US Navy 9-Inch Dahlgren in Downtown Vicksburg

Aug 18

A US Navy 9-Inch Dahlgren is displayed in downtown Vicksburg, Mississippi. I was not able to read the registry number or the weight on the breech of the cannon. I have been told by a friend of the Facebook page that it is one of the two in Vicksburg which was originally carried aboard USS Tuscumbia and later used by the US Army’s 17th Corps. (This description corresponds to Registry Numbers 553 and 558, both of which were cast at Fort Pitt Foundry in 1862.)

The Type: The 9-Inch Dahlgren could fire either a solid round shot weighing about 90 pounds or an explosive shell weighing around 73 pounds. The shell, a spherical projectile cast with a hollow core for filling with three pounds of gunpowder, was designed to imbed itself in the side of a wooden ship before exploding. Few wooden ships could survive the damage caused by more than a handful of such hits. The 9-Inch Dahlgren was the standard heavy broadside cannon aboard the heavy frigates and sloops of the US Navy during the American Civil War. It was carried by some larger gunboats on the rivers.