Photos of Seacoast Guns

Tom Hughes

Sergeant Major
Joined
May 27, 2019
Location
Mississippi
I found these two Webster & Albee stereoview images stuck away in a shoebox in a Vicksburg store many years ago. Almost forgot I had them till I just stumble across them this morning accidentally. Not sure if these images are from Vicksburg. They look like they could be seacoast guns. Maybe an arsenal? I'm open for any suggestions.
Stereoviews provided a 3D type image when the cards were viewed through the machine. Very interesting. I'm going to research these more.
Thanks for looking and for any comments on these images.

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Just looking at the picture, I would say that they are in an arsenal storage yard, those guns are much too large for anything used at Vicksburg and that they may not be an American gun as the scale of the gun doesn't seem to fit an American gun of that large a bore. A 15" Dahlgren:
1860s_15_inch_Dahlgren_gun_side_HKMCD (2).jpg
 
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Just looking at the picture, I would say that they are in an arsenal storage yard, those guns are much too large for anything used at Vicksburg and that they may not be an American gun as the scale of the gun doesn't seem to fit an American gun of that large a bore. A 15" Dahlgren:View attachment 317141
Could even be a Columbiad gun. I’ve seen large guns like this at places like Ft. Pickens in Pensacola, FL and Ship Island in Mississippi.
 
I have seen that photo before and I can't remember where maybe the LOC collection but they were sea coast cannon. I'm going 15 inch Rodman.
 
The 15" Columbiad/Rodman weighed over 25 Tons and fired a 400# shot
The short 15" Dahlgren weighed 42 Tons
The long 15" Dahlgren weighed 43 Tons
Both of the Dahlgrens fired a 440# shot
The 20" Dahlgren weighed over 50 Tons and fired a 1080 # shell
The 20" Rodman weighed 58.2 Tons
20" Rodman Below:
Historic_Gun,_Sandy_Hook,_NJ_-_panoramio (2).jpg
 
The breach in the image looks nearly as tall as the man . Could this image be a hoax ?
 
Nope I believe that its a 15 inch short Rodman aka Jeff Davis Rodman which was the only Rodman that had a bell on the breach as all the other had a notch break. Its sitting on timbers and I believe the young man in the photos is a boy. If you look at the bore size compared the distance below his waste (the top of the bore) and the bottom of the bore ( just above his knee) you have a 15 inch anything.

Jeff Davis Rodman.
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Nope I believe that its a 15 inch short Rodman aka Jeff Davis Rodman which was the only Rodman that had a bell on the breach as all the other had a notch break. Its sitting on timbers and I believe the young man in the photos is a boy. If you look at the bore size compared the distance below his waste (the top of the bore) and the bottom of the bore ( just above his knee) you have a 15 inch anything.

Jeff Davis Rodman.
View attachment 317203
Port Royal SC 1861...we may have a winner. Do you know how many of this style were made besides the 3 illustrated?
 
I'll get back to you on that one.
 
Was this an Arsenal at Port Royal?
With as much ordnance shown in the pictures, I would imagine that this was at a major storage area such as Washington and if the picture was post war that the tubes were being gathered for either storage or disposal. When the Military Parks were being established, the tubes were sent from storage to them for display; for example over 150 field gun tubes went to Shiloh and in a least one example, they were used as either fill materials or just simply dumped and buried. Photo NPS
Image18 (2).jpg
 
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