TREDEGAR IRON WORKS “DOUBLE SHOT” OR “PROVING BOLT” FOR 32-POUNDER SMOOTH BORE CANNON

$5,500.00

Quantity Available: 1

Item Code: 30-2269

Shipping: Determined by Method & Location of buyer

To Order:
Call 717-334-0347,
Fax 717-334-5016, or E-mail

This is scarce piece for collectors of Confederate ordnance and projectiles, being just one of two excavated years ago by relic hunter Paul Chandler at the Tredegar Iron Works site in Richmond. These barbell-shaped rounds were used to proof-test cannon barrels by increasing the pressure significantly over what they would be subjected to in normal use as part of the inspection procedures before accepting them for service in the field. The bolt is nearly identical to two examples from the West Point test range pictured in Harry Ridgeway’s very useful Civil War Research Center section on Civil War artillery as “artillery 1551-Ball32pdr” and “A0853,” also pictured in Bell, Heavy Ordnance, p.47. Ridgeway lists the West Point example as 64 pounds and 6.36 inches in diameter. We measure this Tredegar example as 62 pounds and 6.2 inches in diameter. Both would be the equivalent of double loading a 32-pounder gun, which has a nominal bore size of 6.4 inches, for testing.

The 32-pounder was a common, though comparatively small naval and sea-coast cannon that tended to be replaced by heavier and more modern guns on Federal ships and fortifications during the Civil War, but remained in the Confederate service by necessity throughout the conflict, sometimes altered by rifling or shifted to land use after being captured from Federal shipping.

Tredegar opened in 1837 and prospered beginning in 1841 under the management of J.R. Anderson, who took it over in 1848. The company took advantage of the railroad boom to produce rails, spikes, and other hardware, moving into locomotive manufacture as well in 1850, and other steam machinery. They are best known among Civil War collectors for their ordnance production, supplying some 881 cannon to the U.S. government from 1844 to 1860, and in 1861 were the only southern facility that could turn out heavy ordnance and munitions, which included armor plate. By war’s end they had furnished more than half of the Confederacy’s domestically produced artillery.

Although suffering some damage in the fall of Richmond, the company was back in business shortly after the war’s end, lasting until 1957. A small museum was opened at the site in the 1990s and it became the visitor center from the Richmond National Battlefield Park in 2000, the American Civil War Center at Historical Tredegar in 2006, and merged with the Museum of the Confederacy 2014 to become the American Civil War Museum.

This is a scarce piece for the artillery collector and has a great southern provenance. [sr] [ph:jet]

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