30-Pounder Parrott Rifle

The 30-pounder Parrott Rifle was one of the most widely used siege cannons in the War Between the States. Invented by Robert P. Parrott in 1861, it quickly became one of the Union Army’s standard siege cannons. During the siege of Fort Macon in 1862, Union forces used batteries of siege cannons to bombard the fort, including a battery of three 30-pounder Parrott Rifles commanded by Captain Lewis O. Morris of Company C, 1st U.S. Artillery. Positioned more than three-fourths of a mile from the fort with two additional batteries of 8-inch and 10-inch siege mortars, the guns joined an eleven-hour bombardment on April 25, 1862. Their accuracy made them highly destructive, knocking out many of the fort’s walls and repeatedly cracking the walls and ceiling of one of the fort’s gunpowder magazines. Facing the danger of explosion from its own gunpowder, the Confederate garrison had no choice but to surrender, and Union forces took possession of the fort the next morning. The bombardment of Fort Macon was the second time in history that rifled siege guns were used against a fort in combat, and the power of rifled cannons such as the Parrott to destroy brick and stone walls helped make forts obsolete as a form of military defense.

North Carolina · United States