US Navy 100-Pounder Parrott Rifle of USS Lodona in Buchanan, Michigan
US Navy 100-Pounder Parrott Rifle Number 48 of USS Lodona in Buchanan, Michigan
A US Navy 100-Pounder Parrott Rifle, Registry Number 48, is displayed in a cemetery in Buchanan, Michigan. As manufactured at West Point Foundry in 1862 it weighed 9,727 pounds. US Navy records indicate that it served upon USS Lodona. Lodona was an iron hulled, bark rigged, screw steamer built in 1862 in England. She was captured in Ossabaw Sound attempting to run the blockade into Savannah on August 4th, 1862 by USS Unadilla. She was described by her captors as being 204 feet long, 28.4 feet wide, and 16.5 feet deep with two engines giving and estimated 80 horsepower. She was carrying “a cargo of brandy, wines, tea, coffee, salt, clothing, boots, drugs, matches, figs, raisins, whisky, starch, soap, tin plates, soda, dry goods, paints, colors, quinine, etc., as per manifest found on board.” (Official Records - Navies, 1.13.237.)
Taken into US Navy service at the beginning of 1863, she was armed with one 100-Pounder Parrott Rifle, one 9-Inch Dahlgren, one 30-Pounder Parrott Rifle, and four 24-Pounder Dahlgren Boat Howitzers. A sketch of the ship suggests that the two Parrotts and the 9-Inch Dahlgren were mounted as pivot guns (the sketch is detailed enough to suggest that the 30-Pounder was forward, the 100-Pounder just ahead of the mainmast, the 9-Inch just forward of the funnel, and the boat howitzers aft on the quarterdeck).
Lodona served most of her career on the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. She assisted USS Weehawken on her voyage from Newport News to Port Royal, South Carolina - taking the monitor in tow when Weehawken’s engine suffered a breakdown (ORN 1.13.649 & 654). Reports in the Official Records - Navies describe her bombarding Fort Sumter and Fort Wagner in August of 1863. Her 100-Pounder is specifically noted as being used to bombard Sumter (ORN 1.14.482).
On September 8th, 1863, twenty of her sailors manning two boats participated in the ill-fated amphibious assault on Fort Sumter. Five of her sailors were left behind (ORN 1.14.620).
She was sold out of service at the end of the war.
US Navy 100-Pounder Number 48 saw no further service post-war. In September of 1897 it was delivered to the local Grand Army of the Republic Post in Buchanan, Michigan. It was placed beside a monument to Civil War veterans in the cemetery there.
Sketch of USS Lodona, Naval History and Heritage Command
The Boat Attack on Fort Sumter - September 8th, 1863. Illustration from “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War”, Volume 4.
US Navy 100-Pounder Parrott Number 48 and a monument in Buchanan, Michigan
In my video on Lodona I said that there was only one known period illustration of her. It turns out that there is another. A lithograph in the collection of the Mariners' Museum shows USS Lodona towing Weehawken. Many thanks to friend of the page and collaborator Adam Bartel of "Grim Sentinels Research" & "The American Iron-Clad Monitor Project" for showing me this one! The video, lacking this image, can be found linked below.
