Dahlgren workers help place CSS Virginia Gun at Fredericksburg Museum in 2003.

Visitors to the Fredericksburg Museum will discover an important relic of the American Civil War. But most Dahlgrenites will remember that it previously resided at Naval Support Facility Dahlgren near the entrance to the front gate for 43 years.

It is a 9-inch Dahlgren gun, and only one of three remaining relics from the CSS Virginia (AKA USS Merrimack). The other two artifacts, CSS Virginia’s drive shaft, anchor and chain, are at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond. This particular gun was damaged by a lucky cannon ball shot on its casing when on March 8, 1862 the CSS Virginia met and defeated two U.S. Navy Union ships, USS Congress and USS Cumberland, in an effort to break the Northern blockade to the South’s Capitol city at Richmond.

During that engagement the commander of the Virginia, Flag Officer Franklin Buchanan (who was the first superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy before the Civil War) was wounded while checking out the damage to this and another gun. He turned over command of the CSS Virginia to his young executive officer, Lt. Catesby Jones, who had ironically worked for Rear Adm. John A. Dahlgren, the acknowledged ‘‘Father of Modern Naval Ordnance,” and the designer of this gun. It was Lt. Jones who took CSS Virginia out the next day (March 9, 1862) to meet the USS Monitor in what is acknowledged to be the most significant naval battle of the 19th Century.

Dahlgren, a Swedish born engineer, got into naval ordnance and gun design because of an accident that occurred in 1844 when a 50-pound version of a naval gun designed around the tried-and-true British 32-pound gun blew aboard the USS Princeton. In that accident, killed were Secretary of State Abel Upshur, Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gilmer and New York congressman Rep. David Gardiner who had all come aboard to see the gun fire at the behest of President John Tyler.

Dahlgren himself was almost killed in an accident in developing the Dahlgren gun. But, as an expert in internal ballistics and engineering principles, his final product revolutionized naval gun making throughout the world. The Dahlgren gun was considered one of the safest ever designed. It had a range of nearly 3,500 yards and was extremely accurate.

This gun was one of the six Dahlgren guns mounted on the CSS Virginia. It was apparently the forward-most port (left) broadside gun (gun #2, Midshipman Henry Marmaduke, under the command of Lt. Hunter Davidson). As the Virginia approached the USS Cumberland to ram her, the Cumberland gunners inflicted the only serious damage ever done to the Virginia. At the same instant as it fired, this gun was hit by a shot from the Cumberland. One man was killed and several wounded, including Midshipman Marmaduke. Despite the obvious damage to this gun, they continued to use it but it kept setting fire to the two feet of wood on the inboard side of the iron shield. One other gun was also damaged during this engagement. 1.

After the war, this gun was displayed by the Washington Navy Yard. From 1960, it was exhibited at NSF Dahlgren as a reminder of its namesake until loaned to the Fredericksburg Museum in 2003. It will eventually be loaned to the Mariner’s Museum at Hampton Roads, Va., where it will join its USS Monitor opponent.

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