Pluckemin Cantonment Project – Reconstructing History
By Daniel Ortiz
I am currently working on the Pluckemin Project for the
Washington College GIS Lab. The goal of
the Pluckemin Project is to recreate the Pluckemin Cantonment of 1778-1779 into
the 3D world since it no longer stands.
The Pluckemin Cantonment was the first American military academy to be
constructed and was specifically built for the purpose of training artillery
crews.
My objective for the Pluckemin project is to recreate the
cannons of the Pluckemin Cantonment as they looked back then. Since these cannons do not exist today and
there is virtually no record of what these cannons looked like in great detail,
I have tried to look for cannons that were in America during the time of the
Revolution. And since the only other
country at the time in the 13 colonies were the British, I learned that they
had a high influence on the construction of American cannons. Henceforth, I drew my attention to any
detailed websites and books that dealt with English cannons and possibly
American cannons. Many websites and
books began to appear, but a primary resource that I now use to construct
cannons is “A Course of Artillery” of the Royal Military Academy.
This book contains a whole variety of cannons, howitzers,
and mortars. These include the 6 and 24
pounder cannons, 5in and 8in howitzers, and multiple types of sea mortars.
Above is a picture of one of the three light 6 pounder
cannons that were used at Pluckemin. The
original English cannon that was used for the base of this design had wheels
with a circumference that was 4 – 6 inches smaller than these wheels. This model is made this way for 2
reasons. The first is because there were
no exact measurements for cannons made during the 1700’s in the 13
colonies. So 2 cannons of the same
caliber could be made in the same factory yet with different dimensions. The second reason for the enlargement of
these wheels was that when British cannons were captured, the wheels here
replaced with larger ones so that they could be better fitted for the rugged
terrain of the Americas.
This second image is a picture of the different types of
projectiles that were used by 6 pounder cannons and the exact distribution of
the projectile. The large brass cylinders
in the back of the image are the 8 canister shells the gun crew had at their
disposal. The cannon balls are next to
the canister shells, of which there are also 8, and the final projectile type
is grapeshot. There are 2 groups of
these; there are the 3oz projectiles and the 6oz projectiles. The 11 lighter colored ones are the 6oz shot
and the 14 darker ones are the 3oz shot.
You can find my work on the Google Warehouse, and there will
hopefully be more to come in the near future.
Daniel is currently a student at St. Mary's
School in Annapolis. He was born and raised in Chestertown, MD and is a Junior
Research Associate of the GIS lab.