US Navy 32-Pounders of 42 Hundredweight Numbers 276, 226, and 280 of USS Cairo
US Navy 32-Pounders of 42 Hundredweight Numbers 276, 226, and 280 (background) of USS Cairo
US Navy 32-Pounders of 42 Hundredweight Numbers 276 and 226 are the number 3 and 4 guns on the starboard broadside of USS Cairo. Number 280 is the starboard gun on the stern. Their position in the display makes photographing the markings on the base rings impossible. As can be seen, the number 3 and 4 positions are abeam of the boilers and forward of the cylinders and paddle wheel. The stern mounts a 32 Pounder (Number 280) and a 30-Pounder Parrott. The armor plating on the starboard broadside is largely in place, giving an impression of the intact ship.
32-Pounder 42cwt Number 276 (left) and Number 226 (right) aboard USS Cairo
The three guns are:
32-Pounder of 42 Hundredweight Number 276 cast in 1845 by West Point Foundry. Weight was manufactured was 42-2-21 (4,781 pounds). Number 3 Starboard Gun.
32-Pounder of 42 Hundredweight Number 226 cast in 1845 at the Fort Pitt Foundry. Weight as manufactured was 42-2-20 (4,780 pounds). Number 4 Starboard Gun.
32-Pounder of 42 Hundredweight Number 280 cast in 1845 by West Point Foundry. Weight as manufactured was 42-2-7 (4,767 pounds). Starboard Stern Gun.
Information on these guns is found in The USS Cario by Elizabeth Hoxie Joyner and The Big Guns by Olmstead, Stark, and Tucker.
The muzzle of 32-Pounder 42cwt Number 226 protrudes through the gunport on the armored side.
The muzzle of 32-Pounder 42cwt Number 226 protrudes through the gunport on the armored side.
32-Pounder 42cwt Number 280 is aimed over the stern
The 32-Pounder of 42-Hundredweight, originally a chambered gun, was developed as part of the 1845 system to be used in the main battery of sloops of war. It was similar in weight to 18-Pounders of an earlier generation of naval guns. In service it used a maximum 6-pound propellent charge to fire it’s 32-pound shot.
By the time of the American Civil War, the 32-Pounder of 42 Hundredweight was a relatively light cannon as far as naval guns were concerned. It was therefore used to arm a number of converted merchant ships taken into naval service.
32-Pounder 276 and 226 can be seen along with the 8-Inch shellgun and 42-Pounder Rifle on the starboard side
Unlike the heavier 32-Pounder of 57 Hundredweight which survives in relatively large numbers (over 100 known examples), the 32-Pounder of 42 Hundredweight does not seem to have been kept in US Navy inventories into the 1880s and beyond when cannons began to be donated as monuments. Of the eleven known examples, six were recovered with USS Cairo. Two others were recovered from the wreck of USS Peterhoff.
Rarer still than the cannons of USS Cairo are the surviving carriages, one of which is displayed in the adjacent museum. Very few original wooden carriages survive from the Civil War. The example in the museum is displayed with a partial fiberglass barrel.
USS Cairo at Vicksburg National Military Park
