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Camp's Loose Cannon
by Phillip Obermiller
A small triangular park near mile marker 49 on the trail hosts a Civil War memorial known as the Secrest Monument. According to the Cincinnati Times Star “more than 1,000 persons” gathered there for the October, 1932, dedication of a bronze plaque honoring the Union army units that trained at Camp Dennison. The following year a flagpole was dedicated there to honor Dr. Alfred Buckingham, a Civil War surgeon.
Located a few yards from the plaque and pole is a large artillery piece with no signage. Cannons have long been part of the design vernacular of war memorials, but an anonymous gun mounted alongside the trail is catnip for a curious Trail Mail reporter.
A search of area newspapers published between 1920 and 1960 found no mention of an artillery piece being placed at the monument. Staff at the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library, in the Symmes Township administration, volunteers at the Camp Dennison Civil War Museum and at the Indian Hill Historical Society all drew a blank as well.
It is possible the gun was acquired and donated by a Civil War remembrance association such as the Grand Army of the Republic or the Allied Patriotic Organizations of Hamilton County, groups that were instrumental in establishing the Secrest Monument. A review of minutes in the Library of Congress from these and similar groups also failed to produce the proverbial “smoking gun.”
In any event, Congress must authorize the donation of military ordinance to local law enforcement agencies or civic organizations. An examination of the Hein Online Congressional Documents Library from 1932 to 1940 failed to show any cannons or artillery pieces authorized for donation in Ohio.
Casting the net a little wider, I sent a query to the U.S. Civil War Monuments Project at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. No luck there, but I received a nice offer to include the Secrest Monument in their database if I would write something about it for them.
Time to get out my magnifying glass and do some sleuthing. Under the paint on the gun’s barrel is an engraving: “U.S.N. 4.7” Maxim 45QF No.2, W.S., Wt 1374 lbs, 1898.” This Maxim quick-fire gun was capable of firing a 45-pound round at targets over six miles away. Produced in England by the Maxim Nordenfeldt Guns and Ammunition Company (it became Vickers, Sons and Maxim after 1897), the gun was apparently acquired by the Navy and test fired by “W.S.” The weight shown does not include a gun carriage, recoil tube, or aiming mechanism.
There’s a different etching under the paint on the breech: an anchor symbol and “Vicker’s Sons & Maxim 4.7” R.F. Gun Mark I 1901 EHCL – L.M.G. No.2 Wt 5721 lbs.” This means that at one point the Secrest gun was located at the Washington Navy Yard under the command of Rear Admiral Eugene Henry Cozzens Leutz (EHCL). L.M.G. were likely the initials of the person responsible for test-firing the gun. It’s possible the Navy mated a 1901 breech to the 1898 barrel for test purposes.The dates etched on the gun indicate that the Secrest gun somehow survived WW I and WW II scrap drives when metal, rubber, and paper were salvaged and repurposed for war use.
But the question remains - how did a nearly 3-ton, 17-foot-long naval artillery piece manufactured in England around the turn of the twentieth century make its way to a Civil War monument in Camp Dennison?
According to the NavWeaps.com website, “The Navy acquired two 4.7” Mark I guns from Vickers & Sons in the 1890s apparently for evaluation purposes…these guns were ‘surveyed and condemned’ sometime prior to 1924.” (Surveyed and condemned often meant tested and put into storage.) A query sent to the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington provided another lead: an answer might be found in the Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance records in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
The archives’ Register of Naval Guns and Ordnance does in fact list two English-made Mark I Maxim rapid-fire guns. One was sent to the Naval Proving Ground at Indian Head, Maryland, for testing in October of 1898, while no further information is provided for the other. It seems likely that one of these two guns is now located at the Secrest Memorial, but there the search ends; no entry was made in the NARA files about the disposition of either gun. The military bureaucracy had somehow lost track of a piece of heavy artillery, essentially making the Secrest gun a loose cannon.
In July of 1883, fearing a Confederate attack from across the Ohio River, the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce requested permission from the Ohio Adjutant General to form an artillery battery with its own cannon. The request was denied, but the basic idea seems to have prevailed. Although Camp’s loose cannon showed up decades later, it remains steadfastly on guard pointed symbolically, some might even say defiantly, south.
Phil Obermiller is a FLMSP Sentinel who rides the well-guarded far south end of the trail. He appreciates the assistance of Will Elsbury, a military history specialist at the Library of Congress; David A. Manning, a curator at the Naval History and Heritage Command; Bill Pitman, Symmes Township Director of Public Works; Carol Sims, member of the Symmes Historical Society; Craig Swaim, contributing editor (Civil War category) at the online Historical Marker Database; Keiko Winsch, registered researcher at the National Archives and Records Administration; and Elizabeth Woods, Director of Archives and Libraries at the Ohio History Connection.
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