Intercepting the Mega-Guns
26 AUGUST 1863
INTERCEPTING THE MEGA-GUNS
When South Carolinians fired on Fort Sumter to start the Civil War, all but one of the foundries in the United States were in the North. Only the Tredeger Iron Works in Richmond could bore cannon for the South. Jefferson Davis was forced to purchase cannon abroad, Britain becoming one of the major suppliers. The English-made Armstrong, Whitworth, and Blakeley muzzle-loading and early breech-loading rifled cannon became popular with Confederate fighters. All three were similarly designed cast iron tubes over which multiple heavy iron reinforcing bands were pounded while still red hot. The result was a gun whose firing chamber could withstand the higher pressures necessary for large, rifled shells. The largest of these guns weighed four tons and fired conical projectiles weighing 80 pounds.
On the 3rd of July 1863, Union agents in Liverpool reported that the British steamer Gibraltar, the former CSS SUMTER, had left that port carrying two Blakeley guns. What was unusual about this particular shipment was the massive size of the two Blakeley’s. They had been specially cast for the Confederacy; enormous, breech-loading, and each reportedly weighed 22 tons. They fired rifled, steel-tipped shells of 750 pounds. Intelligence indicated the guns were bound for Charleston, the hotbed of Southern rebellion and a major blockade running port, then under Union siege. Like most goods bound for the South, the shipment was sent first to Bermuda, where it would be re-loaded onto a sleek blockade runner to brave the Union line. Should these guns reach Charleston, they might easily shift the balance of power. They had to be intercepted!
So on August 22nd Navy Secretary Gideon Welles contacted RADM John A. Dahlgren, commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron off Charleston, enclosing a message from War Secretary William H. Seward that the massive guns had safely reached Bermuda ten days earlier. At that moment a wooden sidewheel steamer just purchased from her civilian operators and commissioned USS FORT JACKSON was fitting out in New York City. Welles seized the opportunity this day to divert the one-year-old steamer to a SecNav-directed mission–to cruise back and forth along the Bermuda Line commonly used by blockade runners approaching the Carolina coast. FORT JACKSON did so, at least until her boiler burned out on 16 September, but did not encounter an incoming runner.
Despite Union vigilance the guns did reach Wilmington, NC, in November. Gibraltar herself made the run. One of the guns was emplaced in the shore defenses at White Point on the Cape Fear River, however on the first test firing, the breech plug failed and the barrel cracked in eight places.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 30 AUG 23
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865. Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, p. III-133.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 433.
“Letter of the Secretary of the Navy to Acting Rear Admiral Lee, U.S. Navy, transmitting extracts from consular reports.” IN: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 9, North Atlantic Blockading Squadron from May 5, 1863, to May 5, 1864. Washington, DC: GPO, 1899, pp. 127-29.
“Report of Rear-Admiral Dahlgren, U.S. Navy, regarding the landing of Blakeley guns by the steamer SUMTER, at Wilmington, N.C.” IN: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume 15, South Atlantic Blockading Squadron from October 1, 1863, to September 30, 1864. Washington, DC: GPO, 1902, p. 109-10.
Tucker, Spencer. Arming the Fleet: U.S. Navy Ordnance in the Muzzle-Loading Era. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 226-28.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: Gibraltar met a no less inglorious fate herself. On a subsequent blockade run she was sunk by friendly Confederate shore batteries off Charleston when she was mistaken for a Union blockader on a foggy morning.
