Speaking as a gunner, Columbiads were some of the biggest pieces of crap ever foisted on a gullible Govt (ok, there were worse ones, but that was now, this is then). Low-velocity, large caliber, smooth bore, shell guns, that went boom very loud, but couldn't penetrate a well built stone outhouse. It took 4 Russian Battleships (and 2 big frigates), armed with shell guns, over 4 hours to sink 7 anchored Turkish frigates at Sinope in 1853.ORIGINAL: JWE
It wasn't till the US Civil War era that harbor forts became marginalized. Naval weapons became more powerful ...
And then came naval "Rifles" and the world changed. Just look at Kearsarge and Alabama; two ships that have been cussed, discussed, sliced and diced, by hundreds of historians and Naval Officers since 1879, and every single one avers they were as equivalent as two peas in a pod. Ok, so let's just look for a second at 2x 11" Dahlgren SBs and a 4" Parrott Rifle, vs a 6.4" Blakely Rifle and a Simmons 8" SB (excluding both ship's broadside SB cannons). Woof !! That says volumes, right there, about Mr Blakely.
They coulda, shoulda, woulda, if the damn shell they put in Kearsarge's rudder assembly went off!! Black powder, in explosive shells, in 1864!! You take a pee within 10 feet of that stuff and it gets damp and just fizzles. Schonbein was reporting on nitrocellulose since 1846, and Fredrick Abel was dinking with it in 1862, but it took till Vielle in 1882 to get it together ?? Aw, Woof !! Just goes to show, if there ain't no war going on, there just ain't nothing happening nowhere, nohow.
It was kinda like the Pacific War that started with neat airplanes and machine guns and ended with jets and atomic bombs. Civil War started with smooth-bores and some few rifled pieces, with Napoleonic deployment practice, and ended with the introduction of modern rifled artillery weapons and their attendent deployment techniques.
[ed] But then again one must, simply must, give a bit of a push to Fts. Jefferson, Gaines, Moultrie, Magruder, DeSoto ...
