disappearinggun

Wow

It appears to be a 10" coastal defense gun on a "disappearing" mounting, where the gun would fire from the raised (above a parapet) position, then the recoil would swing the gun back and down, where it would be invisible to the enemy.

Thanks! We'll change the information in the source data and reload the description.

I'm not so sure it's a 10-inch gun now that I've seen this photograph: www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2496403839 which has as the caption, "Aiming 14" gun -- Sandy Hook" Looks like a very similar gun to the one pictured here - and I think that the Sandy Hook emplacement would have been the closest to New York, and hence most newsworthy to the Bain service. However I'm not sure that Sandy Hook had a gun as big as a 14-incher. We'll have to do some more research.

Aha, you could be right. Also, 12' was a common size of gun on the disappearing mounts. In my print coastal defense references, there are many similar pics of 12" disappearing guns from the Endicott period. We need a real artillery geek to weigh in!

On Staten Island. See

Dictionary.com and my Webster's both list "defence" as "chiefly British" usage. I wonder where in the last century that changed, and why? Or was the Tribune putting on airs?