United States or Myanmar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
By the 15th of January we had secured the main gates against an assault, by building a wall of stone and mortar behind them, leaving merely what is called a man-hole, for the entrance of one person at a time. Even this was covered by a twenty-four-pounder howitzer, loaded with canister.
The armament of this privateer consisted of one long twenty-four-pounder and twelve heavy carronades. After the deliberation I fixed upon the Paul Jones as the more desirable vessel.
During the night of the 20th General Taylor had established a battery, consisting of two twenty-four-pounder howitzers and a ten inch mortar, at a point from which they could play upon Black Fort. A natural depression in the plain, sufficiently deep to protect men standing in it from the fire from the fort, was selected and the battery established on the crest nearest the enemy.
Dine with us you shall this day, if we have to dine two hours earlier, and though Mother Cloam rage furiously. How much longer do you suppose you can carry on at this pace? Look at me. I have double your bodily substance; but if I went on as you do you remember the twenty-four-pounder old Hotcoppers put into the launch, and fired it, in spite of all I could say to him? Well, you are just the same.
The long rows of cabins on the upper deck were torn down; and a heavy eight-inch shell-gun, mounted on a pivot between the fore and mainmasts, and the grinning muzzles of four twenty-four-pounder howitzers peeping from the ports, told of her warlike character. The great levee of the Crescent City was crowded with people that day.
Directly in the middle of the gateway, which was only ten feet wide and about as many in height, there stood a twenty-four-pounder gun. On the top of the arch there was built a small square room, from holes in which peeped out the muzzles of five or six field-pieces, the whole affair resembling very much that part of a child's box of toys which represents the stronghold or castle.
It was headed by the flagship "Confiance," a frigate of the class of the United States ship "Constitution," carrying thirty long twenty-fours, a long twenty-four-pounder on a pivot, and six thirty-two or forty-two pound carronades. To these were added twelve gunboats, with varied armaments, but each slightly heavier than the American craft of the same class.
During the night of the 20th General Taylor had established a battery, consisting of two twenty-four-pounder howitzers and a ten inch mortar, at a point from which they could play upon Black Fort. A natural depression in the plain, sufficiently deep to protect men standing in it from the fire from the fort, was selected and the battery established on the crest nearest the enemy.
Henry says that a twenty-four-pounder was used at Point Boneta, San Francisco Bay, Cal., in 1856-57, and that, by the help of it alone, vessels came into the harbor during the fog at night as well as in the day, which otherwise could not have entered. The gun was fired every half hour, night and day, during foggy and thick weather in the first year, except for a time when powder was lacking.
"Ask him," said Bainbridge, "if the solar rays have celerity, and force, and penetration; and how much they weigh. It requires fine shot to bring down the essence of a disease " "Tell him," shouted Castleton, "that the liver is a mammoth that requires a twenty-four-pounder to penetrate its hide. We don't hunt the rhinoceros with bird-shot."
Word Of The Day