"U.S. sailors weapons?" Topic

When sailors doubled as infantry on ground, during the Fort Fisher battle for instance, did they only use pistols and sabers or were they issued rifles at any point?

You'd have thought that they would have issued the swabbies rifles like the Brits did when Her Majesty's Navy decided to inflict Royal writ on unhappy natives, but apparently not – according to this link, the Marines had rifles but the sailors only had pistols and cutlasses

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I believe they were issued rifles. I seem to recall seeing pictures of ones which had been nickel plated to resist the corrosive effects of sea water.

Thanks Frederick, pistols and sabres against rifled artillery and muskets, the life of a sailor was hard..

For sure! A sailor's life is not one for me!

Scott – I am sure some sailors were issued rifles (for example, for boarding parties) but at Fort Fisher apparently they were not

At Fort Fisher they were specifically instructed to have "well sharpened" cutlasses, and pistols. The marines were supposed to provide cover for the sailors. Apparently Admiral Porter viewed storming a fort and boarding a ship as similar operations.

Sharps and Hankins breech loading carbine. US navy version had leather over barrel because they thought it would retard metal corrosion.Oops! Don't know how many crews or what crew ratings got to handle them but they were naval. H

The Marines at Fort Fisher were armed with a variety of long arms depending on what was in the ships' magazines. These included breechloaders and repeaters.

The sailors were formed as a boarding party with instructions t board and capture the fort. They were armed with cutlasses, (not sabers), and pistols. On other landing operations they were armed with long arms and artillery.