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Updated: May 16, 2025
"Great Scott! just listen to the 'New Orleans. She's firing like a house afire." Suddenly there came a deep, thunderous roar. It was the voice of a thirteen-inch gun on the "Massachusetts." Sixty seconds later the six-pounders on the "Yankee's" forecastle joined in the chorus, and the action became general.
It may be interesting to note that the cost of one discharge of a thirteen-inch gun is $800, and that when a battleship like the Massachusetts lets loose her entire battery, both main and secondary, the cost of a single discharge is $6,000.
But she was not to be granted that satisfaction; for shortly after one o'clock, when the chase had lasted two hours, the Oregon threw a couple of great thirteen-inch shells, at a range of five miles, so close to the flying Spaniard that they deluged her with tons of water.
Supporting this force as auxiliary to it, for the bombardment of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, was Porter's mortar fleet of twenty schooners, each mounting a thirteen-inch mortar, and a flotilla of five side-wheel steamers, and the gunboat Owasco, carrying, in all, thirty guns. Philip From the U.S. Coast Survey.
The British were on their part greatly disgusted at the loss of the brig, not merely as weakening them, but also as strengthening the enemy. The chief prize on the ship was a thirteen-inch brass mortar, which on its arrival in camp was greeted with acclamation, and by means of a bottle of rum was solemnly christened the Congress.
Showers of balls from ten-inch columbiads and forty-two-pounders, and shells from thirteen-inch mortars poured into the fort in one incessant stream, causing great flakes of masonry to fall in all directions.
One was an old fellow whose name has been on the navy list for thirty years, the other was a young seaman gunner. When Admiral Cervera led his ships out of the harbor of Santiago, in that brave dash for the freedom of the open sea, the veteran was engaged in his usual occupation of polishing the sleek coat of one of the big thirteen-inch guns.
Though the gun captains had been cautioned not to waste ammunition, but to fire with deliberation, the fire was so rapid that there was an almost continuous report. The measured crash of the big thirteen-inch guns of the battleships sounded above the rattle of the guns of the secondary batteries like thunder-claps above the din of a hurricane.
The shell from the thirteen-inch gun leaves the muzzle at a velocity of 2,100 feet a second, and with an energy of 33,627-foot tons, or the power required to lift one ton one foot. From this velocity the range is to 1,800 feet a second in the one- pounder, although from the three-pounder at 2,050 feet it averages about the same as the thirteen-inch.
And, I tell you, it was a caution any time to be up against Captain Howard, for, though he could be nice as pie and perlite to beat the band, it only needed the occasion for him to unloose on you like a thirteen-inch gun.
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