armoured ship thursday on friday

i thought today instead of the ships themselves i should put on something about the armament of the early armoured ships. these are the 8" or 150lb. Parrot Rifle of the Union Navy and the 7" Brooke Rifle of the Confederate Navy. Parrots came in many sizes from the 10pdr. to the great 300pdr. the largest the Navy used was the 8" firing a 150lb. shot. the 7" Brooke was the largest in the Confederate Navy and used a 120lb. shot. both types were capable of penetrating and/or breaking up the normal armour of 4"-6" usually worn by the Civil War Era armoured vessels. both types had a maximum range of around 8,000yds. or close to 5 miles. with the type of sights used at this time hitting anything in particular at this range would be very difficult. both of them due to the technology of the time had a tendency to occasionally burst when fired. Robert Parker Parrot designed the Parrot Rifles which were mostly cast at the West Point Foundry. he perfected the method of attaching the reinforcing band around the breech of the guns. both Parrots and Brookes were made of cast iron which was very brittle. the band was of wrought iron which was not so brittle and vastly strengthened the breech of the gun. Parrots used one band and Brookes used one, two or three made in narrower pieces as the south's foundries could not make the large one used on the Parrots. the Brooke Rifles were designed by John Mercer Brooke an officer of the Confederate Navy. Brookes were cast by the Tredegar Iron Works of Richmond, VA or the Selma Naval Ordnance works of Selma, AL. in the first picture we see the CSS Tennesee which was armed with two 7" Brooke Rifles one forward and one aft and four 6.4" Brooke Rifles two on each side. in the second picture is one of the 7" Brookes{notice the double bands on the breech} taken from the CSS Tennesee and now displayed in the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. the third picture is the USS Onondaga a USN Monitor which had one 8" Parrot Rifle in each turret alongside a 15" Dahlgren smoothbore. the last picture is of an 8" Parrot Rifle{with the typical broader single band around the breech} on board a USN warship. despite their tendency to occasionally blow off their muzzles or other parts these were both advanced weapons for the time.