Brooke rifle

The Brooke rifle was a type of rifled, muzzle-loading naval and coast defense gun designed by John Mercer Brooke, an officer in the Confederate States Navy. They were produced by plants in Richmond, Virginia and Selma, Alabama between 1861 and 1865 during the American Civil War. They served afloat on Confederate ships and ashore in coast defense batteries manned by the Confederate States Army.

Brookes can be identified by the presence of at least one band of wrought iron at the breech and a rough-finished, tapering barrel. The barrels were made of cast iron for ease of manufacture, but one or more wrought iron bands was welded around the chamber to reinforce it against the high chamber pressure exerted when the gun fired. Because no southern foundries had the capacity to wrap the rifles in a single band like the Parrott design, a series of smaller bands were used, each usually 2 inches (51 mm) thick and 6 inches (152 mm) wide. All of Brooke's rifles used the same seven-groove rifling with a right-hand twist. Most of Brooke's guns had a Gomer-style powder chamber, shaped like a truncated cone with a hemispherical tip, but the 6.4-inch rifles had a simple hemispherical powder chamber.

These weapons were manufactured at the Tredegar Iron Works (sometimes referred to as J.R. Anderson & Co, after owner Joseph Reid Anderson) in Richmond, Virginia and at Selma Naval Ordnance Works in Selma, Alabama.

Guns manufactured at Selma bear the foundry imprint "S", those from Tredegar "TF". "R.N.O.W" may be found on some guns as they were bored and rifled by the Richmond Naval Ordnance Works in Richmond, Virginia after a fire in May 1863 temporarily crippled Tredegar's boring shop.

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