“PEACEMAKER” DISASTER

A series of advancements were made in naval gunnery in the decades before the Civil War.  The commonly used material for gun construction at the time was wrought iron, being cheaper and more readily available than the alternative–brass.  Wrought iron is weaker than brass, and as projectiles became larger, the gas pressures necessary to propel these missiles eventually exceeded the failure threshold of iron.  The result would be the bursting of the gun tube, raking the vicinity with deadly metal shards.  The tighter fitting shells of rifled guns further accentuated this problem.  For these reasons, our Navy preferred smooth-bore cannon firing solid spherical shot.  Such guns were effective and safe against wooden ships of the day. 

Nevertheless, improvements in warship construction spurred naval innovators to develop smooth-bore guns firing larger, more powerful rounds.  Independently, CAPT Robert F. Stockton, later famous for his actions in southern California during the Mexican War, and John Ericsson, who would later design the ironclad MONITOR, developed smooth-bore cannon that fired massive 12-inch projectiles.  Ericsson’s gun employed a reinforcing band of wrought iron that was pounded around the breech while still red-hot.  As this band cooled and contracted, it even more tightly reinforced the breech.  However, Ericsson’s design, the “Oregon Gun,” cracked on its first test firing and further development was abandoned.

Stockton’s design presented an awesome appearance, engendering a nickname of the “Peacemaker.”  With much fanfare, Stockton paraded his new weapon this Leap Day.  President John Tyler and notable Congressional and Cabinet officials were invited to witness a demonstration of the “Peacemaker’s” firepower aboard the Navy’s innovative first screw steamer, USS PRINCETON.  All embarked at Annapolis intending to cruise down the Severn River and begin the test.  The first and second firings were, indeed, impressive.  But CAPT Stockton had failed to properly account for the weakness inherent in wrought iron.  Suddenly, on its third firing, the gun burst!  The effect was devastating.  Seventeen persons standing to the right of the gun were hit with flying debris.  Eight were killed instantly, including the Secretary of State (and former the Secretary of the Navy) Abel P. Upshur; Secretary of the Navy Thomas W. Gilmer; the father of President Tyler’s fiancée, COL David Gardiner; and Chief of the Bureau of Construction, CAPT Beverley Kennon.  Stockton himself sustained minor burns.  Luckily President John Tyler escaped injury!  In the wake of this “Peacemaker” disaster, the Navy halted further development of wrought iron guns.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  7 MAR 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Beach, Edward L.  The United States Navy:  200 Years.  New York, NY: Henry Holt Co., 1986, pp. 203-16.

Blackman, Anne.  “The Fatal Cruise of the Princeton.”  Naval History, Vol 19 (5), October 2005, pp. 37-41.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, p. 383.

Love, Robert W.  History of the US Navy, Vol 1  1775-1941.  Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1992, p. 187.

Miller, Nathan.  The U.S. Navy:  An Illustrated History.  Annapolis, MD: American Heritage and USNI Press, 1977, pp. 124-25.

Potter, E.B.  Sea Power: A Naval History, 2^nd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1981, p 119.

Tucker, Spencer.  Arming the Fleet:  U.S. Navy Ordnance in the Muzzle-Loading Era.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 155-57.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Gilmer had been in office only 10 days.  He remains the Secretary of the Navy with the shortest tenure.

A prototype of Ericsson’s “Oregon Gun” survives, mounted aboard the US Naval Academy outside Dahlgren Hall. 

A good example of wrought iron rifled technology is mounted outside the Command suite of Naval Medical Center San Diego–a 30# Parrott rifle from the revenue cutter Shubrick.  Like Ericsson’s, this design employed an extra strengthening band around the breech.  In the case of Parrott’s gun, the reinforcing band was sufficient to prevent rupture of the breech, however the energy was transmitted further along the barrel, and Parrott rifles had a disagreeable propensity for blowing off their own muzzles!

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                                 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 3^rd 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 22^nd 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.

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                   THE GUN FROM USS SHUBRICK

               (outside the NMCSD Command Suite)

RADM William Branford Shubrick’s Navy career was long and distinguished.  Born on 31 October 1790, Mr. Shubrick received his midshipman’s warrant in the Spring of 1806 at the age of 15.  During the Barbary Wars, he served aboard WASP, 18, and ARGUS, 16.  During the War of 1812, he served aboard the ship-sloop HORNET, 18, and CONSTELLATION, 36.  It was during this latter tour that he distinguished himself by leading a party of bluejackets in the defense of Craney Island, near Norfolk, on 22 June 1813.  Serving subsequently aboard CONSTITUTION, 44, he won a Congressional gold medal for his actions in that frigate’s engagement with HMS LEVANT and HMS CYANE.  The Mexican War found him overseeing the capture of Mazatlan, Guaymas, and San Blas and later commanding the Navy’s Pacific Squadron.  He retired in December of 1861 and was appointed to the rank of Rear Admiral (Ret) on 19 July 1862.

During Shubrick’s career he also served several tours on loan to the US Lighthouse Service, a branch of the Treasury Department whose vessels were often captained by Navy officers.  From 1859-71 he chaired this service’s governing body, the Lighthouse Board, and for this effort was honored with the naming of a Lighthouse Service wooden sidewheel frigate.  Early in the Civil War, on 23 August 1861, USLHS SHUBRICK was transferred to the US Revenue Cutter Service (now US Coast Guard) to patrol the Puget Sound area.   Confederate commerce raiders were then operating in the north Pacific, exacting a heavy toll on merchant shipping.  Indeed, when the Russian Telegraph Company planned to survey the Bering Strait, they recruited an American agent, COL Charles S. Buckley, to petition our government for an escorting warship.  USRCS SHUBRICK was re-assigned to the Navy for 90 days of special duty beginning 15 February 1865, to protect this Russian survey party.  No records of USS SHUBRICK’s brief Navy career survive.  Like many wooden steamers then in military service, she probably mounted both traditional smooth-bore naval guns as well as more advanced artillery pieces.  We know she mounted at least one of the latter, for a 30-pounder Parrott rifle from her battery is currently mounted outside the Command Suite of Naval Medical Center San Diego.

RADM Shubrick has since been honored with the nameplates of three other Navy vessels.  After WWI the Blakley-class torpedo boat SHUBRICK (TB-31) was renamed COAST TORPEDO BOAT No. 15 to allow the Clemson-class destroyer DD-268 to assume the Shubrick name.  Still later the WWII Gleaves-class destroyer DD-639, commissioned 7 February 1943, carries on the Admiral’s name.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  20 MAR 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cogar, William B.  Dictionary of Admirals of the U.S. Navy, Vol 1 1862-1900.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 164-65.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 6 “R-S”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1976, p. 492.

Reynolds, Clark G.  Famous American Admirals.  New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1978, pp. 310-11.

Tucker, Spencer.  Arming the Fleet:  U.S. Navy Ordnance in the Muzzle-Loading Era.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 228-30.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The Parrott rifle was developed in 1860 by Robert P. Parrott, a former US Army CAPT then in charge of the West Point Foundry Association.  The cast iron, muzzle-loading rifle was reliable, reasonably durable and relatively inexpensive, and thus became popular with the Navy and the Army.  By January 1864 the Navy had about 650 Parrott rifles in service, about 20% of the total that had been manufactured to that date.

The 30-pounder identifier indicated the weight of the projectile it fired.  The gun weighs about 3500 pounds and had a range of 4800 yards.  The Parrott’s characteristic feature is the reinforcing band about the breech.  The higher gas pressures in the firing chambers of rifles caused conventionally constructed cannon to burst.  Parrott’s technique strengthened the breech by pounding a red-hot band into place, then allowing it to cool and contract even more tightly around the gun.  SHUBRICK’s Parrott rifle is the most modern of the three guns currently displayed on the NMCSD compound.

In 1915, the US Coast Guard was created by combining two splintered services then in existence, the US Lifesaving Service (seaborne rescue) and the US Revenue Cutter Service (anti-smuggling and customs enforcement).  Then on 7 July 1939 the US Lighthouse Service (aids to navigation) was merged with the Coast Guard, hence their three modern missions.

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