From ’63 to ’66: The later batches of 3-inch Ordnance Rifles

In earlier posts I’ve discussed the 3-inch Ordnance Rifles produced by Phoenix Iron Company through 1862.  Early guns had “side sights” and lacked a stamp for Samuel Reeves’ patent.  Although some sources indicate the patent stamp appeared with registry number 236 in the series, I have offered a rebuttal on that point.  Regardless of the stamps, around registry number 284 the guns received an auxiliary sight between the trunnions.  Now let me turn to guns produced after March 1863.

…. Oh, and before going too far, conceded a point to a reader who wishes to remain anonymous – the Phoenix guns are properly identified as “wrought iron ordnance rifles” to set them apart from other weapons made to the ordnance pattern.  But I hope you will allow me to use the short name to reduce the word count!

As alluded to in the earlier post, the later batches of guns from Phoenix simplified the sights to a single set – pendulum hausse and muzzle blade sights.  Among the first guns to conform to that new standard is registry number 597, credited in the last week of March 1863.

3-inch Ordnance Rifle #597 at Fort Monroe

The gun is a bit pitted, and … well… the better collection of ordnance rifles is up at Gettysburg.   So let me introduce you to registry number 616 over near the Gettysburg maintenance facility.

Muzzle of #616

Fairly typical muzzle markings indicate Theodore Thadeus Sobieski Laidley (a name like that inspires a post!) inspected this gun in 1863. He called the weight at 816 pounds – like so many ordnance rifles.  The right trunnion stamp reiterates the vendor’s name.

Right Trunnion of 3-inch #616

The left trunnion displays the patent date for the manufacturing process.

Left Trunnion of 3-inch #616

But between the trunnions, only the “U.S.” acceptance mark.  No hole for the auxiliary sight.

Trunnions of 3-inch rifle #616

This gun only retains the pendulum hausse seat and muzzle sight.

3-inch Ordnance Rifle #616

The front sight originally stood taller than what we see today.  Handling has left them just a stub. Number 616 actually has a substantial base to the sight.  Most survivors simply have the remainder or “nubbin.” Some surviving 3-inch rifles have more substantial muzzle sights, such as the base left on 616.  Others have only the threaded hole for the sight.

Hole for muzzle sight on #674

Again, the variations seen here (markings and sights) had no substantial effect on the use of the guns.  Or at least not that I’ve found in the veteran’s accounts.  So something must have worked!   With a few possible and minor exceptions, all remaining 3-inch Ordnance Rifles confirmed to those particulars.

3-inch Ordnance Rifle #931

That includes registry number 931 delivered in 1866, more than a year after the last Confederate surrender.

So in conclusion, the long line of 3-inch Ordnance Rifles – over 950 of them – conformed in all practical details to the pattern set by the Ordnance Board in 1861.  There are no major variations that would affect performance of the weapon.  However for modern-day visitors, there are some subtle differences with the markings and sight arrangements.  These are in some cases clues to the story of the otherwise silent guns.

Oh, and don’t think I’m done with the Ordnance Rifles.  I fully intend to bore you readers with more minutia about these guns!

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Patent Stamps and Extra Sights: Middle Batches of 3-inch Ordnance Rifles

In earlier posts I referenced a middle “batch” of 3-inch Ordnance Rifles from Phoenix Iron Company.  The writers of Field Artillery Weapons of the Civil War, while not neatly describing this as a set, referenced markings on Phoenix guns with a sequence of guns delivered in 1862:

A problem arises from the trunnion stampings found on many of the Ordnance rifles, beginning with Registry number 236:

Left trunnion face: PATENTED DEC. 9, 1862

Right trunnion face: PHOENIX IRON CO.

Contract tallies reveal that Registry numbers 236 through 543 were inspected from 20 February through 25 November 1862, before the patent was granted on 9 December 1862.¹

The writers continued from there offering the logical conclusion that Federal authorities held some of these guns, after their acceptance, in some facility instead of rushing them to the front line units.  While being held, sometime after December someone went through and stamped the patent information on the left trunnion.  Only then did these guns get rushed to batteries for use.  So at the height of the war, the Union army let some 300 perfectly good rifles sit by unused.

Wonderful story.  For years, I’ve accepted this as a great example of how the gun markings can tell us more than just bland administrative data.  But as I look back over field notes and photos, my sense is this story is just not supported by field evidence.

For example, let me reference some guns representing the 13th New York Independent Light Battery (Wheeler’s), along Howard Avenue at Gettysburg.

Four Ordnance Rifles at the 13th New York's first day position

At the battery location are registry numbers 217, 252, 284, and 575.  All but the last mentioned were produced in 1862.  Two of the four should fall within the range mentioned above.  But neither of those guns have the patent stamp.

Blank left trunnion of #284

Only the last produced, number 575, displays the patent stamp.

Patent stamp on #575

Since records give that gun an inspection date in March 1863, one expects to see the stamp.

Registry number 236 is currently in the Gettysburg maintenance facility waiting its turn in the cannon shop.  When I last viewed it, no patent stamp was present.  Registry number 240, also at Gettysburg representing Lewis’ Battery on Confederate Avenue, does not have a patent stamp.  The next number up, registry 241, represents Battery A, 2nd US Artillery on the first day battlefield, and it also has no patent stamp.

Of the guns within the registry range cited above, the only ones in my notes which may have the patent stamp are numbers 339 at Shiloh and  404 at Chickamauga.  And let me stress may, as I am unable to locate photos to verify.

In short, I’d say the premise about those 300 guns does not have strong evidence.  There may be a handful of guns in that registry number range with the stamp.  Clearly a substantial number do not.  That may be due to heavy layers of paint, corrosion, or – as I think most likely – no stamp ever being present.  If some guns were held after manufacture, and received the stamp after acceptance, their numbers are small.

But before we dismiss the separation of the “middle” batches from Phoenix, there is one feature that appeared on the guns starting during the spring of 1862.

Hole for auxiliary sight between trunnions on #284

The hole just below the “U.S.” acceptance stamp is tapped for mounting an auxiliary sight.  Number 252 nearby which does not have the hole or any middle sight.  But as seen above, number 284 does have provision for the sight.  Many guns at Gettysburg have a small blade mounted there, as seen below in registry number 510 on Confederate Avenue (Jordon’s Battery, near the Longstreet Tower).

Auxiliary sight on #510

Guns produced in early 1863 continued the auxiliary sight.  But at some point that year, the Ordnance Rifle sights simplified to just a pendulum hausse and a front sight blade.

There’s one other interesting mark from a gun in the middle batches of ordnance rifles:

Muzzle of #533

There’s a noticeable ring around the muzzle of number 533.  A few other guns exhibit this ring.  Is this the vestige of the mandrel used in Reeve’s process,  or is it just a machining mark?  Oh, and for the record, 533 has no patent stamp and does have the auxiliary sight.

Of course nothing mentioned here had any substantial impact on the tactical employment of the gun.  Certainly not the patent stamp.  Perhaps the sights were an improvement to help the gunner.  However any advantage gained was minimal as the later production lots from Phoenix adopted a simplified sight system.  I’ll turn to that long production run next.

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1. Hazlett, James C., Edwin Olmstead, and M. Hume Parks. Field Artillery Weapons of the Civil War Revised Edition (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004), page 124.

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An Oddity for Leesburg: Tredegar Rifle Siege Howitzer

When the Civil War broke out, rifled artillery was all the rage.  Officials took old guns in hand for conversion, usually amounting to cutting rifling grooves and adding a reinforce band.  At the same time the foundries took existing patterns and bored new guns out as rifles.  Some of these turned out well.  Others not so.  The better of these conversions were James or early Brooke rifles.  The worst of these conversions are best described as “oddities.”  In February 1862, one of those oddities arrived in Leesburg, Virginia.

To start out, in the summer of 1861, the Confederate Army ordered fifty 8-inch siege howitzers from Tredegar Iron Works.  Before the war Tredegar cast seven 8-inch Siege Howitzers Model 1841 for the US Government.  Those weapons weighed around 2,630 pounds.   The howitzers Tredegar sold to the Confederate government weighed about fifty pounds more, but are within the range for the 8-inch 1841 pattern.  Invoices show that Tredegar delivered only twenty-four of these smoothbore howitzers.  Two trophy howitzers captured outside Charleston, South Carolina, which have no foundry marks, may be the only survivors of Tredegar’s Confederate production (but such identification is based only on circumstantial evidence).

8-inch Siege Howitzer at Washington Navy Yard

Included in the tally of twenty-four, Tredegar bored out four of these 8-inch howitzers as 4.62-inch rifles.  No documentation supports such design change.  Perhaps someone in the new Confederate ordnance department asked for rifled howitzers.  Perhaps Tredegar just rode the fad, trying to rifle everything.  Perhaps some state (Virginia) authority called for the rifles.  Or perhaps someone in the field had a specific tactical role for these weapons.

Regardless of the origin of the idea, all four examples saw at least brief service in Confederate defenses.  Tredegar sent the first two, foundry numbers 1279 and 1280, to Essex County, Virginia in December 1861, presumably for Rappahannock River defenses.  Invoices link that shipment to Robert M.T. Hunter, the Confederate Secretary of War, who hailed from that county.   The third howitzer, foundry number 1342, went to the Richmond defenses at Meadow Bridges Road.  All three of these pieces returned to Tredegar within months and were rebored as 8-inch smoothbores.  Given the time frame, likely these weapons recycled out to the Richmond defenses in the summer of 1862.

That leaves the fourth rifle howitzer.  An invoice from Tredegar, dated February 11, 1862, indicates that howitzer and a rifle siege gun also of 4.62-inch caliber went to General Daniel Harvey Hill in Leesburg.

According to the invoice, the 4.62-inch rifle howitzer weighed 3,390 pounds.  The weight increase is within the range expected given the increased metal used by reducing the bore by about a third.  Other lines in the invoice include Tredegar’s fee for handling the gun for shipping, and even the cost of proofing the gun.  (I wonder if Tredegar worked in a charge for the paper the invoice was written upon!)

On the right margin is a note, “Sent to Genl. D.H. Hill as per R.R. Receipt.”  That receipt was attached to the invoice.

The invoice and receipt leave not doubt this weapon was a rifle siege howitzer.  Using the receipt as the lead, this howitzer took the round about route from Richmond to Gordonsville on the Virginia Central Railroad.  From there it must have taken the Orange & Alexandria Railroad to the north.  Perhaps unloaded at Manassas, the howitzer moved overland to Leesburg for delivery.  With little doubt, the rifle howitzer went into one of the forts, possible Fort Evans, then around Leesburg.

So was this rifle howitzer any good?  Well consider the projectile weight, likely powder charge, and the piece itself.  The 4.62 bore matches the smoothbore 12-pdr size.  As such the elongated rifled projectile would weigh between 20 and 30 pounds.  Recall that a smoothbore 8-inch shell weighed around 42 pounds.  The bore size matched the 8-inch howitzer’s chamber size.  That places the powder charge around four pounds.  As noted above the howitzer itself weighed just over a ton-and-a-half.  The reduced windage and increased resistance with rifling probably presented some recoil issues when firing this piece.  But the nothing that could not be allowed for.

The real problems would be range and accuracy, given the weapon’s howitzer form.  The 4.62-inch rifle siege gun shipped to Leesburg on the same invoice was a modified 24-pdr siege gun.  The gun, with an indicated weight of 5,150 pounds, likely possessed performance figures similar to Federal 24-pdr guns altered to the James system.  So assuming all things equal, the Tredegar siege rifles might boast 1900 yard ranges on typical siege carriages.  At the same elevation, I would expect the rifled howitzer to only reach 1200 yards.

The howitzer’s small size would allow higher elevations, perhaps extending range out to 2000 yards.  There the question becomes one of accuracy.  With a shorter bore than the rifle gun, the howitzer’s velocity would be lower.  Accuracy then would suffer.  Perhaps after a few test fires, the gunners figured out the 3,390 pound howitzer was more an albatross to be handled about than a functional weapon.

As indicated above, the other three rifle howitzers went back to the foundry and were remade as smoothbores.  There is no record of the Leesburg howitzer undergoing such modification.  While the odds are that fourth howitzer underwent a similar transformation, with no paper record there is another possibility.  With the withdrawal from Leesburg in March, just weeks after the howitzer and gun were received, General Hill marched his men and equipment south.  The Confederates destroyed most of what they left behind. What if the Confederates likewise discarded the “junk” howitzer instead of hauling it south?  Perhaps that rifle howitzer remains here in Loudoun, waiting to be unearthed.  Stranger “oddities” have occurred.

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