Also known as: ship's guns.
| Role | Armament of warships |
|---|---|
| Mounts | Broadside carriages and pivot mounts |
| Guns | Dahlgren shell guns, Brooke rifles, and heavy smoothbores |
The guns afloat
Naval artillery was the ordnance mounted aboard warships, on carriages that ran out through the broadside ports or on pivots that could train across wide arcs. The rise of the shell gun and the ironclad made the Civil War a period of rapid change in naval armament.
Federal ships carried the bottle-shaped Dahlgren shell guns and heavy rifles, while Confederate ironclads mounted the banded Brooke rifles and other heavy guns, the two sides meeting in the famous duels of the ironclads.
On this site
Sources & further reading
- United States Army, Ordnance Department. The Ordnance Manual for the Use of the Officers of the United States Army. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1862.
- CivilWarArtillery.com research archive: cannon identification pages, manuals, and reports.