U.S.S. Sabine Parrott Rifle

This 6.4 inch 100 pounder Parrott rifled naval cannon served on the U.S.S. Sabine during the Civil War and is the only one from that ship that survives today. Cast in 1862 at the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, New York, it weighed 9,790 pounds. The cannon's service was bound to that of the U.S.S. Sabine, whose keel was laid in 1822 at the New York Navy Yard but whose construction was not completed until February 1855. Commissioned on August 23, 1858, the U.S.S. Sabine was one of the last two sailing frigates in the U.S. Navy before later frigates adopted steam propulsion. She carried 375 officers and sailors and was armed with 49 cannon. During a refit at the Portsmouth Navy Yard from July to August 1862, this was one of two powerful 100 pounder rifled cannon added to her armament; mounted on swiveling carriages on the fore and aft decks, they could fire farther and more accurately than smoothbore cannon. Just before the Civil War began, the U.S.S. Sabine, with the U.S.S. Brooklyn, U.S.S. St. Louis, and U.S.S. Wyandotte, reinforced the Federal garrison at Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island and began blockading Pensacola Bay, Florida. After Fort Pickens was secured, the U.S.S. Sabine served on blockade duty with the Atlantic Squadron. That November, during a hurricane off Cape Hatteras, she rescued the foundering transport Governor and saved 500 U.S. Marines and crew. In March 1862, more than 40 of her crew transferred to the ironclad U.S.S. Monitor and took part in the clash with the C.S.S. Virginia (Merrimac) at Hampton Roads. After refitting, the U.S.S. Sabine was sent to hunt the Confederate commerce raiders C.S.S. Alabama and C.S.S. Tacony. In 1864 she retired from active sea duty and served as a training ship for landsmen and midshipmen until the war's end. She was decommissioned in 1887 and scrapped in September 1883. The cannon was donated to Grand Traverse County by Senator William Alden Smith in 1910.

Traverse City, Michigan · United States