CANNON--BOND HALL
From Knob Knowledge
This cannon is a seven-inch bow gun from the Confederate ironclad Palmetto State. On January 31, 1863, this bow gun fired and struck the U.S.S. Mercedita in Charleston Harbor in one of the efforts to break the Union naval blockade. The C.S.S. Palmetto State was an ironclad ram built in Charleston and commissioned in September 1862. Women of the state helped to finance the building of the ship by selling their jewelry. The ironclad was active in the Charleston vicinity during the war. When Charleston was evacuated on February 18, 1865, the ironclad was destroyed. According to eyewitnesses, when the ship blew up in Charleston Harbor, "her smoke, high against the sky, formed a perfect palmetto tree"--symbolizing for many the fate of Confederate South Carolina. The cannon was dredged up from the Cooper River in the fall of 1929 and was presented to The Citadel by Major N. Y. Duhamel, the resident U. S. Army engineer. (Sources: "Gun Dredged from Cooper Served the South's Navy," News and Courier, December 15, 1929, p. 7-B; Brian Hicks, "Journal Holds Clues to Treasure," Post and Courier, October 27, 2005, pp. 1A, 11A; Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series 1, Vol. 13, p. 617. THIRD FLOOR STACKS E591 .U58 1987; U. S. Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center Online Library of Selected Images: Ships of the Confederate States; E. Milby Burton, The Siege of Charleston, 1861-1865, p. 321. E470.65 .B87)
