Parrott Canyon

Parrott Cannon Battery, Fort Brady, Virginia, 1864.

The Parrott was the first barrel with scratched bore made in the United States and used in the Civil War. It was the standard-striped barrel of the US Army and Navy from the 1860s to the 1880s.

Its creator was the captain of the US Army Robert P. Parrott and made them in the private foundry of West Point, Colds Spring, New York. Parrott died in 1877, but they were still making cannons under his patent several years later.

After the War of Secession began to be sold to several countries, being Chile the first to buy them, in number of 42 of diverse calibres, 5 of which were delivered by the own Robert P. Parrott Cannon design

Robert Parrott made his guns on a cast iron cylinder, scratched and reinforced in the chamber by a wrought iron horn. It should be noted that cast iron was not a metal used to manufacture guns. Their striped bore allowed these guns to shoot spherical bullets with papier-mache salty, a characteristic that could not equal the other striped guns. He also fired ogival cylinder bullets and grenades. Thus, the 100-pound cannon could fire 32-pound spherical bullets and the 200-pound, 68-pound spherical bullet.

Parrot also used Blakely's canned-barrel manufacturing system, though it did not have to pay for the patent. Gauges

Parrott guns were called by the weight of the projectile in pounds, but this generated much confusion because one cannon used a different type of projectile. A clear example is the 10-inch Parrott, which was called at 300 pounds by the army and 200 pounds by the navy. Thus, the naval guns used a lighter projectile that went faster and despite being the same cannon that the one used by the army, its denomination was smaller.

Parrott gauges were: Bibliography

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