| Civil War Weapons |
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| The 13-inch seacoast mortar weighed over 17,000 pounds and, as its common name implies, was intended for seige and fortifications and not field work. This monster was made portable during the Seige of Petersburg by being mounted on a railroad car, specially strengthened with extra beams and iron rods to withstand the strain of firing. Since this mortar threw a 218 pound shell about two and one-half miles with a charge of 20 pounds of powder, this strain was considerable. The mortar was placed on the car and run up the tracks from City Point toward the Union cordon around Petersburg, where a curve in the tracks allowed the Dictator's gunners to adjust the plane of fire. Cast at the Fort Pitt Foundry in 1862, the whereabouts of the Dictator are now unknown, and this famous weapon may no longer survive. |
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| THE DICTATOR |
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| The Gatling gun saw only limited use in the Civil War, (Ben Butler used two around Petersburg and eight on gunboats; Porter acquired one; and Hancock ordered twelve for his I (Veteran) Corps), however, the conflict did test this weapon, perhaps the first successful true machine gun used in warfare. Invented by Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling, the Civil War model served as the precursor of more successful models. The Gatling gun was a hand-crank-operated weapon with 6 barrels revolving around a central shaft. The cartridges were fed to the gun by gravity through a hopper mounted on the top of the gun. 6 cam-operated bolts alternately wedged, fired, and dropped the bullets, which were contained in steel chambers. Gatlin used the six barrels to partially |
| cool the gun during firing. Since the gun was capable of firing 600 rounds a minute, each barrel fired 100 rounds per minute. The gun had a number of problems, however. The bores were tapered, and often the barrels and chambers did not exactly align, affecting accuracy and velocity. The chamber system itself, in which a paper cartridge was contained inside a capped steel chamber, was both expensive and fragile. While the gun showed much promise and fired the standard .58-caliber ammunition, it had so many drawbacks and was so radical in both design and purpose that Gatling was unable to interest the U.S. government. The army purchased none of his guns, but Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, after a field test, purchased 12 for $1,000 each and two were used on the Petersburg front in 1864 and apparently were considered successful. |
| The first machine-gun type weapon ever used in combat was built by the Confederate War Dept in Sept 1861. The Williams breech-loading rapid-fire gun was first used at the Battle of Seven Pines and worked so well that the War Dept ordered 42 more of them. The gun was actually a crank-operated, very light artillery piece that fired a one-pound (1.57 calibre) projectile with a range of 2,000 yards. It was operated by a crew of three and could fire at a rate of 65 rounds per minute. One operator aimed and fired the weapon by turning the crank, the second placed a paper cartridge into the breech, and the third placed the percussion cap. The major problem with this gun was overheating, which made the breech jam due to heat expansion |
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