A Crew at Its Stations

A field gun with its crew posed at their stations — rammer, handspikes, lanyard — an officer standing at the right with his sword, and a chevaux-de-frise obstruction at the edge of the frame. An albumen print from the album page of Fort Moultrie views dated April 1865.

The drill is real even if the occasion is a photograph: each man stands where the manual put him. This print's mount carries no legible plate number, and no negative matching it was found in the staged material — it may reproduce one of the negatives of this series that were never staged here, and it is kept as its own record until a number or a negative surfaces.