The Second Blakely, at Fraser's Wharf

When the second Blakely rifle reached Charleston from Wilmington, the Confederates put it more than half a mile northeast of White Point Garden — at the North Central Wharf, at the foot of Cumberland Street on the Cooper River.

The offices of Fraser, Trenholm & Co. stood nearby, which is how the position got the name everyone used for it. Fraser, Trenholm was the most successful blockade-running house in Charleston, with a Liverpool arm that served as the Confederacy's financial agent in Britain; the Gibraltar, which brought both these guns through, was theirs. So the gun was mounted at a wharf belonging to the firm that had imported it.

After the bombardment opened on August 22, 1863, Fraser and Trenholm moved their operations further north, out of range. Confederate engineers built up the dock with fill dirt and raised a large earthen parapet for the second 12.75-inch gun.

This is the carriage after the Confederates blew the gun up on February 17, 1865. The blast knocked down the right skid, which is why the truck wheel axle is lying at a slant in the embrasure.

The plate has a publishing history of its own. It first appeared in Francis Trevelyan Miller's ten-volume Photographic History of the Civil War in 1911, captioned “Wreck of the Giant Blakely Gun at Charleston.”