previous next
[145]

A mammoth sea-coast cannon aimed by wooden wedges--1861 this Rodman smooth-bore gun in Port Royal, South Carolina, is mounted on a wooden carriage of a type prevalent during the war. These carriages were sufficiently strong to carry the guns of that time, being made of selected oak, beech, ash, hickory, cypress, or some other durable and resisting wood; but at the close of the war the increased size and power of the guns had surpassed the strength of the old carriages, and the Ordnance Department was confronted with the problem of replacing all the old carriages and making iron carriages for the guns then in process of construction. The elevating device seen on this carriage is primitive, consisting of wooden wedges to be inserted, one on top of another, until the required elevation of the breach was obtained. The recoil on firing sent the piece back, and it was loaded in its recoil position. The piece was returned “in battery” by inserting the bars in the holes in the wheels of the upper carriage. The piece is centered on a pivot, and wheels running on the circular track allow it to be “traversed.” this was known as a “center-pintle” carriage. It could be revolved in a complete circle.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Port Royal (South Carolina, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
T. J. Rodman (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: