8-Inch Rifle Number 44 of USS Lancaster
US Navy 8-Inch Muzzle Loading Rifle Number 44 is one of four of the type displayed outside the Patriots Point Soccer Stadium in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.
US Navy 8-Inch Muzzle Loading Rifle Number 44 is one of four of the type displayed outside the Patriots Point Soccer Stadium in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. All four are mounted on original circa 1880 US Navy carriages which came off of USS Lancaster.
8-Inch MLR Number 44 was originally cast as 11-Inch Dahlgren Number 63 at Builders Foundry (Providence, RI) in 1863. It originally weighed 15,805 - information which can still be seen on the breech. In 1879 it was converted by the South Boston Foundry into an 8-Inch Rifle by boring out the barrel to 13.5-Inches and inserting an 8-Inch rifled wrought iron sleeve.
At my last visit to the site - which all visitors to USS Yorktown and USS Laffey pass - I took detailed photos of Number 44 and its carriage.
Together the four rifles form one of the largest, if the largest, collection of guns and carriages of a US Navy ship of the 1880s.
To read more on these four rifles, see:
https://www.santee1821.net/preserved-artillery/8inch-dahlgren-rifles-at-patriots-point
The individual posts on the four surviving rifles of USS Lancaster: Number 44, Number 45, Number 48, Number 50
8-Inch Rifle Number 44 as previously displayed overlooking USS Yorktown, CV-10
Detail of USS Lancaster Plans showing two of the 8-Inch Rifles mounted on the ship’s broadside (National Archives)
Figurehead of USS Lancaster, Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, Virginia
