The six inch seacoast defense gun consists of two major elements: the gun tube and the disappearing carriage on which the tube is mounted.

The gun tube is a long steel tube with a rifled bore six inches in diameter. The gun is painted a dark olive green. It weighs 20,845 pounds. Because the breechblock for the gun is missing, the gun cannot be fired.

The gun tube is mounted on a carriage of the disappearing type that was designed to hoist the gun tube over a concrete battery parapet for firing, and using the energy of the recoil from firing, to lower it or cause it to disappear backwards and downwards behind the rampart, ending up in the lowered loading position, protected behind concrete from direct enemy fire.

This six inch breechloading rifle on disappearing carriage is one of only two such guns which survived the scrapping of such coastal defense ordnance following World War II, and of the two, is the only one whose recoiling mechanism is in operable condition so that it can be moved between the firing and loading positions.

This weapon embodies the distinctive characteristics of Endicott period seacoast defense ordnance, representative of the golden age of coast artillery dating from the last decade of the 19th Century and the early decades of the 20th Century.

It is a rare, surviving example of once-common weaponry.