Iron Guns, and Men of Steel

     In 1974 a board game titled “Wooden Ships and Iron Men” was introduced by Battleline Publications.  The title was an obvious reference to the fact that the men who sailed the 18th and 19th century wooden warships were made of stern stuff.  I whole heartedly agree, but I do take exception to the term “men.”   I am sure it should have read “men, women, children, and maybe even small pets.  During the Middle Ages
most of humanity was content to grovel to and serve the needs of the spoiled aristocracy, and   dictatorial church with little hope of advancement in conditions.  All that changed though with the coming of The Age of Exploration,  No sir-re Billy Bob, these were dyed in the wool independent expansionists intent on conquering anything that came within their site or reach.
     Today if a man has to mow his own lawn, or his wife has to do her own nails they feel as though life is being cruel and unjust to them.  We forget that life following the Middle Ages was a pure and simple matter of survival, you either got tough or died!  Now don’t get me wrong, these people knew that their life was a crap shoot at best but instead of going “ Oh me what will I do” they sought to create empires (granted, usually at the expense of some less developed group that they considered uncivilized) from the untamed wilderness.  They didn’t let little things like hunger, physical anguish, and death keep them from attaining their dreams and goals, they just spit in the Devil’s eye and kept going.
     I think a perfect example of this occurred during the Civil War near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, when following the Battle of Antietam General George McClellan ordered that a 30 pounder Parrott Rifle (30 pounds being the weight of the projectile) to be placed on Maryland Heights to afford protection to the town of Harpers Ferry and area around Loudoun Heights.  Later on Robert E. Lee threatened the area again on his way to Gettysburg in 1863 and another Army Official determined that a the 30 pounder Parrott Rifle should be replaced with a 100 p
ounder Parrott Rifle.
     Now for those of you unfamiliar with Civil War artillery the term 100 pounder Parrott Rifle really doesn’t sound very impressive.  Well maybe this will impress you, a 100 pounder Parrott Rifle barrel weighs almost ten thousand pounds.  Still not impressed?  How about the fact that the trail to the top of Maryland Heights ascends 1200 feet in less than two miles?  Or that the path to the top of the Heights which is made up of solid rock, had to be widened and improved in order to accommodate the guns added size. And lastly the fact that mules were in short supply by this point in the war meant that all the hauling, pulling, and lifting had to be done by soldiers.
     To put it into perspective imagine someone ordering you to haul a full grown elephant sitting on a sled to the top of a mountain over a road way that barely existed using only hand tools and determination.  That is that task that befell the 500 men of the 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery.  If any of you who read this post have ever climbed the trail to the top of Maryland Heights as I have you would say that this can’t be true, but history assures us that it is.  So the next time you hear the term “Wooden Ships and Iron Men” think about the story of the 100 pounder gun and what kind of men it took move that ten-thousand pound gun to the top of a mountain with their bare hands.

P.S.  To add insult to injury at the end of the war the Army ordered the gun to be brought back down!