures showing cannon scrapping at Mare Island.  It's interesting to note that last sentence, "Some of these guns had never been fired, and these were much more difficult to break up than others."  I infer that there was concealed damage in the fired ones that made them easier to split.



That's an intriguing photograph: The caption not only mentions drilling and wedging being used to split the barrels, but also dynamite.
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Offline and7barton

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Re: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« Reply #11 on: January 07, 2009, 04:21:53 AM »
Quote from: seacoastartillery on January 02, 2009, 02:27:10 PM
After the Civil War they had the older, used up and obsolete naval tubes hauled there where huge steam powered gang drills bored 30 to 40 holes simultaneously, from muzzle to breech, in preparation for spliting with wedges, just like so much cordwood.  A large bunch of the never used 13" Dahlgren naval guns were split into six equal pieces and hauled off to be melted down and used for bridge parts or some other use. 

This takes the whole idea of metal bashing to a new level. I'd love to have witnessed this kind of large-scale metal-working.
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Offline cannonmn

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Re: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« Reply #12 on: January 12, 2009, 07:13:35 AM »
My friend Jim Schoenung, a serious student of British ordnance if ever there was one, put this composite image together to help verify that this was indeed a 9" Blakely.  The center drawing is from the Holley book, which may be a Googlebook by now, don't know, but it is a classic, documenting all there was to know about ordnance development ca. 1865, and heavily illustrated.

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Offline cannonmn

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Re: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« Reply #13 on: February 01, 2009, 06:03:47 AM »
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Offline Artilleryman

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Re: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« Reply #14 on: February 01, 2009, 06:39:40 AM »
An excellent description on how to reduce a gun and its carriage to scrap.  I wish reporters today would write in a similar style.
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Offline cannonmn

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Re: Naval cannon I've never ever seen before
« Reply #15 on: February 01, 2009, 06:46:26 AM »
I thought it was interesting that the inventor thought the cause was that the shell's wall was too thin.  The cause was that dynamite can't be subjected to the shock and acceleration of a normal cannon launch.  The only "successful" dynamite guns used high-low principle (the 2.5-inch field gun) or compressed air (naval guns and coastal defense version.)  Simms-Dudley and Zalinski are two names associated with "successful" dynamite guns in the US.
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