Confederate Artillery.
The French 12-pounder bronze field-guns in the top photograph were made by Le Place Freres in
Paris.
They weighed 1,200 pounds and fired a projectile weighing 25 1/4 pounds with a charge of 2 1/2 pounds of powder.
The Southern output was large, of the bronze 12-pounders known as Napoleons.
During 1863 and 1864, no less than 110 of these were manufactured at the
Augusta arsenal under the direction of
General George W. Rains of the
Confederate ordnance service.
In the lower photograph is an old cast-iron Columbiad, strengthened at the Tredegar Iron Works at
Richmond, by the addition of iron bands, after the manner of the
Brooke heavy artillery invented by
John M. Brooke, formerly of the United States navy, the designer of the ironclad
Virginia--better known as the
Merrimac. The gun in the middle of the second photograph is a light Brooke rifle — a 3-inch gun. Its length was about seventy inches, the diameter of the barrel at the muzzle was eleven inches, and the piece weighed nearly 900 pounds. The weight of the projectile was ten pounds with a powder charge of one pound. The maximum effective range of these guns was 3,500 yards, and the time of flight fifteen seconds, with an elevation of fifteen degrees.
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An old Columbiad iron bands added: Confederate cannon — imported, manufactured, adopted and invented |
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