Further To Big Guns
I recently received a comment from one of my classmates about my first post regarding the largest cannon of the war. He commented that Ft Hancock in not across from Ft Hamilton and he is right. We went looking for the two guns guarding New York Harbor and found the No. 1 gun “Satan” located at Ft Hamilton in Brooklyn. The No. 2 gun is at Ft Hancock located on Sandy Hook, NJ at the Coast Guard Base. It is on concrete stanchons not a steel carriage like the one at Ft Hamilton. The Satan gun weighs 116,497 pounds and the carriage mount weighs 36,000 pounds. The solid iron ball projectile weighs 1080 LBs. It can fire up to 8000 yards on a 200LB powder charge. The No 1 gun guards the Veranzano Narrows and is generally aimed in the direction of Ft Wadsworth across the Narrows. The No. 2 gun is aimed north across the mouth of New York Harbor. There were four guns cast at the Ft Pitt Foundry in Pittsburgh. It took four foundry pours to complete a gun and two railcars to move it. The last two guns were cast in 1867 after the War. One is a shell gun in Callao, Peru (Beelzebub)and No. 4 is unaccounted for at this time I believe. It (Moloch) had a shorter barrel and was to be mounted on a dual-turret Navy Monitor USS Puritan but that project was cancelled. This picture is of the Ft Hamilton Gun, a most imposing weapon.