US Navy 100-Pounder Parrott Rifle Number 15 of USS Sabine
US Navy 100-Pounder Parrott Rifle Number 15 in Traverse City, Michigan
US Navy 100-Pounder Parrott Number 15 at Traverse City, Michigan was one of two of the type carried aboard the sailing frigate USS Sabine during the Civil War. The two Parrotts were mounted as pivots - one on either end of the spar deck. The aft pivot can be seen in an 1864-1865 photo of Sabine taken at Hampton Roads as she was beginning her career as a school ship for Navy Apprentices. A drawing made (perhaps from a photo) which appeared in Harper's Weekly in 1865 also shows the stern pivot with the boy sailors posing all around it.
Sabine was armed with a curious mix of old an new during the Civil War. She retained a good portion of her 1840s-vintage 32-Pounder battery. However, she also carried the the two 100-Pounders as pivots and ten 9-Inch Dahlgrens on her main deck. It was with this battery that she was sent off to hunt CSS Alabama in 1862. It is hard to imagine the rebel raider politely steaming under the frigate's broadside. If, somehow, Sabine managed to encounter Alabama on the high seas or emerging from a foreign port, the two Parrotts may have been the only guns with the range to land a disabling hit before Semmes's ship was just a whisp of smoke on the horizon. Sabine, much like Constellation, was a sailing ship in a steam ship war.
US Navy Apprentice Sailors aboard USS Sabine as depicted in an 1865 Harper’s Weekly Illustration. The boys are sitting around a 100-Pounder Parrott Rifle mounted as a pivot on the aft end of the spar deck.
Breech of US Navy 100-Pounder Parrott Rifle Number 15. Weight is shown as 9,790 pounds.
