Fort Sumter cannon saved by anonymous donor
Conservators use super heated water at extremely high pressure to remove layers of paint on an 1830 seacoast artillery piece at Fort Moultrie on Sullivans Island, S.C., on Friday, Dec. 13, 2013. Fort Sumter has 11 similar Parrot rifles that need similar work (Photo: AP/Bruce Smith)
Charleston, South Carolina’s historic Fort Sumter, famous for its role in the Civil War, received an influx of $200,000 to restore 11 vintage Parrot rifles.
The donation came from an individual who wished to keep their name private, in honor of their father, a Citadel graduate.
The 6.4-inch guns at hand, which fired 100-pound shells, are something of a mystery to the National Park Service, being moved to the site around 1870 and covered in layer upon layer of paint, obscuring their foundry numbers which would tell when they were cast and potentially where they saw service during the war between the states.
Fort Sumter was unfinished and partially armed when the war started in 1861 but the brief battle in which the Confederates captured the installation was widely regarded as the opening shots of the conflict. The fort, later garrisoned by southern troops, was in turn placed under siege in 1863 by U.S. forces that ultimately left the masonry fortification in ruins by the end of the war. It was during Reconstruction that the Parrot rifles were brought it after Sumter was repaired and installed in the first-tier gun rooms of the fort.
Officials think they may have actually been used by the Union troops to bombard Sumter during the war, but won’t know until they can get to the buried numbers under 150 years of paint and grime– which the donation will pay for.
“It’s a possibility that during the Civil War these cannons were actually on Morris Island shelling Fort Sumter and other places,” Fort Sumter historian Rick Hatcher told The Post and Courier.
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Source: http://www.guns.com/2016/12/08/fort-sumter-cannon-saved-by-anonymous-donor/
