The International Gun
By John L. Morris Photos by author
The 23 May edition of Tuesday Tidings included: “For this week’s “In Case You Missed It” article we offer a link to a May 11th presentation given by an-up-and-coming naval historian working at the Naval History and Heritage Command, Emily Abdow. Her monograph The Boxer Rebellion: Bluejackets and Marines in China, 1900-1901 (navy.mil) is her first of what we are sure will be many. Congratulations Emily!” My congratulations as well, and the comment that her monograph is fascinating and well-worth your time. I’ve been interested in in the Boxer Rebellion ever since watching the Allied Artists’ film “55 Days at Peking” when released in 1963. The movie was certainly entertaining but was in no way a documentary.
One interesting aspect of the U.S. Navy/Marine Corps role in the defense of the International Legation compound in Peking was construction and employment of “The International Gun.” From Emily Abdow’s book, pp. vii: “On the night of 13 August 1900, Gunner's Mate First Class Joseph Mitchell fired his improvised cannon into Chinese imperial troops mounting their strongest assault on the Legation Quarter in Beijing (then Peking). The Legation Quarter was home to diplomats from 11 foreign powers, including the United States. For 55 days, an ad hoc multinational guard of 407 sailors and marines had protected its shrinking perimeter from attacks by an enemy possessing superior strength and firepower. Mitchell's makeshift cannon, christened the "International Gun,” was an innovation born of desperation. Fashioned from a bronze barrel unearthed in the Legation Quarter, mounted on an Italian gun carriage, and firing Russian shells, the crude but mostly effective invention was symbolic of the collaboration between the besieged nations. It was not a well-oiled machine- in fact, it emitted a cloud of smoke every time it fired- but it got the job done.”
What became of this iconic weapon after its use at Peking? Emily Abdow’s monograph note 145 describes its curious and difficult journey from Peking to USNA: “After the siege, the U.S. legation guard left the International Gun in Beijing on the condition that it would be placed at the base of a monument to Minister von Ketteler. Instead, the other nations claimed their parts and the cannon barrel remained lying in the Legation Quarter until July 1901, when it was shipped to Nagasaki and then on to West Point. When Captain McCalla caught wind of the gun's final destination, he wrote an indignant letter to the Secretary of the Navy. The Navy Department forwarded McCallas letter to the War Department, prompting an investigation that examined statements from Captain Myers and Minister McDonald to establish the gun's Navy connection to Gunner's Mate Mitchell. In May 1902, the War Department ordered the gun be sent to the U.S. Naval Academy, where it remains to this day.
USNAM 1902.001, Accession Records, U.S. Naval Academy Museum, Annapolis, Maryland.”
Presumably after arrival at USNA, it acquired the brass plaque engraved with a few words describing its use at Peking in 1900, as shown in a photo below. It was also painted the same dark green color used on all other assorted iron and steel weapons displayed near it in front of Dahlgren Hall at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD. It rested there outdoors, unsecured until, as nearly as I can guess, the late 1960’s when it simply disappeared, presumably stolen. Sometime, again guessing, in the 1970’s the USNA Museum got a call from a landlady in Annapolis, who stated she’d discovered a cannon in a closet of a room previously occupied by some college students. It was easily identified by the brass plaque and returned to USNA.1 It was then loaned to the small US Marine Corps Museum, then in the Washington Navy Yard, where I photographed it in December 1987 (photos below.)
What did I learn from seeing the cannon up close? It is a typical merchant ships’ “Insurance Gun” used aboard merchantmen to satisfy Lloyd’s’ requirement that any vessel it insured must be armed with an appropriate complement of carriage guns and swivels. The small gun barrel is about four feet long, has about a three-inch bore, and is almost certainly of English manufacture. The “breeching loop,” trunnions, and cascabel had been broken off at some point prior to Gunner’s Mate Mitchell’s use of it at Peking. The fracture surfaces looked to me like those of relatively brittle cast iron, even though all references I’ve seen mention a bronze barrel, but unfortunately at that moment I had no magnet to test for iron. The carriage shown in my 1987 photos is a reproduction.
Mid-1980’s conversation between author and a USNA museum staff member.
