The gun “Swamp-Angel.”
One of the most famous guns in the
Civil War was the “Swamp-Angel.”
The marsh here surely deserved the name.
The two engineers who explored it to select a site for the battery carried a fourteen foot plank.
When the mud became too soft to sustain their weight, they sat on the plank and pushed it forward between their legs.
The mud was twenty feet deep, and men on such a plank could start waves rippling across the oozy surface by jumping up and down.
It is said that one of the officers detailed for the construction of the plat-forms called for “twenty men, eighteen feet long!”
In spite of these difficulties piles were driven in the marsh at a point that commanded the city of
Charleston and a platform at length laid upon it. On August 17, 1863, an 8-inch, 200-pounder Parrott rifle was skidded across the marsh and mounted behind the sandbag parapet.
On the night of August 21st, after warning had been sent to the
Confederate commander,
General Beauregard, the gun was fired so that the missiles should fall in the heart of
Charleston.
Sixteen shells filled with
Greek fire were sent that night.
On August 23d, at the thirty-sixth discharge, the breech of the gun was blown out and the barrel thereby thrown upon the sand-bag parapet as the photograph shows.
From the outside it looked to be in position for firing, and became the target for Confederate gunners.
Two weeks later two 10-inch mortars were mounted in place of the Parrott.
It was later mounted in
Trenton.
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The “Swamp-angel” --one of the famous guns of 1863 |
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After the 36th shot — the “swamp-angel” burst |
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