Note 6 — XXII VERA CRUZ February–March, 1847

Besides fine old Spanish guns, there were new and heavy English pieces (Nacional, July 12, 1846) and twenty recently cast in the United States (Davis, Autobiog., 131). A battery of sixteen bronze long 24-pdrs., made in England in 1840, was pronounced by American artillery officers “far superior” to anything of the sort they had seen elsewhere (213 Hatch to father, Apr. 2). It was in the city. As to the amount of ordnance in the city and castle accounts differed. Scott made it 400 pieces; Hitchcock, upwards of 350; Balbontín, 113 mounted, 46 unmounted at Ulúa, 83 and 57 respectively at Vera Cruz; G. T. M. Davis, 390 effective pieces. The statement of the Mexican government, December, 1846 (based of course on earlier reports), was as follows: Vera Cruz, mounted, bronze, eleven 24’s, twenty 16’s, six 12’s, four 8’s, four 4’s, four mountain 4’s, five 12-inch mortars, seven 8-inch howitzers, and of iron, mounted, three 42-lb. mortars, three 24-lb. cannon, five 12’s, nine 8’s, six 13-inch mortars, two 9-inch mortars; Ulúa, bronze, mounted, thirty-six 24’s, four 16’s, four 8’s, two 14-inch mortars, and of iron, mounted, ten 84-lb. mortars, ten 68-lb. mortars, sixteen 42-lb. mortars, fifty-one 24-lb. cannon, two 16’s,—a total of 224 besides a considerable number of unmounted pieces in both places, some of which were doubtless mounted later (Memoria de ... Guerra). Still other guns were sent from the interior. Possibly some unserviceable ordnance may have been included in the highest American figures. Balbontín gives the number of firearms as 7369—half of the total number belonging to the government. Ripley (War with Mex., ii, 19) and Wilcox (Mex. War, 251) state that there was no ditch, but the weight of evidence seems to be against them. Perhaps the drifting sand filled the ditch before the Americans took the city.