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[1812] Details re:General Jackson's Naval Guns at New Orleans

Posted By: John Morris (71.178.114.252)
Date: Wednesday, 18 August 2010 2354 hrs. EDT

While looking for something in the National Archives, I ran across an interesting notation in an old ledger book. Record Group 74, Entry 117 consists of one very large ledger book. The Navy used it to keep track of the thousands of guns and carronades aboard its ships and at the Navy Yards.

I don't know when the Navy began using this volume, since most of the notations are undated, but the last entries seem to have been made in 1850.

A lengthy section of this volume lists many hundreds of guns at the New York Navy Yard, Near the bottom of page 61 are notations on two 24-pounder naval guns, bearing identifying numbers 24 and 27 respectively. Weights were recorded in the hundredweight system as 48-2-7 and 48 -1-21 respectively. A pencil note reads: "Used by Gen'l Jackson at New Orleans." Other notes state that these had been returned (presumably by a ship) as unserviceable and had been sold in 1849.

Researchers have suspected that Jackson had, among his artillery at New Orleans, at least three naval guns, including one 32-pounder gun and two 24-pounder guns. However as far as I know nothing has been published regarding the specific identity of these guns, by exact weight and registry number. I don't yet know what model of naval 24-pounder these were, but now with the exact weights known, some "known" early models such as the "24 pounder of 45 hundredweight" can be eliminated.

A convenient source of information regarding Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans is Robert McCully's "Too Much Praise Cannot Be Bestowed...Andrew Jackson's Artillery at the Battle of New Orleans," Military Collector and Historian, Summer 2010, pp. 88.

The photo below shows the bottom of page 61 of the ledger cataloged by the National Archives as RG74 Entry 117, entitled "Record of Guns in Navy Yards and On Ships, 1849."

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