Civil War Shells

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historical question--did the Civil War gunners have explosive shells--often shown in movies--and if so--How didcthey work?

Thanks for any kind input

rusty
 
Some guy blew himself up cleaning an old Civil War cannon ball a while back. Most of the smaller ones were solid (I have one) but some were hollowed out and filled with black powder.
 
I have one, back from when we lived in Richmond, VA and we found it in our yard. Ill post pics of it later, unfortunately my mom didn't want it in the house so it has been outside but ill just bring it in and put it into my closet.... hopefully it wont blow up! :p
 
For smoothbore guns (the 12 pounder bronze field gun/howitzer was the most common), there were four kinds of projectile, the solid shot, the shell, spherical case, and canister. The first three are round balls, the first is simply a solid iron ball. The shell and spherical case contain powder charges touched off by a fuse inserted in the projectile. The shell is a hollow ball filled with powder; damage is done mainly by the explosion. Spherical case, also known as Shrapnel*, after its British inventor, has small iron balls inside it along with a powder charge; on exploding, the balls are blown out and kill or injure personnel. Canister is what it sounds like, a can full of iron balls used to convert the gun into a large shotgun; it was mainly a short range anti-personnel weapon used against attacking infantry or cavalry.

Shell and spherical case were issued attached to a sabot with the fuse pointing forward. It was cut to the appropriate time before loading and ignited by the flame from the gun's charge washing around the projectile. (No, the fuse didn't point backward, as some folks think; the gun's charge would have blown it into the shell and exploded the shell in the bore, a very undesirable situation.)

Explosive projectiles from rifled guns usually had impact fuses, meaning that the charge in the shell or case shot was ignited by a percussion cap when the projectile struck something, though time fuses were also available for some projectiles.

From the safety viewpoint today, solid shot is no danger; it is simply an iron ball. But if a ball has a fuse in it, it is a shell or spherical case and is highly dangerous to mess with. Sometimes heavy rust, dirt or some kind of accretion may cover up the fuse and give the appearance of a solid ball. If in doubt, call in the experts as mentioned in the earlier link. All elongated projectiles should be treated as explosive unless one has expert knowledge of the types of projectiles used in the Civil War era.

*The term later came to mean shell fragments, but that was not the original meaning nor was it Shrapnel's invention, which was for balls within a shell.

Jim
 
Thank you guys, for your comments and Thanks Jim K for your detailed info

on that "ancient ordinance"


Rusty out
 
Rusty, if you ever get a chance to visit the US Army Ordnance museum in Aberdeen, MD, at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds I HIGHLY recommend it! They have examples there of nearly everything that's ever fired a projectile and nearly every type projectile that's ever been fired. It's absolutely amazing how some of those ancient explosive shells were built and operated. Cannonballs weren't necessarily just "cannonballs". Fascinating place. They have things you'll never see anywhere else.
 
Wow! you guys! did I mention Shells??? First from Drew- A movie about what looks like "The Merrimac "--IN THE DESERT(Near sighted Jones at the wheel?)The fused cannon ball in the copter was fun-but would have been fired from a mortar-SO WHAT

What about those shells that Lee posted They weremaking huge improvements in artillery rounds-I wasn't even aware that rifled cannon existed back then!

Talking about the Merrimac -I wonder if she would have sunk the Monitor-had she had those exploding shells (and vice versa)

I sure would like to spend time browsing in a museum devoted to these projectiles etc

many thanksfor all your kind help

rusty
 
I grew up in Hanover County, Virginia. Unexploded ordinance was far from rare. Probably still isn't. My grandfather who did a LOT of relic hunting had a dozen or so "cannonballs" under his house.

One of my neighbors, a teacher at my high school, had blown the fingers off one of his hands when a shell he had dug up, went off in his hand. Fortunatly it was a partial dud and all he lost was a couple of fingers. He used to laugh and say he was the last casulty of the Civil War. He was wrong. There have been others. A couple of years ago, a man in the Chester, Virginia area was killed when one went off while he was working on it.

A friend of my ex-mother in law was working around her yard when she found what she at first thought was a large rock. A little digging revealed it to be metal. She called the police. The police called the bomb squad. The bomb squad responded and found a shell from a 10" gun, probably from Fort Darling at Drewerys Bluff. They transported it to nearby Ft. Lee and detonated it where it left a hole I heard described as "big enough to bury a Volkswagen."

Talking about the Merrimac -I wonder if she would have sunk the Monitor-had she had those exploding shells (and vice versa)
Click to expand...

Probably not. Exploding shells wouldn't have penetrated the armor. Their real intention would be to batter a hole in the armor plating of the opposing vessel, or to hit a gun port with a lucky shot. Even the sledgehammer blows of the solid shot on the armor plate would fill the interior of the ship with steel and wooden splinter that could/would rip a man to shreds.

Later developments in naval artillery would develop shells that could penetrate armor and THEN explode, but the idea of ironclad ship against ironclad ship was brand new at the time of the Virginia (AKA Merrimac)/Monitor.
 
During the battle at Hampton Roads the CSS Virginia (a.k.a. USS Merrimack) was firing full powder charge solid shot at the USS Monitor and the only damage to the Monitor was dents in it's turret and concrete dust in the eyes of the steersman when the pilothouse got hit once.
The Monitor however was using half charges of powder in it's guns (due to the navy brass being worried what the concussion of full charges would do to the gun crew in the turret.) And those half charges were making the iron plates of the Virginia come loose.
 
The explosive shells were more like grenades. Somebody lit a fuse, they were fired, and they exploded when their fuses burned out.
 
No they didn't.

By the time of the Civil war, any number of time delay and percussion impact fuses had been perfected and were in widespread use.

See the link Lee Lapin posted in #10 for many examples of different fuses in use at the time.

rc
 
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