Artillery shells.
The guns of the parapet of
Fort Putnam were siege guns of heavy caliber.
Shells with metal rims made soft to take the grooves of the rifling are stacked up in the foreground.
The projectiles by the chassis in Battery Magruder were 8.5-inch
Armstrong rifle-shot, which could be used as shell or solid shot at pleasure.
They had a cavity for the insertion of a bursting charge, which, with its percussion-fuse, was not inserted unless it was desired to fire the projectile against advancing troops as shell.
These had a terrific effect, bursting at times into more than 200 pieces.
The view of
Fort Johnson reveals both spherical solid shot and oblong shell.
The latter are slightly hollowed out at the base, in order to secure a better distribution of the gases generated when the pieces were discharged.
The stack of projectiles around the two 100-pounder Parrott guns in the lower view of
Fort Putnam are for these rifles.
Their weight was eighty-six pounds-although the guns were known as 100-pounders-and the powder charge was ten pounds. The projectile for the 3-inch field-gun on the top of the parapet weighed ten pounds, and the powder charge was one pound.
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Projectiles in Magruder battery, Yorktown |
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