On 20 June 1900, 56 U.S. Sailors and Marines were
besieged in Beijing by thousands of imperial soldiers and countless Boxers, members of a violent secret society that resented foreign influence. The small contingent of Americans was guarding the Legation Quarter, an area that spanned about three-quarters of a square mile and was home to diplomats from 11 foreign nations, including the United States. Seven of the other nations present also had a small guard, which brought the total force defending the Legation Quarter to 407 Sailors and Marines.
As the siege dragged on, the international guard’s artillery dwindled. The Italians had a 1-pounder that had run out of shells, and the Americans had a Colt gun, but it required too much of the limited ammunition supply. A gun was needed to reply to the shells fired by the Chinese army.
U.S. Navy Gunner’s Mate First Class Joseph Mitchell and the U.S. legation’s secretary Herbert Squiers had an idea: build a piece of artillery using the cylinder of a pump as the cannon barrel. They began to experiment, but then, on 7 July, a stroke of luck changed their plans. Chinese Christian refugees sheltering in the Legation Quarter discovered a cannon barrel reportedly lying in a junk shop, likely a relic from the Anglo-French expedition during the Second Opium War. Firsthand accounts record that the barrel was rifled and forged from either bronze or steel, but what Mitchell received was a “mass of rust and dirt.” He scraped and cleaned the barrel to give it “a creditable appearance,” one worthy of serving as the centerpiece for his improvised gun.
At first, the barrel was mounted to a heavy pole. When this proved unsatisfactory, the gun carriage was taken from the Italian’s 1-pounder, and the barrel was secured to the carriage with rope. Now, ammunition was needed. The Russian allies had arrived in Beijing with a chest of 3-inch shells but forgotten their gun in the city of Tianjin. When the siege began, they had thrown their shells down a well to prevent them from falling into Chinese hands. The disposed shells were hauled up, but found to be too large for the narrow barrel. Mitchell solved this problem by first removing the shells from their casings, then ramming them into the barrel. Thus, the “International Gun” was born, made of material from Russia and Italy and primarily manned by an American gunner, Joseph Mitchell. Members of the international guard also knew the weapon as “Betsey” or “the Empress Dowager.”
On 8 July, the International Gun fired its first shot at a Chinese battery 240 yards north on the wall of the Chinese Imperial City. The projectile “went screaming over the battery” into the Imperial City, a result that was met by cheering within the Legation Quarter and by “an astonished silence on the part of the enemy.” The second shot “went woefully short,” but the third hit the battery, causing the Chinese to reply with Mauser bullets. In further testing, Secretary Squiers doubted whether the gun would be able to penetrate its target. He was proved wrong when one round blasted through three walls of his house.
Throughout the 55-day siege, Mitchell fired the International Gun from multiple positions in the Legation Quarter to make the Chinese believe the allies possessed ample artillery. “I kept it going night and day, moving it around to different parts of the city for two months and getting little naps every two or three hours,” Mitchell told the
Times (Philadelphia), which hailed him as the “Hero of Pekin [Beijing].” Moving the gun also turned out to be a necessity, as it emitted a dense cloud of smoke disproportionate to its size that quickly drew Chinese fire.
Lacking both a sight and accuracy, the gun could not fire effectively at long range. It did inflict heavy damage on enemy barricades and emplacements about 30 yards away, discharging its Russian shells followed by grapeshot consisting of old nails and bits of scrap iron. U.S. Marine Captain John T. Myers, commander of the American guard, wrote, “This gun was a striking example of the Chinese proverb, ‘Any man can fire a gun, but who can tell where the shot will strike.’”
On the night of 13 August, as an estimated 20,000 foreign troops converged on Beijing to relieve their besieged compatriots, the Chinese mounted their strongest attack on the Legation Quarter. Mitchell fired the International Gun at point-blank range to hold the Chinese at bay until a bullet shattered his right arm. The next day, allied troops stormed the walls of Beijing to relieve the Legation Quarter.
Though the fighting in that section of the city ceased, the International Gun remained loaded with a charge Mitchell had not gotten the chance to fire. The commander in chief of the Legation Quarter, British minister Sir Claude MacDonald, reported, “As it was impossible to draw the charge, the muzzle was elevated, and the last shot fired from this unique gun descended among the yellow-tiled pavilions of the Pink or Forbidden City [ a walled palace complex within the Imperial City ].”
After the relief of the Legation Quarter, the American guard of Sailors and Marines hoped to take the International Gun home. Ultimately, they agreed to leave it behind in Beijing on the condition that it was placed at the base of the monument to Baron Clemens von Ketteler, a German diplomat killed during the siege. Instead, other allied countries reclaimed their parts of the gun, and only the cannon barrel remained in the Legation Quarter until July 1901, when U.S. Army Captain James H. Reeves asked Secretary Squiers if the Navy had laid claim to it. Squiers answered the Navy had not, and with the secretary’s permission, Reeves personally transported the barrel to Nagasaki. From there, the International Gun barrel was shipped to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Captain Bowman McCalla had commanded Navy Sailors in China during the Seymour Expedition, a failed initial attempt to relieve the Legation Quarter. When he read about the International Gun barrel’s destination in the 7 September 1901 issue of the
Army and Navy Register, he sent an indignant letter to the Secretary of the Navy. “I can hardly believe that this Naval gun, preserved and used by a detachment from the Navy, before the arrival of our Army at Peking [Beijing], is to be added to the museum at West Point, merely because it fell into the temporary possession of a detachment of the Army,” he wrote.
The Navy Department sent McCalla’s letter to the Secretary of War, prompting an investigation by the Adjutant General’s Office. The investigators examined a statement by British minister MacDonald, commander in chief of the besieged legations, and another by Captain Myers, commander of the U.S. legation guard. In his letter, Myers requested that “this interesting historical relic may be restored to the custody of that branch of the service by whom it was operated during the defense of the legations.”
In May 1902, the War Department conceded that the International Gun barrel belonged to the Navy, and on 23 May, the artifact was shipped to the U.S. Naval Academy. Accompanying it were copies of the flurry of correspondence it had prompted between the Navy and the Army, including the letters from McCalla and Myers. Over a century later, the barrel of the International Gun continues to reside among the collections of the
U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Maryland, a storied place the Sailors and Marines of the Boxer Rebellion would agree is its rightful home.
Read NHHC’s recent publication The Boxer Rebellion: Bluejackets and Marines in China, 1900–1901 for the full story of how U.S. Sailors and Marines forged international alliances to prevail against the Chinese empire.