civil war cannon, info please

[Dave]

What was the name of the gun that was cast iron and had the large reinforcing band at the rear. I think it was called a rifle and the name was of the inventor (an Army Officer?) thanks.

Information

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[John Kepler]

The inventor and name-sake was Capt. Robert Parker Parrott. He resigned from the Army and became Superintendent of West Point Foundry, Cold Spring, NY in 1836. He invented his rifled gun and the shells it fired in 1860, patented them in 1861. The tube was cast iron with a forge-welded wrought iron breech reinforce band.

The Parrott Rifle, while hardly the best rifled artillery piece of the Civil War...had the advantage of being easy and cheap to produce, very effective, and became the main-stay of field artillery in the conflict as a result.

[Vern Humphrey]

The most common smooth bore gun was the Napoleon -- named for Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III), the emperor of France at the time. Confederate batteries tended to have both smooth bores and rifled guns, while Union batteries were mostly either smoothbore or rifled.

[Embalmer]

X2 that cannon was the parrot rifle. Think I read there was a design prob with them, that caused the rear reenforcment ring to split alot. Actually have seen a few parrot barrels on display that had the breach area had ruptured for what ever reason.

[John Kepler]

The most common smooth bore gun was the Napoleon -- named for Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III), the emperor of France at the time. Confederate batteries tended to have both smooth bores and rifled guns, while Union batteries were mostly either smoothbore or rifled.

Picking nits....the most common field smoothbore was the US Ordnance M1857 Bronze 12 pdr. Technically, a Napoleon was a 6 pdr at the max. But like the terms "Shrapnel" and "Kleenex", it was morphed into a generic term for ANY smoothbore field piece...incorrectly.

Confederate batteries generally had whatever they could get their hands on.....much of it obsolescent sweepings from the various Federal Arsenals they appropriated at the start of the war. They produced a copy of the Parrott as well as the Brooke...but not many of either.

FWIW, the rifled field gun was the last addition that caused the horror show that the Civil War became, not due to any real increase in range or accuracy....but by a 3-fold increase in lethality! The rifling allowed shells to be cylindrical rather spherical, increasing the throw-weight by at least a factor of 3, effectively tripling the weapon's lethality. In addition, the fact that the rifled shell would stay oriented in a single plane allowed the first use of practical contact fusing rather than timed fuses that had typified shells in prior conflicts. To his dying day, Gen Henry Hunt, Chief of Artillery, Army of the Potomac insisted that his guns alone could have broken up Picket's Charge at Gettysburg had his 2nd Corps gunners not been ordered to engage the Confederate artillery in counter-battery fire earlier by Gen Hancock, expending all their long-range ordnance.

[John Kepler]

X2 that cannon was the parrot rifle. Think I read there was a design prob with them, that caused the rear reenforcment ring to split alot. Actually have seen a few parrot barrels on display that had the breach area had ruptured for what ever reason.

Only in the larger examples, generally over 6.5". There were numerous failures in the 200 pdr (8") Parrott's, but later analysis indicated that the problem was not with the gun, but the shells. The shells were prematurely detonating in the bore, fracturing the cast iron tube through the breech at the touch-hole. The 300 pdr. (10") Parrotts had similar shell failures, but they tended to blow the muzzle-area of the tubes off rather than the breech. The gunners would simply chisel the fractured areas smooth to permit loading, and continued to fire the massive rifles. In one instance on Morris Island, the muzzle was blown off the 10" Parrott rifle by defective shells three times before the gun was finally too damaged to fire! Gunners in those days were made of very stern stuff!

[Embalmer]

Thanks for the clarification. I had seen field pieces damaged at the rear, but have read somewhere about a design problem with them, but dont recall what size it refered to.

As for firing guns whose barrels kept getting shorter... least they wernt wasteful lol.

Used to be a gunner for the 140th NY artillery for civil war reenacting years ago (think they since merged with another unit), and we had a battery of 3 parrots. Alot easier to lug around than the napoleons, easier to keep clean, but didnt have the bark of a napoleon

[Vern Humphrey]

Confederate batteries generally had whatever they could get their hands on.....much of it obsolescent sweepings from the various Federal Arsenals they appropriated at the start of the war. They produced a copy of the Parrott as well as the Brooke...but not many of either.

It's true that the Confederate ARMY had whatever it could get its hands on, but it was perfectly possible to pool weapons and issue like weapons to batteries. The Union Army did that, the Confederates did not. One consequence of that was that it complicated the Confederate battlefield ammunition resupply problem.

[John Kepler]

Without question Vern, but a lot of it went to the very foundation of the Confederacy....States Rights!

Unlike the Federal forces, the Confederate Gub'mint didn't own those guns, the STATES did, and in some cases (militia groups), the individual gunners!. Once a battery was organized and equipped by a state or a community, it was pretty much inviolate! E. Porter Alexander tried on NUMEROUS occasions to re-organize the various hodge-podge of guns in his batteries in 1862, only to start gigantic sh*t-storms with the state governors, particular John Letcher of Virginia and Joe Brown of Georgia over the attempted THEFT of state property by the central government! It was Robert E. Lee, then military adviser to Jefferson Davis that quietly told Alexander that the artillery re-organization he proposed was simply a political impossibility, and that he'd better cook up a way to work with what he had. Porter then did the best he could, organizing Batteries with as many similar weapons as he could get away with. Yes, it was a logistical nightmare....but then it was only one of many such handicaps the Confederate Armies were saddled with. This single example of military idiocy gives a great deal of validity to one of the epitaphs of the Confederacy, "Died of a Theory!"

[Jim K]

The Parrott was well liked, but the mainstay of the U.S. field artillery and arguably the best field gun of the Civil War was the 3" Ordnance Rifle.

FWIW, 20 pdr Parrott rifle Serial No. 1 is on the square in Hanover, PA.

Jim