Guns of the Civil war

[38-55]

Hey Ya'll,
I've worked with one of Dr. R.G. Gatling's revolving battery guns.... The cartridges were load into 'chambers'. An iron cylinder with a musket cap and nipple on one end and open to .58 on the other. The 'chambers' were preloaded with 150 gns ( yup that's right 150 gns ) of musket powder and packed in tins. When the battery gun was in position the chambers were fed into a hopper on top of the receiver. As the handle was cranked the chambers went through the mechanical cycle and were then collected by the crew to be reloaded.. Rates of fire up to 650 rpm have been documented..
TWIMC.. the battery gun I helped with was an original and it was used in the draft riots in new york and by ben ( the beast ) butler at Bermuda's Hundred in Virginia...
Stay safe
Calvin
PS any of you heathens make it to gettysburg look me up and I'll show ya about and buy ya an adult beverage or not, to your choosing.. ( it's just up across the way from me )
PPSS the henry was rim fire in it's original form
PPSS again... buck and ball was one .58 or 69. ball and three .36 balls generally issue.. trooper did field mods as troopers do... there is a monument to the right of pickets charge to a unit that used b&b to great effect that day....

[Gaucho Gringo]

.44 Henry rimfire or 44 Henry flat is in no way related to the 44-40 or 44 WCF cartridge other than the bullet is .44. The 44 Henry rimfire was the cartridge of the the first SUCESSFUL REPEATING RIFLE TO BE MANUFACTURED IN LARGE NUMBERS, THE HENRY REPEATING RIFLE. The 1866 Winchester was also made in .44 Henry rimfire. The 1873 Winchester saw the introduction of the 44-40 centerfire cartridge in the Winchester repeating rifle. Although the rifle was offered in some rimfire cartridges most were centerfire.

[oldfart1956]

How often we forget the devastation of the guns during The War of Northern Aggression. There is a battlefield not far from my home where a lot of good southern boys fell at the rate of one every 30 seconds, dead or mortally wounded. That's 120 men each hour. And the battle lasted for 11 hours. It was in Sept. if I recall correctly..a place called Antietam. Yeah...some Yankes got kilt to. Not nearly enough judging from the mess we're in now. Audie..the Oldfart..

[Wayne Smith]

1) The 44-40 cartridge debuted with the 1873 Winchester. The Henry was a rimfire.

2) Berdan's sharpshooters originally were recruited from target shooters and they initially used their heavy barreled, false muzzle target muzzle loading rifles. They were issued the revolving rifle! (Colt or Remington, I don't remember) and initially resisted the Sharps until it was proven as accurate as their target rifles.

[John Taylor]

Not much about this little pistol. Marked "Manufacture by Moore for Smith & Wesson". Made from around 1861 to 1865. A 7 shot 32 RF that many officers purchased themselves, lighter and faster to reload. S&W had the patent for the bored through cylinder so that's how their name got on it. Push the little button next to the hammer and the barrel and cylinder swing out for reloading.

[John Taylor]

.44 Henry rimfire or 44 Henry flat is in no way related to the 44-40 or 44 WCF cartridge other than the bullet is .44. The 44 Henry rimfire was the cartridge of the the first SUCESSFUL REPEATING RIFLE TO BE MANUFACTURED IN LARGE NUMBERS, THE HENRY REPEATING RIFLE. The 1866 Winchester was also made in .44 Henry rimfire. The 1873 Winchester saw the introduction of the 44-40 centerfire cartridge in the Winchester repeating rifle. Although the rifle was offered in some rimfire cartridges most were centerfire.

The Volcanic was a lever action repeater made by S&W that didn't catch on. Winchester was the money behind it and ended up owning the company. Henry worked for Winchester, took the design and made it bigger and designed it to take a cartridge ( the Volcanic had a sort of rocket bullet with the powder and cap in the base of the bullet). Winchester took the same design and made the 1866, 1873 and 1876. The Volcanic held more rounds but it only had about 28 foot pounds of energy. They also made a pistol.

[shooter575]

I always thought that the Henry was a 44-40 center fire. Do you have some reference to a rim fire Henry?

Also, I've been told that "buck & ball" was a favorite load for the old Brown Bess back then. Apparently that was a musket ball loaded along with several pellets of buckshot.

The Henry cartridge was the .44 Henry flat...Rimfire. There were no center fire cartridges during the C/W. Matter of fact the first conversion of leftover Springfields post war were a .58 rinfire.
The 50-70 was the first US milatary center fire cartridge.
Ball and buck and ball were the two standard loads for smoothbores.Ball being one rb. B&B being one .660 and three .300 buckshot. All US made smoothbores were .69 cal. [Other than a few hundred cadet models]
The smoothbores early war were used by the majority of troops on both sides. They were phased out mostly in the eastern theater by mid war.
The western theater some union and a lot of southern were still using then to the end.
As said above on making ammo. Cartridges were made in armorys packed into 10 round paper packages with 12 caps.Then loaded into wooden boxes of 60 lb or so and shiped to the front.BTW most of the Minnes in both armies were not cast.They were swaged. Look in the base cavity and many were marked by the die.The ones I have seen had a X in the base.
Troops did not made their own ammo during the war. 99.99% just drew their load from supply just like the troops do now.