Artillery in the USA: Vermont: Middlebury, Montpelier, Morrisville, Orwell, Mount Independence, St. Albans, St. Johnsbury, Stowe, West Rutland, Woodstock

Artillery in Vermont

Middlebury, Montpelier, Morrisville, Orwell, Mount Independence, St. Albans, St. Johnsbury, Stowe, West Rutland, Woodstock

Middlebury

(Santee1821 Photos)

A10-Inch Rodman, Pattern 1861, Reg. No. 128, weight 15,140 lbs, mounted on a large stone pedestal in Middlebury, Vermont.  It was manufactured for the US Army by Cyrus Alger and Company in 1866. The pedestal notes that the display was dedicated in 1910 by the Grand Army of the Republic.

In service, this type of cannon would have been mounted on a wrought iron carriage.  The oval-shaped sockets in the rear of the cannon were to allow levers to change the elevation of the gun.   This cannon is a smoothbore designed to fire projectiles which were 10-inches in diameter.  In service, this cannon could fire either an approximately 125-pound round short or an approximately 100-pound explosive shell.

Though this type of cannon was produced for the US Army before, during, and after the American Civil War, very few saw combat service during the war.  The vast majority were used to arm coastal fortifications around Northern cities which were never attacked.  As a cannon produced after the war in 1866, the Middlebury Rodman almost certainly saw no combat service.  It may or may not have ever even been mounted at a fort, spending its days at a US Army arsenal until it was donated by the US Government to be part of this Grand Army of the Republic monument in Middlebury.

In the years leading up to the war, US Army officer Thomas Jackson Rodman would create a technique that would allow much larger guns to be cast in iron. Rodman worked out that the traditional manner of casting a gun solid, allowing it to cool from the outside in, and then boring out the barrel would not work beyond a certain size tube. As such a gun cooled, the outside was the first to cool, and it would contract slightly as it did so, but as metal further and further toward the center began to cool and harden, it would contract beneath metal that had already contracted. Rodman’s innovation was to cast the guns with a tube going into the area where the bore would eventually be made. Into this tube was run water to cool the cast gun from the inside while fires burned on the outside of the casting. Cooling from the inside out, the metal contracted onto successive layers of already contracted metal.  Eventually Rodman’s techniques were used to produce 8-Inch, 10-Inch, 15-Inch, and 20-Inch cannons for the US Army and 11-Inch and 15-Inch cannons for the US Navy. (Santee1821)

‍Montpelier

(Author Photo)

Vermont State Capitol building, Montpelier, 20 Aug 2019.

(Author Photos)

Bronze smoothbore muzzle-loading Light Gun, mounted on a wheeled carriage with limber.  This is a Hessian field piece, captured from Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum's Hessian mercenaries at the Battle of Bennington.  An inscription on top of the barrel reads: "Taken from the Germans at Bennington 16 Aug 1777".  This gun stands in front of the State House portico.

(Author Photos, 20 Aug 2019)

Krupp 15-cm SK (schiffkanone) L/35 naval rifle of 1890 vintage, Krupp Steel, taken from the Spanish cruiser Castilla, sunk by Admiral Dewey's squadron in Manilla Bay, 1 May 1898.  Mounted on an iron stand in front of the State House, No. 1 of 2.  Admiral George Dewey was a native of Montpelier.

(Author Photos, 20 Aug 2019)

Krupp 15-cm SK (schiffkanone) L/35 naval rifle of 1890 vintage, Krupp Steel, taken from the Spanish cruiser Castilla, sunk by Admiral Dewey's squadron in Manilla Bay, 1 May 1898.  Mounted on an iron stand in front of the State House, No. 2 of 2.

(Author Photo)

The two Krupp 15-cm SK (schiffkanone) L/35 naval rifles are located right and left of the front entrance to the State Capitol building.

Morrisville

(Gary Rushford Photo)

3-inch Ordnance Rifle, mounted on an iron stand, possibly Serial No. 783.

(Author Photo)

75-mm M1A4 Pack Howitzer, in front of the town war memorial.  Similar to this one on display at the 1st Cavalry Museum, Fort Hood, Texas.

Orwell, Mount Independence

Mount Independence on Lake Champlain in Orwell, was the site of extensive fortifications built during the American Revolutionary War by the American army to stop a British invasion.  Construction began in July 1776, following the American defeat in Canada, and continued through the winter and spring of 1777.  After the American retreat on 5-6 July 1777, British and German troops occupied Mount Independence until November 1777.  After the American Revolution, Mount Independence was farm land, used for grazing sheep and cattle. It is now a state historic site, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972 for its historical significance.

Previously named Rattlesnake Hill, Mount Independence is located in Orwell, Vermont, on the east side of Lake Champlain opposite Ticonderoga, New York, and historic Fort Ticonderoga.  At its narrowest, the lake is a quarter mile wide between Mount Independence and Ticonderoga.  The decision to fortify Mount Independence was made at Fort Crown Point on 7 July 1776, by a Council of War presided over by Northern Department Commander and Major General Philip Schuyler.  Less than a week earlier, an American army had returned after a disastrous ten-month invasion of Canada. Morale was low, and the defeated army was ravaged by smallpox.  In a letter, Schuyler told commander in chief George Washington, the peninsula opposite Ticonderoga was “so remarkably strong as to require little labour [sic] to make it tenable against a vast superiority of force, and fully to answer the purpose of preventing the enemy from penetrating into the country south of it.”

Twenty-one field officers objected to the move from Crown Point to Mount Independence, but on 11 July work began on the new site under the direction of military engineer Jeduthan Baldwin of Brookfield, Massachusetts.  Within the week, much of the army relocated to Ticonderoga while men labored on Mount Independence to clear the forest and build huts and barracks.  Mount Independence is a naturally strong defensive position. Unlike Fort Ticonderoga, which dominated the portage from Lake George to Lake Champlain but was open to attack from the north, Mount Independence presented a formidable obstacle to an invader from Canada.  At the height of the American fortification of Mount Independence in the late fall of 1776, the site was occupied by three brigades of New England troops or more than six thousand men, which were reinforced by temporary militia from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and the New Hampshire Grants (the territory that was to become Vermont). Numerous huts and barracks housed these troops.  An extensive breastwork with a battery of 28 cannons was built at the northern point of the peninsula. Above that position was the Citadel or Horseshoe battery. A star-shaped picket fort was later constructed on the height of land.

In the late spring of 1777, batteries designed by Polish military engineer Thaddeus K?ciuszko were constructed on the southeast side of Mount Independence.

During the four-month British and German occupation five blockhouses were begun to defend the east side against attack by land.  By the end of October 1776, there were more than 13,000 men defending the fortifications at Mount Independence and Ticonderoga, making the location one of the largest population centers in the new country.  (Wikipedia)

Map of Mount Independence as surveyed by British assistant engineer Lt. Charles Wintersmith in 1777.  (University of Vermont Photo)

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St. Albans

(Vermontish Photo)

155-mm M2 "Long Tom" Field Gun mounted on a Mk, 1 carriage.

(Vermontish Photo)

M4A3(75) Sherman Tank (Serial No. 12381), RN 30545536, 1-172nd Armor, ARNG Armory.

St. Johnsbury

(Daderot Photo)

(Peter Flood Photos)

3.67-in (20-lb) Naval Parrott Gun No. 107, from USS Kanawha.  This ship was armed with one 11-inch Dahlgen smoothbore muzzle-loading gun, two 24-pounder moothbore muzzle-loading guns and two 20-pounder Parrot rifles.

(Peter Flood Photos)

3.67-in (20-lb) Naval Parrott Gun No. 126, from the USS Magnolia.

USS Kanawha, a Unadilla-class gunboat built for the Union Navy during the American Civil War.  She was used by the navy to patrol navigable waterways of the Confederacy to prevent the South from trading with other countries.  (19th Century phototype by F. Gutekunst, Philadelphia, depicting Kanawha "cutting out a blockade runner from under the guns of Fort Morgan", at the mouth of Mobile Bay, Alabama).

(Google Earth Photo)

5"/31-caliber Mk 1 naval rifle, of wire and hoop manufacture, with an interrupted-screw breech.  Date of manufacture appears to be 1890s.  Mounted on a concrete stand in front of the Chamber of Commerce near the center of town.

The 5"/31 caliber rifle (spoken "five-inch-thirty-one-caliber") were used in the secondary batteries of the USN's "New Navy" protected cruiser USS Chicago and later mounted in USS Panther during the Spanish-American War.  Mark 1, Nos. 1 and 2, were 31 calibers and two of the first steel tube guns that were built entirely in the United States.  They were trunnioned guns, no liners and that fired bag ammunition.  After the Spanish-American War was over they were modified to Mod 1 in 1901.  A liner was inserted in the breech end and the trunnions were cut off.  The Mod 1 consisted of tube, jacket, and 9 hoops.  After these changes the gun was able to use the same ammunition as the later Mk 2 5-inch gun.  (Wikipedia).

(NARA Photo, 512893)

USS Chicago, 1891.

(USN Photo, N44471)

USS Panther, 1889.

USS Chicago and USS Panther.  These two ships were the only ones in the USN to have been armed with the 5"/31-caliber Mk 1 naval rifle.  It is therefore possible, though not confirmed, that the gun on display in St. Johnsbury most likely came from one of them.  (USN Photos)

Stowe

3-inch Ordnance Rifle, Serial No. 266 (TBC), No. 1 of 2.

(Peter Flood Photos)

3-inch Ordnance Rifle, Serial No. 374, weight 816 lbs, manufactured by the Phoenix Iron Company, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. Inspected by TTSL.  No. 2 of 2.

West Rutland

(US Army Signal Corps Photo, 14 May 1901)

3-inch gun M1898M1, No. 120 Driggs-Seabury, rapid fire breech-loading artillery gun with a 360-degree traverse, located in Central Park.

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Woodstock

(Peter Flood Photo)

4.2-inch (30-pounder) Parrott Rifle, Naval Model, 3,470 lbs, Serial No. RPP No. 278 on the breeching ring and front site mount, P, RHH on the left trunnion. 1864, 30-POUNDER on the right trunnion. GAR Memorial Square.

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