The Whitworths in the Naval Battery

Sailors and soldiers sit among the sandbagged merlons of the Naval Battery with two Whitworth rifles run up to their embrasures, sponges and rammers racked at the right — the first numbered plate of Haas & Peale's siege series, their signature scripted at the corner of the negative.

The Whitworth was an English gun, hexagonally bored, famous for reach and accuracy; a pair of 80-pounders in naval hands was siege artillery of the first class. The battery's commander, Captain Foxhall A. Parker, reported its service in the appendix of Gillmore's published volume — the report this site's Gillmore collection notes as Appendix F.