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Updated: June 19, 2025
On the walls, gaping landward as well as seaward, are thirty or thirty-five iron cannon, all en barbette, but protected toward the harbor by heavy piles of sand-bags, fenced up either with barrels of sand or palmetto-logs driven firmly into the rampart. Four eight-inch columbiads, carrying sixty-four pound balls, pointed at Fort Sumter.
Philip, on the left or north bank, was a work of brick and earth, flanked on either hand by a water battery. In the main work were mounted, in barbette, four 8-inch columbiads and one 24-pounder gun; the upper water battery carried sixteen 24-pounders, the lower one one 8-inch columbiad, one 7-inch rifle, six 42-pounders, nine 32-pounders, and four 24-pounders.
Fort Jackson, on the south or left bank of the river, was a casemated pentagon of brick, mounting in the casemates fourteen 24-pounder guns, and ten 24-pounder howitzers, and in barbette in the upper tier two 10-inch columbiads, three 8-inch columbiads, one 7-inch rifle, six 42-pounders, fifteen 32-pounders, and eleven 24-pounders, in all sixty-two guns.
The advance of the enemy's column to the Hauffpaur . . . will ensure its speedy fall, with loss of guns and garrison. Under these circumstances, General Taylor has ordered the removal of the 32-pounder rifle and 11-inch columbiads to a position higher up the Red River."
The water battery below the main work was armed with one 10-inch columbiad, two 8-inch columbiads, and two rifled 32-pounders. Fifty of these pieces were available against the fleet, but of the whole armament of one hundred and nine guns, fifty-six were old 24-pounder smooth-bores. The passage of the forts had been obstructed by a raft or chain anchored between them.
Now that Captain Gray's industry had lined the river-shore with batteries armed with twenty-four, thirty-two, and sixty-four pound guns, and eight-inch howitzers and columbiads, sufficient to blow out of the water any unarmed steamer that should venture to cross, the task was impracticable with his present resources.
It was held by six companies of the 39th Mississippi regiment, under Colonel W. B. Shelby, while behind, in the positions of land batteries III. and IV., were planted six field pieces, and still farther back on the water front the columbiads of Whitfield and Seawell, mounted on traversing carriages, stood ready to rake the road with their 8-inch and 10-inch shell and shrapnel.
To replenish it they have established a cartridge factory at the village of Imus, about ten miles south of Cavite, where they have 400 people engaged in re-loading cartridges with powder and lead found at Cavite, or purchased abroad. They have no artillery, except a few antique Columbiads obtained from Cavite, and no cavalry.
Nineteen batteries were now hammering at us, and the balls and shells from the ten-inch columbiads, accompanied by shells from the thirteen-inch mortars which constantly bombarded us, made us feel as if the war had commenced in earnest. When it was broad daylight, I went down to breakfast. I found the officers already assembled at one of the long tables in the mess-hall.
"With thunderin' batteries, of course." "With short thirty-twos and a few rapping sixty-eight Paixhans or Columbiads, as they ought in justice to be called." "And you think this chap likely to be a craft of that sort?" "Nothing is more probable, sir. Government has several, and, since this war has commenced, it has been sending off cruiser after cruiser into the Gulf.
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