The 8-Inch Rodman Rifles on US Navy Carriages at Palisades Park
US Army 8-Inch Rifle converted from a 10-Inch Rodman. It is displayed on a US Navy Carriage at Palisades Park in Santa Monica, California. Photo by Robert Finlay. Used with permission.
Two US Army 8-Inch Rifles which were converted from 10-Inch Rodmans in 1885 and 1886 are displayed at Palisades Park in Santa Monica, California. They were installed at the park in 1908. They are said to have originally come from Fort McDowell on Angel Island near San Francisco.
This conversion involved boring out the original 10-Inch smoothbore to 13.5 inches and then inserting an 8-inch rifled sleeve into the bore. According to Olmstead et al., the sleeves were intially wrought iron but steel in later examples. These two would have been among the final examples of the type converted. Of the fifty conversions in the final series, these are registry numbers 47 and 48, and Number 48 has the latest conversion date - 1886 - of all of the surviving rifles.
Intriguingly they are mounted on US Navy Carriages intended for the 8-Inch Rifle which was a similar conversion of the 11-Inch Dahlgren. Compare these carriages to that of the 8-Inch Rifle in Lambertville, New Jersey. This type of carriage was used on almost all US Navy warships in the period from 1877 to 1885. It is a development of the earlier iron carriage for the 11-Inch Dahlgren. The two carriages at Palisades Park and the one in Lambertville are the only three examples of this type of carriage which I know to still exist.
Both of the rifles at Palisades Park have cables wrapped over the “mushroom knob”. This is almost certainly to prevent park goers from tipping the cannons forward. The Rodmans were designed to have neutral preponderance in order to use the post-and-socket elevation system. A single person sitting on the muzzle might otherwise be able to overcome the friction on the trunnions and tip the cannon. The early 20th Century postcard below shows the cables already in place.
A Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War Camp prepared the linked report on the status of the cannons: https://suvcw.org/sites/default/files/2023-05/CA_Los_Angeles-Santa_Monica-Palisades_Park-Rodman_Gun-263_redacted.pdf
Early 20th Century View of one of the cannons. Photo of the postcard by Sltaylor1954, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The two cannons at Palisades Park are:
US Army 8-Inch Rifle Number 47. Originally cast as 10-Inch Rodman Number 102 at Seyfert, McManus, & Co. in 1864. Original weight was 15,176 pounds. Weight as converted is 15,980 pounds. It was converted to an 8-Inch Rifle at the West Point Foundry in 1885. Number 47 can be seen in three photos on Flckr: Photo 1 Photo 2 Photo 3 (Photos embedded below.)
US Army 8-Inch Rifle Number 48. Originally cast as 10-Inch Rodman Number 102 at Seyfert, McManus, & Co. in 1864. Original weight was 15,176 pounds. Weight as converted is 16,020 pounds. It was converted to an 8-Inch Rifle at the West Point Foundry in 1886. Photos of Number 48 are generously provided by Robert Finlay and are used with permission.
Both were converted using the “Muzzle Insertion” technique.
Carriage for US Navy 8-Inch Rifle (Converted from an 11-Inch Dahlgren)
US Navy 8-Inch Rifle Number 32 displayed in Lambertville, New Jersey on an original carriage. More photos of this cannon can be seen here: https://www.santee1821.net/preserved-artillery/the-8-inch-muzzle-loading-rifle-of-lambertville-new-jersey
US Navy 8-Inch Rifle Number 30 photographed on USS Kearsarge circa 1890. Read more about this cannon here: https://www.santee1821.net/preserved-artillery/the-guns-of-uss-kearsarge-in-1894
US Army 8-Inch Rifles displayed at Fort McHenry on original army carriages. More photos of the cannons at Fort McHenry can be found here: https://www.santee1821.net/preserved-artillery/the-rodmans-of-fort-mchenry
Photos of 8-Inch Rifle Number 48 - taken by Robert Finlay
These photos were originally posted on the Facebook group Big Cannon Project by Robert Finlay and are available here: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1F2UTLRaye/
US Army 8-Inch Rifle converted from a 10-Inch Rodman. It is displayed on a US Navy Carriage at Palisades Park in Santa Monica, California. Photo by Robert Finlay. Used with permission.
US Army 8-Inch Rifle converted from a 10-Inch Rodman. It is displayed on a US Navy Carriage at Palisades Park in Santa Monica, California. Photo by Robert Finlay. Used with permission.
Markings on the US Navy Carriage mounting a US Army 8-Inch Rifle
US Army 8-Inch Rifle converted from a 10-Inch Rodman. It is displayed on a US Navy Carriage at Palisades Park in Santa Monica, California. Photo by Robert Finlay. Used with permission.
US Army 8-Inch Rifle converted from a 10-Inch Rodman. It is displayed on a US Navy Carriage at Palisades Park in Santa Monica, California. Photo by Robert Finlay. Used with permission.
Photos of Number 47 - Embedded from Flickr (Photos taken in 2016 by Flickr user Anthony Kernich. My thanks to him for posting them.)
Of course, for those searching “Palisades Park Cannon”, they will probably first find the 1962 song “Palisades Park” by Freddy Cannon!
