US Navy 24-Pounder of 32 Hundredweight
US Navy 24-Pounder of 32 Hundredweight in Alden Park on Mare Island, California. Photo by Rob of the YouTube channel Firearms Addict
Many thanks to Rob of the YouTube channel Firearms Addict for sharing these photos!
A US Navy 24-Pounder of 32-Hundredweight is displayed in Alden Park on Mare Island in California. I believe that it is Registry Number 52.
The 24-Pounder Medium Cannon of 32 Hundredweight was manufactured to arm the Boston-class sloops of war built in the 1820s for the US Navy. Experience in the War of 1812 had shown that ships armed entirely with carronades were vulnerable to ships armed with long guns - such as when USS Essex was defeated by HMS Phoebe. The Boston class sloops were to be armed with twenty-four of these medium 24-Pounders which weighed considerably less than the long 24-Pounders in USN service at the time which weighed 48 hundredweight - 5,376 pounds. In practice even these medium 24 pounders proved too heavy for the sloops.
The profile of this cannon resembles a lengthened carronade - something that is even more apparent in the drawing of the type which appears in Spencer Tucker's "Arming the Fleet: U.S. Naval Ordnance in the Muzzle Loading Era". The same drawing (pg. 144) shows a slight flare of the bore at the muzzle similar to a carronade.
A plaque beside this 24-Pounder states that it was carried aboard the frigate USS Independence. It may be associated with Independence, but it was not aboard during the Mexican War - Independence’s battery at the time include 32-Pounders of 42 Hundredweight on the spar deck and 32-Pounders of 57 Hundredweight on the main deck. If it was carried aboard Independence, it was either before she was rearmed in 1846 or when she was a receiving ship.
