I wonder what the rate of fire was ? or how proficient the crews were allowed to become ...target shooting and all ?
Now that would be scary exploding beach balls !!!!
Gary, I read several different accounts of the firing of the No. 1 gun at Ft. Hamilton and, as I recall, only four shots were fired. All used the 1080 lb. shot and with successively greater powder charges of 50, 100, 150 and 200 lbs. of Rodman's 'Giant' type BP. Upon the last discharge, the ball was seen to splash in the saltwater a bit more than 8,000 yards south of Ft. Hamilton, more than 4.5 miles away!
The only beach balls that I am familiar with are those sold by Kmart and Target every summer. They are 15" in diameter which equals the diameter of the 440 lb. cored shot of the Army's Rodman and the Navy's Dahlgren guns. I have often thought of making paper-mache molds for concrete mortar balls by using some of these as the positive and lowering them into a box which could be then filled with sand to resist the pressure of the poured concrete. A 5" hole cut in the top, a little rabbit fence re-mesh, a couple of simple, steel, shell tong inserts with rebar anchors which could be affixed to the mold before pouring, cured, and spray painted black, and these mortar balls would look like the originals and fly pretty well too!
These cannon were all part of a diabolical game called bowling for confederates.......
it was thought that whole battalions would be swept away with one shot,
if fired from the coast inland the shells could reach Richmond and end the war
with three or four shots......... Lincoln’s super secret science unit had plans for
building rockets called the V1 (Victory 1) and V2 (victory 2) but the war ended
and the programs were cut...... the plans found their way to Germany years later........ 
Now you know some kid will come along read this and add it to a history paper for
school........... because everything on the internet is fact.............
Allen, I think most of what we read here came from the recesses of your fertile mind, but, both Mike and I agree with the accuracy of that first sentence in blue, above.
This is precisely what the Federal Monitor Captains ordered their gunners to do during the Second Battle of Fort Fisher, NC on January 13, 1865. The Navy's mistakes in Fire Control during the First Battle of Fort Fisher, in which they attempted to subdue this, 'Gibraltar of the South', in December of 1864, were corrected. No longer were all guns aboard the 58 warships of Admiral Porter's squadron to aim at the fort's flag which was flown from the fort's Headquarters. A detailed plan was formulated in which each ship had a particular section of the fort's mile-long ramparts to fire at.
The Monitor's guns were the heaviest in the fleet and they were ordered to concentrate on the heavy, Land-Front guns which stretched across the narrow, 400 yard wide, peninsula. The Battery Commanders had the gunners aim low where the Atlantic Ocean met the beach 100 to 300 yards from the fort's 40 foot high ramparts. The huge projectiles cut deep grooves in the beach and also in the soded, sand walls of the fort's ramparts, losing a lot of forward velocity as they bowled up and over the high walls, and then thudded down into the batteries and onto the parade. This tactic worked very well. After a few hours of bombardment, most of the Confederate guns had been damaged or destroyed.
CSA Major General Chase Whiting pleaded with General Braxton Bragg to send as many reinforcements to the fort as possible; but when he refused, Gen. Whiting chose to join the fort's commander, CSA Col. William Lamb, to meet the Union's 10,000 man amphibious onslaught. Although Whiting had previous problems with drinking during critical engagements, during this battle he was sober and resolute in his courage. Several reliable witnesses testified to his exemplary conduct as one of these large 15" shells landed 20 feet from where he stood in the 'Pulpit' helping Lamb direct artillery operations during the bombardment. Puffing vigorously on his cigar, he looked at it contemptuously and watched it's three fuses as they sputtered away, and then calmly, he averted his gaze from it just before it blew up. He was blown flat upon the terraplein by the concussion, but discovered that he was not scratched by even one fragment as he picked himself up and dusted his uniform off.
Both he and Col. Lamb were both seriously wounded while leading infantry counterattacks on the third and fourth traverses, held by Federal troops, later in the battle. Lamb was imprisoned locally, but Whiting was sent to a northern prison near NYC. Guess where? Think. That's right, Fort Lafayette, at the entrance to NYC's Harbor, across from Fort Hamilton and now under the huge Brooklyn support column of the Narrow's Bridge. He died from his wounds on March 10, 1865 in the Fort Lafayette Hospital.
Surviving Marine sharpshooters who were part of the Union Navy's Landing Party assualt upon the Pulpit area, at the fort's 'Angle', testified after the battle that the best protection they had on the beach, near the fort's land face, were the deep ditches and furrows plowed by those heavy, 15" Dahlgren Gun shells, fired from the Federal Monitors, as they "bowled for Confederates".
Much of this is from
Confederate Goliath: the Battle of Fort Fisher.by Rod Gragg.
Regards,
Tracy and Mike
