Captain Alexander Blakely RA

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Captain Alexander Blakely RA

Original inventor of improvements in cannon and the greatest artillerist of the age Steven Roberts 2012
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Contents
_________________________________________________ 1. Introduction 2. Alexander Blakely 1827-1868 3. The Blakely Patent 4. Construction 5. First Manufacture 6. Cannon for Peru 7. Cannon for the South 8. Cannon for Russia 9. The Blakely Ordnance Company, Limited 10. Scandal 12. The Guns 13. Parrott, Brooke & Blakely Guns 14. Blakely & Dahlgren 15 Blakelys Patents 16. Associates 17. Sources _________________________________________________
the largest number were made for the south during the Civil War. They ranged from the 3 inch calibre field gun used to fire on Sumter in 1861 to two great 13 inch cannon of 60,000 pounds that defended Charleston in 1863. There were several batteries of 3 inch Blakely rifled field guns with the Armies of Northern Virginia and of Tennessee. 7 inch Blakely cannon protected Vicksburg and Mobile. On the high seas the steamer Nashville, in November 1861 the first Confederate warship to visit Europe, was armed with two Blakely rifles. The cruisers Alabama and the Florida carried the Confederate flag and 7 inch Blakely cannon across the great oceans. The battery of the cruiser Georgia included three Blakely rifles. The famous rams built in 1863 by Laird Brothers in Birkenhead to devastate Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York City were each to carry four 9 inch Blakely guns in their turrets. The four cruisers building in France in 1864 but never delivered were each to have twelve 68 pounder Blakely guns. The Brooke guns, so-called, of Confederate manufacture were cast, forged and assembled for the Confederate States Navy under Captain Blakelys patents with the consent and co-operation of the inventor. In Parliament on June 18, 1863, Captain Blakely declared, archly, that shot at Charleston were fired from guns either made by me, which have found their way there somehow, or else made (and very ably made) by Captain Brooke of the Confederate Artillery, from models supplied by me. A remarkable thirty-two Blakely guns still exist as relics in North America either whole or in parts. His support went further than simple commerce. In addition to making guns for the South, during March
1. Introduction
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aptain Alexander Blakely RA is a name that anyone interested in the American Civil War will be familiar with; his cannon are mentioned in battle after battle, in page after page of its history, on land and at sea. Yet scarcely anything is known about this man his very name is subject to query and question even now. He and the guns he designed flourished only briefly between 1855 and 1866, he and they are forever associated with the South. The number of Blakely cannon imported or used by the Confederate States of America is not known; but of the more than 470 guns manufactured under Blakelys patents between 1855 and 1866
Dedicated to the memory of John Roberts, killed in action on June 19, 1864, off Cherbourg, France, beside a 7 inch Blakely gun

1862 - in an attempt to conceal their true ownership Blakely bought ten batteries of Austrian bronze artillery off Captain Caleb Huse CSA for shipment from Hamburg to the south by the governments steamer Bahama. Blakely travelled to Hamburg to supervise shipment, even managing the rescue of eight cannon sunk in a lighter on the river Elbe through sabotage. But there is more, much more to the life of Captain Alexander Blakely... His guns were sold in hundreds to nearly a dozen other countries, from America to Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, Egypt, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Russia, Sweden and, especially, to Peru... But he never was able to sell a single cannon for service in Britain. His life ended in ruin and scandal; this is the story of Captain Blakely and his Cannon. _________________________________________________ On December 31, 1856, when aged 30, Alexander Theophilus Blakely, Esq., Captain, half-pay, Royal Artillery, married Harriette Catherine Tonge, widow of Captain John Henry Tonge, 16th Lancers, of Alveston, Gloucestershire, the only child of the late John Maugham Connell, of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Blakely and his new wife moved from his single gentlemans lodgings in Little Ryder Street, St Jamess, London to a small rented house at 34 Montpelier Square, Brompton, West London, which was his family home for the best part of his short life. They had no children. He was an inveterate traveller; he served the Royal Artillery at Plymouth between 1844 and 1846, on the Ionian Islands, in the Mediterranean, from 1846 until 1849, and then on the fortress peninsular of Gibraltar between 1846 and 1852, where he retired on half-pay after his health failed. After wintering in Italy to recuperate in 1852 he visited Constantinople, Turkey; in 1854 he was in the Crimea. In the Spring of 1859 he was in Spain and Italy; in March 1862 he was in Hamburg, before going on to Vienna and Constantinople again; in the summer of 1863 he was in Paris, in the winter of 1864 in Russia. In the war between France and Austria in northern Italy in May 1859 Blakely was with the Austrians providing reports for The Times newspaper. He also spent much time in Ireland during the 1860s, where he held a property called Clermont at Ballykeel, Hollywood, County Down. Even at the age of eighteen when replacing the old 18 and 24 pounders that defended Plymouth harbour with 32 pounder cannon he was proposing to the Master General of Ordnance in London, a much larger gun than that which had ever been considered before. He, as a mere Second Lieutenant, was ignored. Later, when visiting Constantinople in 1853, Blakely proposed to the Ottoman authorities an original scheme for the defence of the Dardanelles against Russian incursion - it involved floating batteries and twenty cannon each firing a projectile of an unprecedented 300 pounds weight. The heaviest shot in the Royal Navy then was 68 pounds. Blakely was one of the first to apply theoretical science to the manufacture of ordnance, and went on to obtain several patents for inventions relating to cannon. In this occupation he came up against the interests of the industrialists William Armstrong and Joseph Whitworth, who both sought to acquire manufacturing contracts for cannon from the government. Always something of a controversialist, he engaged in vigorous debates with these giants of industry and with scientific competitors such as his fellow countryman, Robert Mallet, creator of the great 36 inch calibre mortar of 1856. Blakely, after his initial military service, undertook a long period of scientific research and calculation on which he founded original principles of ordnance. He became skilled in manipulating the London press into giving his ideas coverage. He used the learned societies to give prominence and veracity to his principles of ordnance, and cultivated many scientific allies, as well as being fearless, but reasoned, when challenged by his
2. Alexander Blakely 1827 1868 Manufacturer of Ordnance

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lexander Blakely was born in Sligo, Ireland on January 7, 1827; the son of the Very Reverend Theophilus Alexander and his second wife, Mary William Blakely. His father, of English descent, was a minister in the Anglican Church, eventually becoming Dean of Down. He was nominally Theophilus Alexander Blakely but preferred his second name, rarely using his first and signing with just his initials. Blakely had two sisters, Mary Stewart Blakely and Isabella Chalmers Blakely; the odd female given-names were a family trait. After education at the Royal Military College, Woolwich, on June 14, 1844, at the unusually young age of 17 Alexander Blakely was commissioned from Gentleman Cadet to Second Lieutenant in the Royal Regiment of Artillery; on April 2, 1846 he became First Lieutenant, and on April 1, 1852 he achieved the rank of Second Captain of Artillery, he was known universally as Captain Blakely for the rest of his life. He retired on halfpay on August 18, 1852. During the Crimean War in July 1855 he took the temporary rank of Major and Assistant Quartermaster General in the Irregular Cavalry of General Robert Vivians 22,000 strong Turkish Contingent, a mercenary corps organised by the British Army. He served as such until December 23, 1855. Blakely finally left the service on May 10, 1861, by selling-out his commission. On March 12, 1855 Captain Blakely had appeared as an independent witness before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into the Condition of the Army at Sebastopol. He was one of the few junior officers to be invited to appear: he reported bluntly that during his visit in the last fortnight of December the British soldiers were very wretchedly clothed, very ragged and looked half starved. They complained that they did not get their rations and had no rum at all. His observations were reported nationally in the newspapers.
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peers. His first break came from the support of William Needham of the Butterley Company, a huge concern that owned coal pits and ironworks, who was clearly looking for government gun contracts. The Butterley works made his first test pieces. From his unique scientific base Blakely was able to acquire and then capitalise early orders from Giuseppe Garibaldi in Sardinia, Francisco Bolognesi in Peru and Edward Anderson of the Confederate States during 1860 and 1861 into credit at a London bank or at Fawcett Preston, the Liverpool ironworks, to get the first production orders completed. Although, in 1898 Blakelys widow stated that she had contributed 9,000 towards her husbands early experiments. By the 1860s he was a respected expert on ordnance and was called to speak to the relevant committees of the British Parliament. Blakely was a valued contributor and speaker to the learned societies of the period in his role as engineer and artillerist. He also took on the industrial interest by forming his own joint stock company to make cannon. His profession from then, he stated, was Manufacturer of Ordnance. Although most noted for his loyalty to the cause of the Confederate States of America, for whom he provided nearly a hundred guns, Blakelys ordnance, advice and licences for manufacture were sought by Chili, China, Denmark, Italy, Morocco, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and, interestingly, the United States. Blakely was a Member of the Royal Society of London, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Irish Academy, an Honorary Member of the Society of Engineers, the Smeatonians, and was a Founding Fellow of the Anthropological Society of London. He was also a vigorous contributor to the debates of the Royal United Service Institution, the military think-tank of the day. Socially, he was also a member of the Army & Navy Club, and of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club. He owned at least two yachts. Sir Richard Burton, the famous explorer and writer, became a friend of Blakelys in the early 1860s. They plotted together to provide ordnance for Francesco II, King of the Two Sicilies, in May 1860 when southern Italy was invaded by Garibaldi, the revolutionary, another customer of Blakelys! For a few years he was a wealthy man. In 1866 he moved from Montpelier Square to the much grander No 1 Park Lane, overlooking Marble Arch, Hyde Park, in London. His immediate neighbour was the Dowager Duchess of Somerset. The new house had formerly been the town residence of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bt, MP. In the summer of 1865 he bought the 300 ton steam yacht Ceres of Charles Kuhn Prioleau, the English partner in Fraser, Trenholm & Company, treasury agents to the Confederate States. Mrs Harriette Blakely became a patroness of charities, including one to assist members of the ballet in time of sickness and distress. Blakely was by no means a snob; he supported with funds, along with his peers Edward Reed, the naval architect, and Henry Maudslay, the engine builder, the London Association of Foreman Engineers, in its scientific and benevolent work. In addition to his ordnance interests, when the Atlantic Telegraph cable, between Ireland and Newfoundland, was being manufactured Blakely made a mathematical investigation into its characteristics. He proposed, in August 1857, that to reduce the waste of cable payed out in slack, that the speed of laying be increased and the specific gravity of the cable be reduced. He patented in that year a process to control the velocity of cable sinking in the ocean. In the General Election of 1865 Captain Blakely stood as a candidate in the Liberal interest for the Tavistock constituency in Devon, where he was developing an iron works. The two winners, also Liberals, took 330 and 179 votes, Blakely, the fifth and last, had just eight votes. He does not appear to have canvassed personally. During 1865 and 1866 Blakely maintained an adulterous relationship with Mrs Harriet Dering, which was exposed in her divorce proceedings in June 1867. This, and the failure of his ordnance company in 1866, completely ruined his reputation in England. He fled the country and was declared an Outlaw to be arrested on sight for failing to appear before the courts of justice on July 27, 1867. He was to flee to the only place that would welcome him, the source of his first success in gunmaking, where his cannon had just seen off an invading fleet, where he was regarded almost as a hero. In his moment of distress, Blakely left his creditors and the moralists behind him in Europe and, by way of Panama, made for Peru. Captain Alexander Blakely RA died at Chorrillos in distant Peru of yellow fever on May 4, 1868, age 41. He is buried alongside Mrs Dering in the Cementara Britnico de Bellavista, at Callao. He left no will; the only persons entitled to his personal property and effects being Harriette Catherine Blakely, his widow, Mary William Blakely, his mother, Isabella Chalmers Blakely, his sister, and Mary Stewart Spankie, his other sister. Isabella was never to wed; Mary had married Robert Spankie, a government lawyer in India. Despite his adultery, thirty years after his death, in 1898 his widow began a campaign to recognise Blakelys contribution to artillery. _________________________________________________
3. The Blakely Patent

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o properly understand Alexander Blakelys contribution to ordnance it is necessary first to understand the claims he made in the several patents he obtained between 1855 and 1866. As well as being aware of the many and varied claims within these patents one needs to compare these claims with the subsequent descriptions of his manufactured ordnance. A full summary of the claims for each patent is contained in the Patent page. Only his first patent, numbered 431/1855, for Improvements in Ordnance, dated 27 February 1855 is
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really vital to his subsequent history. In this Blakely claimed as his invention the forming of guns with an internal tube or cylinder of cast-iron or steel, enclosed in a casing of wrought-iron or steel. He subsequently expanded this concept His first patent of February 27, 1855 defined the principle of tension in cannon; giving scientific reason for adding strengthening jackets to a basic gun tube. The importance of the principle that Alexander Blakely determined cannot be over-emphasised; adding successive jackets or rings of differing hardnesss of forged metal to an inner barrel permitted the construction of great guns. The principle was adopted under dubious Crown Privilege by W G Armstrong in Britain and was pirated by R P Parrott in North America. It was licensed to Spain and Russia, to the steelmakers Whitworth and Bessemer in Britain, to Voruz in France, and to the Putnam company in New England. As probably the most scientific maker of ordnance of the age Alexander Blakely co-operated with many of his contemporaries including James Longridge, who perfected wire-wound gun barrels, Daniel Treadwell, the American who first proposed composite gun barrels, John Norton, his Irish compatriot and the pioneer of shell-firing guns, Joseph Whitworth and Henry Bessemer, as well as John Mercer Brooke, Chief of Ordnance in the Confederate States Navy. He had a scientific squabble with Robert Mallet, creator of the 36 inch calibre, 40 ton mortar intended for the Crimea, over the discovery of tension in ordnance. He had a less than scientific squabble with W G Armstrong, who used, but did not understand, tension jackets in his ordnance; being outraged at Armstrongs hiding behind Crown privilege on his appointment as Her Majestys Superintendent of Rifled Ordnance. Treadwell It is sometimes claimed that the American engineer Daniel Treadwell (1791-1872) originated the banding of gun barrels; this is not so as he proposed and patented in America and Britain during 1845 the construction of ordnance from short rings of metal welded end-to-end without a core. It was not until 1855, a full six months after Alexander Blakelys initial patent, that Treadwell filed his claim for composite-barrelled cannon in Washington. This had a core around which the strengthening outer rings were screwed together; coincidentally, and curiously, Treadwell was living in London, England, at the time. In any event, the young Blakely maintained cordial even amicable relations with the very much older Treadwell, sometime Rumford Professor at Harvard University. It is likely that Treadwell and Blakely co-operated closely; they corresponded, when Treadwell had his 1855 patent re-issued in 1862 unusually he included an extensive reference to the English professor, Peter Barlow, a primary source of Blakelys knowledge on tension in metal, missing from the original. Treadwell was also a prominent resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, of which State more later The Obvious Solution Blakely had a long narrative letter published in the Engineer magazine on October 24, 1862 that carefully summarises his view on the development of his principles of ordnance contained in his original patent, the influence of his scientific peers and the resistance of the British authorities: BUILT-UP GUNS Sir - In a leading article of the 17th inst. [October 17, 1862] you state that Mr Barlow long ago laid down the rules governing the strengthening of hydraulic press cylinders. You will greatly oblige many of your readers, I am sure, if you will be kind enough to inform them in what publication can be found these rules, if, indeed, you are not mistaken in supposing that they exist. The only generally known paper by Mr Barlow on the subject does not even hint at the possibility of strengthening cylinders, but is simply a calculation of their strength when cast of one piece of iron or one piece of brass. He clearly demonstrates that the outside of thick cylinders formed of one mass is almost useless, but he does not suggest the remedy of putting this outside part into a state of initial tension. I grant, sir, that this remedy appears sufficiently obvious, now that I have pointed it out. Most inventions are obvious. When first hearing of nine out of ten, one wonders that such obvious improvements had not been made before. Indeed, when this thing first occurred to me I had the same feeling. I never dreamt of patenting what seemed to me so perfectly obvious an improvement. My only dread was that so extremely obvious an idea must occur to every one - the thinking of how to make strong cannon (it did really occur to Dr Hart, Mr J A Longridge, and Prof Tredwell [sic] within a few months) and that the Russians would construct cannon so powerful that one or two shells from them could sink one of the huge three-deckers which then formed our fleet. To induce the British Government to manufacture some very strong guns, quickly and secretly, was my wish. Granite forts were then the great opponent of ships. Supply ships, I said, with one 320-pounder, in place of ten 32-pounders - as one ounce of lead in the form of a bullet is more effective against an animal than several ounces in the form of very small shot, so will one 320pounder smash a block of granite which fifty 32pounders could not seriously injure. This suggestion, also, I considered obvious, and greatly was I taken aback when the War Office - or rather the Ordnance Office, this happening before the War Office was established - greatly was I astonished when the Ordnance Office informed me that in the first place it wanted no large guns; and, secondly, that it disbelieved in all mathematical calculations, and that consequently it had made up its mind to spend half a million in a Royal Gun Foundry, believing the weakness of cast-iron guns not to be inherent to the form, but to proceed from the use of bad iron by the contractors. The half million was spent and exceeded, and not one cannon fit for service was turned out of the Royal Standard Gun Foundry.
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Meanwhile I saw that reasoning was of no use, so I proceeded to make strong guns, and, to secure a chance of having my expenses reimbursed, I took out a patent on the 27th February, 1855. By June, 1855 - after several less successful attempts - I had produced the 4 inch gun, which stood seven times as much firing as a cast iron gun, and three times as much as a brass gun, which the Ordnance Committee tried against it at Shoeburyness. Obvious as my invention seems to you and many others, its value gradually rose in my own estimation when I found that so very few could understand it. To Mr Whitworth I endeavoured to explain it in 1855, and again in 1856, after the bursting of his guns formed of cast iron with sides 11 inches thick, the bore being only 4 inches or 5 inches! Yet in 1860 Mr Whitworth so little understood the principle, that every single gun he built burst; one so small as even a 32pounder, and made with extra care as an experimental gun for Denmark, burst at Copenhagen, and killed my poor friend Lieut Carlsen. The remains of another gun of Mr Whitworths, an 80-pounder, can still be seen at Woolwich Arsenal. So unscientifically was this constructed that the inner tube is burst and the outer coils not disturbed. I believe the gun only fired sixteen rounds. Knowing all this I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read in the Times of Tuesday week Mr Whitworths letter claiming the credit of the construction of the 120-pounder gun, made for him at Woolwich, in precisely the same way as the Armstrong guns are made. Sir William Armstrong to this day denies the necessity of building-up cannon with the layers in definite tension or compression. His speech on the subject at the British Association last year is thus reported: He differed from Captain Blakely in thinking that such mathematical nicety was required in the construction. Provided only care were taken to allow sufficient shrinking, the hoops would adapt themselves to that amount of tension which would give the maximum resisting force of the gun, and before the hoops would give way the gun would have passed through the phase of greatest resistance. This is the secret of the imperfection of the Armstrong guns. He dare not use anything but very yielding wrought iron in this manner. He attempted to make his inner tubes of cast iron for hardness, but all the guns tried burst, and a couple of hundred are now lying unfinished in Woolwich Arsenal. It was one of these, by the way, which was lately shown there as a burst Blakely gun. Yet Sir William Armstrongs guns are almost as perfect as regards strength as they can be while he uses iron. The difficulty of persuading not only the War Office people but others to use any method of strengthening cannon being so great, however obvious that method may appear to the fifty or one hundred persons who can understand it, I think, sir, you underrate both Sir William Armstrongs services and my own. Of my own I will not say more than that you are in error in believing Professor Tredwell [sic] to have preceded me. His patent in England is dated eleven months after mine, and his American patent still later. Sir William Armstrong may not even have been an original discoverer at all; he may have learnt from the published writings of Professor Tredwell [sic] and myself; he may have learnt something when, in 1855, he bored and turned at his works at Elswick a gun, constructed on the coiled system, for Mr James Longridge, under a license from me; yet it cannot be denied that, from Sir William Armstrong, and not from us, did the Government learn to build strong cannon. It does not appear that he used any more charlatanism that the ignorance of the War Office authorities rendered necessary. Two hundred years ago he would have been forced to secure the attention of an ignorant person to his system by telling him that the metal was cast when Mars was in tune with Mercury. I am sure that not two out of the whole Ordnance Select Committee could be imposed upon by such a statement, carefully selected though they are; so, to gain their votes, Sir William was driven to pretend that he had a secret, to keep which an Act of Parliament was necessary. This ruse, sir, was surely very pardonable when we compare it to the effrontery of some others, who want the War Office to buy their wares; those, for example, who say that bullets from an hexagonal bored gun have greater initial velocity than from a smooth bored one, and who add, by way of climax, that the hexagonal gun has less recoil even when projecting its bullet with greater velocity. (I presume all readers of The Engineer know that the velocity backwards of a gun is exactly in proportion to the velocity forwards of the bullet, other circumstances being alike.) I most conscientiously believe, Mr Editor, that you will be doing better service to the public, if you dwell more on their folly in not forcing the Government to appoint a scientific and independent committee to consider all ordnance questions, and less on the ease of the task of those who attempt to introduce any improvement, however obvious, through the present channels. I also believe that you will be more just. T A Blakely Army and Navy Club, October 21st, 1862. Blakely and the Government The selection and purchase of guns for both the Army and the Navy in mid-nineteenth century Britain was in the hands of the Ordnance Select Committee of the War Office. This was a body dominated by elderly officers of the Army, whose experience was based on the French wars of fifty years previous. To add context, by 1850 the British Armys field guns, those that accompanied its infantry and cavalry on campaign, were to common designs that originated in 1719, being made of what was called brass, actually bronze metal, bored smooth within to fire solid round cast-iron shot. The weight of the shot denominated its nature. The principal field gun was a 9 pounder brass piece, the cavalry were supported by a 6 pounder brass piece, and activities in mountainous regions or in diffi-
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cult colonial territories were covered by a small 3 pounder brass piece. There were also 12 pounder and 24 pounder brass howitzers dating from the early 1800s that were attached to field batteries to fire hollow shells filled with explosive. These weapons were all made at the Royal Brass Foundry, part of the War Offices Woolwich Arsenal. Manufacture of the brass 3, 12 and 24 pounders ceased in 1859, and of the brass 6 and 9 pounders in 1862. The carriages, on which these guns travelled and from which they were fired, were all of wood with iron strapping. All other Army guns, the very much larger pieces of the so-called garrison artillery in fortresses and guns of the siege train, were made of cast-iron. The guns for the Royal Navy were made through the agency of the War Office, which is the same source as Army ordnance; these too were made of cast-iron. The largest piece in service was the 68 pounder. Iron guns were usually manufactured by contractors; by 1850 there were two: the Gospel Oak Foundry, Tipton, Staffordshire, owned by John and Edward Walker, and the Low Moor Iron Company, of Low Moor, Bradford, Yorkshire, owned by Thomas and Charles Hood. During the Crimean War of 1854 a large number of other ironworks were contracted to make ordnance, virtually all were to cast mortars for the siege of Sebastopol; only one then made iron guns for the government. By 1860 others were making cast-iron guns. The coming of the rifled musket into the hands of the common infantry had rendered the range of smoothbore artillery inadequate by 1855. In addition, at sea, the ironclad ocean-going steam-driven warships that appeared in 1860 were impervious to all existing cannon. To meet these challenges the War Office took the one-size-fits-all solution offered by the successful hydraulic engineer William Armstrong of Newcastleupon-Tyne in Northumberland. No competition was allowed: the War Offices decision was final. Armstrongs new guns were revolutionary. They had wrought-iron tubes and wrought-iron strengthening bands. The tubes were made with polygroove rifling, a multiplicity of small shallow grooves. They were breech-loading with a complicated vertical breech block and a hollow-screw mechanism, requiring unique ammunition covered with lead to grip the polygrooves and new precision-made mechanical fuses. They were immensely complex in manufacture and they were fantastically expensive. The elderly Field Marshal, His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, commander-in-chief of the British Army, and uncle to the Queen, remarked, sarcastically, that they could do everything but talk. Armstrong was given the monopoly of supply for all ordnance, a patent he obtained in 1856 was classified as a national secret by Act of Parliament, he was appointed superintendent of manufacture at Woolwich Arsenal, as well as owning and running, simultaneously, the Elswick Ordnance Company in Newcastle. The Admiralty, although having to accept the advice of the War Office regarding the huge new 110 pounder rifled guns, that would apparently pierce all known armour, carefully contrived to continue have orders placed with the contractors for old reliable cast-iron ordnance. Their conservatism was well founded. As a quantum leap in technology, from a simple castiron tube to a sophisticated multilayered series of forgings, problems might have been expected with the new system of ordnance, which ranged from small 9 pounder field pieces to 110 pounder 7 inch cannon. The tubes in Armstrongs guns fractured and burst, wrought-iron breech bands made in spirals opened up, the breech-blocks blew out, the lead-covered bolts jammed in the barrels, if they did not do that their coating fragmented into jagged shrapnel on leaving the barrel, his new mechanical concussion and percussion fuses proved hopelessly unreliable, costs (of course) escalated in endless attempts to rectify these issues. But the War Office would hear of no criticism. It was not just Alexander Blakely that resented and rejected this appalling abuse of public money and resources, proposing safer, stronger and cheaper guns. The great engineer Joseph Whitworth of Manchester was the first to challenge the inefficiency of the new order. Charles Lancaster, who had devised simple oval-bored rifling for cast-iron guns before the Crimean war, made his own claim to be recognised by the War Office. In the Royal Navy, having inadequate armament in the face of foreign ironclad fleets, Commander Robert Scott proposed alternatives. The civil engineer Bashley Britten came up with his own system of ordnance manufacture and projectiles. Even one Alfred Krupp of Essen in distant Prussia offered better, more durable guns. The official accounts for the purchase of iron ordnance presented to Parliament late in 1862 quantified public concern. They showed that for the period between March 1858 and June 1862 371,484 was paid to the contractors T & C Hood, J & C Walker, T Astbury and Samuel Pegg for 5,052 conventional cast-iron muzzleloading guns, all being large pieces, 32 pounders, 68 pounders, 8 inch shell guns and 10 inch shell guns. In comparison the amount paid to the Elswick Ordnance Company for 1,102 wrought-iron breech-loading guns, mainly 110 pounders, 40 pounders and 12 pounders, was 371,818 in the same period. In addition to which Elswick received 486,463 for shells and fuses for the breech-loaders. The new Royal Gun Factory at Woolwich, also superintended by William Armstrong, made a further 1,610 wrought-iron breech-loading guns from 1860 until March 31, 1862, 110 pounders, 20 pounders, 12 pounders, 9 pounders and 6 pounders, costing the War Office, under the Arsenals dubious accounting regime, another 325,484. The press in due course revealed the level of the problems with the Army and Navy ordnance. But it was not until 1863 that Parliament took a grip on the situation and Armstrong resigned.
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In the mean time the opposition in the ordnance war effectively coalesced into two productive factions: that of Joseph Whitworth and that around Alexander Blakely, to whom Commander Scott and Bashley Britten became allied. The Secretary of State for War, Lord Herbert, in the face of public uproar in 1860 grudgingly requested a test of Blakelys principles at the governments Woolwich Arsenal and proving grounds, then controlled by William Armstrong. An iron tube cast for an Armstrong 70 pounder piece by the Low Moor Iron Company was steel-banded at the breech at Woolwich to Blakelys scientifically-calculated principles. A naval cast-iron 32 pounder, manufactured in 1799, was drawn from store and also given a Blakely steel breech band at Woolwich. Both tubes were then rifled at the Arsenal with Bashley Brittens new system, indifferently, according to the designer. According to their markings recorded at Woolwich in 1864 the guns had Blakely serial numbers 97 and 98 of 1862; both were of 6.5 inch bore, rifled with seven square grooves and weighing 6,380 pounds each. Blakely was aware that a similar trial at Woolwich in 1860 by William Armstrong using his own banding on cast-iron tubes had ended disastrously with eight pieces bursting on initial proof. He publically stated that he had no confidence in using Armstrongs metal in the 70 pounder, and that the old metal, when banded on his system, would stand the trial better. Despite his reservations the Blakely 70 pounder was fired 84 times at proof or maximum overload charge with an increasing weight of projectile starting with 180 pounds, and only burst with a 221 pound bolt. The ancient 32 pounder, with its Blakely strengthening at the breech, was fired with the proof charge 133 times, the weight of the projectile being increased every ten rounds after the first fifty, initially with 96 pound projectiles and finally burst with a 238 pound cylinder. The trials, long-delayed, were undertaken without the presence of, or even notice to, Captain Blakely in March and July 1862. The guns proved to be the two strongest and safest tubes of the twenty strengthened cast-iron pieces that were tested by the British government between 1858 and 1863. And then having these amazing results Herbert did... Nothing. On March 1, 1861 Captain Blakely informed a meeting of the Institution of Naval Architects in London, in a discussion on Arms and Armour, of another mysterious trial of his patent guns. Woolwich Arsenal had he said completed and tested to destruction two other guns to his design; both able to break the 4 inch armour of the latest ironclads. One was to 8 inch bore and had fired a 30 inch long bolt weighing 408 pounds before bursting. The other piece was to 10 inch bore, weighing 9,856 pounds, costing just 100. It finally shot a 35 inch long iron bolt weighing 512 pounds before it fractured. Each gun had been fired between forty and fifty times. When asked by Parliament to value his original patent Blakely naively said 500,000. This was immediately seized upon as the price he demanded for government use. In fact he offered a usage license for just 1 shilling per hundredweight, 112 pounds, of metal equal to about 4s 0d on each field gun. The critical issue eventually turned on Armstrongs failure, due to his reliance on wrought-iron and wilful misunderstanding of initial tension, to make safe pieces larger than 7 inch bore, firing 100 pound bolts. When he eventually produced a trial 300 pounder gun, Blakely was already making 600 pounders! On January 4, 1864 the War Office actually acquired an 11 inch Blakely cast-steel gun, similar to those he was selling in quantity to Russia. It was designated to fire a 400 pound bolt with 35 pounds of powder, and proved with a 531 pound bolt and 52 pounds of powder. The War Office insisted on trying the gun with 70 pounds of powder on August 18, 1864. As Captain Caruana wrote in his work on Blakely in 1992, It would have been extraordinary if the gun had not burst. The Admiralty, who suffered most from the Armstrong fiasco, themselves purchased a 7 inch Blakely rifle in 1865 but had to hand it over to the War Office for proving. It was tried at Shoeburyness in Essex on January 30, 1865; designed for 12 pounds of powder, the soldiers filled it with 25 pounds and damaged it. Parliament and Blakely 1865 It is opportune to let the Parliament of the day have its final say as regards Captain Blakely and his guns. The following are extracts from the House of Commons Debate of March 2, 1865, on a motion to establish a Select Committee on Armaments for the Army and Navy. It was the last foray of Parliament in reaction to the four year long scandal around the appointment of Armstrong and the purchase of his weapons. In the opening statement proposing the Select Committee, Henry James Baillie, Conservative Member of Parliament for Invernessshire, at first recited the weakness of the existing system for providing armaments, dwelling at great length on the officially-reported failures of Armstrong cannon in the naval campaign against Japan. He went on to describe other sources of cannon: It is not my intention to enter into a discussion with regard to the respective merits of the great inventors and manufacturers of modern ordnance. All I wish to say of them is, that if their guns are not appreciated by their own Government they are at least appreciated by all the other Governments of the world. There is, first of all, the Blakely Ordnance Company. That company have been manufacturing guns of great calibre, 300 and 600 pounders, both for the Confederate and the Federal States of America, and they are still executing orders for the Federal Government. But it is not in America only that the guns of this company are appreciated. They are executing immense orders for the Russian Government - 11-inch guns for the defence of Cronstadt, and 8-inch guns for the Russian fleet. They are also manufacturing guns for the governments of Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Italy, in fact for most of the Governments of
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Europe, and it appears that it is only in their own country, and by their own Government, that their guns are not appreciated. Baillie went further in describing the system that allowed Blakely to be so overlooked: We know that the Government claim a right to use any patent they may think proper. But if the plan should be rejected, then the invention would be discredited, and no private manufacturer would construct a gun the plan of which had been condemned by the Ordnance Committee. It must be remembered also that the members of the Committee are themselves rival inventors and rival manufacturers. I say that, under those circumstances, the Ordnance Select Committee act as a complete obstruction to the introduction of new guns. Captain Blakely for five years never had his gun tried by the Government. And why? Because he always refused to send in his drawings to the Ordnance Select Committee. He also described the manner in which other countries acquired great guns: Now what is the state of the Russian navy? The Russians did not lose much time in following the example of the English and French, in procuring for themselves iron-clad ships; I believe they have now sixteen of them. But the Ordnance Department of St. Petersburg, as soon as this decision was come to, made a report to the Emperor, in which the following passage occurs: The employment of iron-clad vessels in America has demonstrated the absolute necessity of having guns of a very large calibre, and the successful use of such guns against iron-plated vessels depends upon heavy charges. This report was made on the 10th of August, 1862, so that at that period the Russian engineers came to the conclusion that heavy charges were necessary for their guns, and I believe we have ourselves only very lately arrived at the same conclusion. About the same time - that is to say, in the year 1862 - Captain Blakely offered the Secretary for War to manufacture an 8-inch gun at his own expense, and to hand it over to him for six months to do what he liked with it, while he engaged that it should pierce the sides of the Warrior [the British iron-clad]. The Secretary for War told him that if he had such a gun he could not use it, and he therefore declined the offer. The consequence was that Captain Blakely communicated with the Russian Government, and they accepted his proposal. He then sent two of the guns to St Petersburg. The result was that the Russian Government was so pleased with them that they gave him an immense order. They also gave orders for guns of the same calibre to be constructed by the great German founder Krupp; and the iron-clad fleet of Russia was now armed with Krupps and Blakelys guns. They also got guns from the French, but they prefer those supplied by Captain Blakely, and with them the Russian fleet is now being armed. The gun is of eight inches calibre with a 25 pound charge, and a projectile consisting of a long flat steel bolt weighing 180 pounds. Now, I ask whether it would be fair to expose one of our English ships to a collision with a Russian ship armed with such a weapon as that? In response, for the government of the day, Spencer Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, Liberal Member of Parliament for Lancashire North, and Under Secretary of State for War, replied: The hon. Member seems to know a good deal about the armament of the Russian navy. I always thought it was a very difficult matter to obtain accurate details connected with the Russian army or navy. The Russians are not so communicative as to their experiments, or the state of their preparations, as we are. It is quite possible that the Russian Government have ordered some guns from Captain Blakely. It is not a fact, as was stated by the hon. Gentleman, that no trial of Captain Blakelys guns has ever been made by the British Government. Captain Blakely offered them a gun; it was accepted, and it was proved, but it burst in the proof. I do not mean to say that is any proof of the inferiority of Captain Blakelys guns, because he has since stated to us that the gun in question was one of his third-rate guns. It is true that Captain Blakelys first-rate guns have not been accepted, because they are so expensive, and, judging from his own description of his guns, and our own knowledge of what can be performed by guns of a cheaper construction manufactured by us, they are not worth the cost of the experiment. But I believe the Russians have also got some Prussian guns, but I doubt whether the information of the hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. In spite of the secrecy observed by the Russian Government, it is known that two of Krupps guns have burst at St Petersburg, and burst in such a manner as to cause considerable damage and loss of life. This sly and almost defamatory answer would not do. George Bentinck, Conservative Member of Parliament for Norfolk, rejoined; Now, so far as he could gather from what the noble Marquess the Under Secretary of State for War had said, he understood the noble Marquess to admit that Russia was ahead of us in point of guns which he (Mr. Bentinck) ventured to think was in itself a most alarming admission; and if that were so he thought the country would be of opinion that it was a most unsatisfactory state of things. He did not think this country should rest satisfied if any other country was ahead of us in ordnance. If we were in this position of inferiority the cause was that which was at the root of all evil in the management of our national affairs - a misplaced and an ill-timed economy. He believed it was on the score of expense that the Blakely gun was not adopted; and he was very much afraid - though it did not appear on that occasion - that it was the cloven foot of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer which peeped out under the mantle of economy which had been worn by his noble Friend - that was the root of all the mischief. In a subsequent debate on March 20, 1865, Sir Morton Peto, Conservative Member of Parliament for Finsbury, added to the Marquess of Hartingtons discomfort by
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pointing out that the 1,944 great guns built for the ring of new fortresses along the English south coast had cost on average 4,046, according to government figures. In comparison the 220 guns being manufactured by the Blakely Ordnance Company for the fortresses defending St Petersburg in Russia cost on average 3,525. Projectiles The other significant patent that Captain Blakely secured was that for Projectiles for Ordnance and Loading and Firing Ordnance, number 3,087 of 1863. This demonstrated his increasing independence from his previous associates Bashley Britten and Robert Scott, substituting a new design of shot for muzzle-loading rifled ordnance for theirs. It was inherently simple, a copper plate with curved edges was riveted to the base of the projectile and on firing the propellant expanded the plate to seal the shot or shell against the expanding gases. From 1863 this was the projectile used in all Blakelys guns. The Confederate States Naval Arsenal at Selma, Alabama, was manufacturing copper-cup sabots for projectiles during 1864, all marked in the metal, Blakely. Rifling In the late 1850s and early 1860s Blakely was equivocal in regard to the correct form of rifling needed in all forms of ordnance. In October 1863 he said before Parliament that he wished, in this early period, that all forms of rifling might be tried in his pieces to determine their effect. Blakely added that early in 1859 Bashley Britten had written to him requesting that a strengthened cast-iron gun might be rifled on his plan, to fire his skirted shells, so that it and they might compete more equally with those of the governments favourite, William Armstrong. Blakely immediately agreed to this request and added that he would provide a large piece strengthened on his principles, with Bashley Brittens rifling, free of all cost to government for trials. The offer was ignored. In addition to the square rifling of Britten, Blakely also used the ratchet or triangular, the so-called centrical, rifling devised by Commander Robert Scott RN between 1860 and 1862. By 1863 Captain Blakely had developed and fixed his own views on effective rifling, adopting and patenting his own version of ratchet rifling for his guns. Other forms of rifling actually employed in ordnance in Britain included Armstrongs earliest polygroove, with a multiplicity of tiny shallow ratchet grooves to work in his breechloaders with iron bolts entirely covered with lead; and Armstrongs subsequent shunt, with three deep grooves, having a step between a deep side and a shallow side so that a studded bolt might easily be muzzle-loaded and when fired rotate into the tighter shunt or shallow part. The other form of rifling, and the most common in Europe, was that devised by Colonel Treuille de Beaulieu and adopted in 1860 by the Imperial French army and navy. This had three deep elliptical grooves for muzzle-loaded studded shot. It was adopted by Austria, Holland, Portugal, Russia and Spain for converting old ordnance in the early 1860s. In France and Spain the larger, newly-rifled cast-iron guns were banded at the breech to Alexander Blakelys principles. _________________________________________________
4. Construction
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n October 4, 1861 the Mechanics Magazine described the manufacture of Blakelys guns at Fawcett, Preston & Companys works in Liverpool: There were in full operation, a most extensive series of well-contrived apparatus, adapted to the manufacture of artillery guns, of varying magnitude and widely divergent calibre, from the small and light piece of ordnance suited to the exigencies of mountain warfare, and discharging a ball of 4 pounds weight up to the huge 100 pounder suited for the deck of an ironclad Warrior or Black Prince, or fitted to defend, or to assail the most formidable of defensive works. Some of these great guns were almost in the earliest initiatory state of manufacture, others far advanced towards completion, while others again were perfected and ready for delivery. Nearly all these powerful implements of war and destruction were constructed on what is known as the Blakely principle, that is, on the principle invented by Captain Blakely, which is recommended as combining great strength of resistance to explosive action, immense power of range, and economy as regards first cost. The principle upon which this formidable implement is constructed has been frequently described, yet as it is, like most other inventions of merit, exceedingly simple, it may not be out of place here a remark or two descriptive of the process. In the first instance the size and consequent proportion of the gun having been determined on, a core or heart-piece, forming a complete gun, is cast solid on end, the breech being cast undermost, and the gun of considerably greater length than is wanted, to insure perfect soundness and solidity in the cast. The superfluous length is then cut off from the muzzle end, and the gun bored out to the requisite calibre. Captain Blakelys principle of gun construction, however, includes the manufacture of the interior, or central portion, of steel or of wrought-iron, although he prefers cast to wrought iron, as being in his estimation, in every way better. So far this differs little from the old process of making cast-iron cannon; but after the manufacture has been accomplished thus far, the process invented by Captain Blakely, which we understand, has been secured by a patent, comes into operation. This consists of hooping the iron or steel gun with a series of steel rings, made of the first class and most tenacious steel. These being bored to the requisite diameters, and heated, are placed on the gun at the breech end, extending from the trunnions backwards, and completely enclosing the breech, and while at a moderately high temperature , their lateral joinings are securely placed together, and as the steel casing applied in the manner stated, contracts by cooling, it forms an inseparable and
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hard binding of finely prepared steel, varying in thickness from half-an-inch to three or four, or any number of inches, according to the size of the gun and the requirements of service to which it is to be applied. Besides the steel rings referred to in guns of large calibre, Captain Blakely also introduces a strong binding jacket of cast steel, over which he places his binding steel rings, the whole forming a very strong support in resistance to the expansive force exercised by the explosion of the charge of powder. When the process of cooling, and thus securely fastening the formidable steel binding of the cannon has been completed, the exterior surface is then trimmed and fashioned in the ordinary way, on a turning-lathe suited in power to the magnitude of the gun. From the preceding brief outline it will be seen that the principle and also the manipulation of this style of gun are founded on strictly scientific principles, and on qualities well-known as pertaining to the materials used. Great care is, of course, requisite to have each casing and ring of the precise diameter suited to bring its strength to bear, and this being ascertained by abstruse calculation and numerous experiments, forms the only secret of the manufacture. Guns made on this principle are said to possess numerous advantages over those which are simple cast of iron, and also over those which are made altogether of wrought-iron. Their superiority over the former consisting chiefly in their greater strength, and consequently in their greater range, as compared with the latter; greater cheapness also constitutes an important advantage; whilst in the case of the Blakely gun, the trunnions being cast in the original metal of which the heart-piece or jacket is formed, they constitute integral parts of the gun, and require no troublesome process of hooping on, and are not liable to be detached from the gun while it is use. The exterior of the gun having been finished as suggested, and the boring having also been completed as already stated, the implement may now be considered complete, unless it be intended to have it made on the improved principle of rifled ordnance, in which case the process of rifling has yet to be gone through; but this thanks to the inventions of modern science, and the ingenious apparatus employed by Messrs Fawcett, Preston & Co., is not an operation of great difficulty or tediousness. Before quitting, the subject of the manufacture of these guns, it is right to state that Captain Blakelys great object being to ensure strength at the breech, he has designed the exterior aspect with an especial eye to ensure that, and he adheres, although not exclusively, to the principle of muzzle-loading. Construction in 1866 Five years later, Engineering magazine, on January 12, 1866, was to write: The Blakely Gun - A little more than ten years ago we were in the thick of the Russian war. The science of ordnance had been neglected during a long period of peace, a period when there were many who, no doubt, sincerely believed the world was on the eve of the millennium. But war soon taught us that even if our guns were as good as those of our enemies, we needed others very much better than theirs. The occasion suggests the invention, although there may be those who prefer the old and wise saw of necessity is the mother, &c. Captain Blakely and Mr Mallet saw what was required, but Mr Mallet did not propose an altogether practicable gun, while Captain Blakely did. On the 27th of February, 1855, before the then Mr William G Armstrong had given to the public, or even the Privy Council, his own ideas of guns, Captain Blakely secured a patent for the mode of making cannon with steel or cast-iron inner tubes, strengthened by wrought iron or steel jackets shrunk over them with a considerable initial tension. This idea of initial tension was not, perhaps, clearly expressed in the original patent, but Captain Blakely secured it by a disclaimer and memorandum of alteration, early in 1859. Mr Mallet had tried the principle in the 36 inch mortar, first fired with a shell, weighing one ton and a quarter, October 19th, 1857, but the monster mortar was not made as we should now make such a piece of ordnance, even if we were working upon the principle then laid down. We can understand in a little time exactly what is the principle of the Blakely gun. Captain Blakely appears to have reasoned in this way: In exploding powder within the chamber of a gun, the first effect is that of percussion, and steel will withstand this much better than wrought iron. Therefore, I will make my inner tube of steel. But the internal surfaces of the chamber, being strained, will stretch, whereas the metal outside and beyond them will be extended in a less and less degree according to a principle some years ago demonstrated by Professor Barlow, who showed, that, beyond a certain thickness, no additional metal would give more strength to a hydraulic press cylinder. If we can in imagination follow Captain Blakelys reasoning from what he has since done, we may suppose that he summed up in words much like these: I will first place the material immediately surrounding the bore, in a state of compression, by shrinking wrought-iron tubes or rings upon the outside. Then, when the powder explodes, the outer tubes or rings will be made to do their work, and this inner tube will, in the first extension due to explosion, come merely to a state of repose, afterwards extending by tension. Thus a great deal of the force of the powder will be expended before the metal of the inner tube is really brought into tension. We are here putting words of our own into the mouth of another, but Captain Blakelys specification, and his later practice as an ordnance engineer, show exactly what his governing ideas must have been. In his principle of throwing work upon the outer metal of the gun, beyond what it ever before has borne, he has been imitated by Sir William Armstrong, by Parrott, and by Captain Brooke of the late Confederate Army [Navy], who fabricated many guns - essentially upon Captain Blakelys principle - at the Tredegar Works, Richmond, Virginia. And this principle has been adopted by all the great military powers of the world.
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The earlier Blakely guns were of cast iron, hooped with wrought-iron jackets. The Parrott guns, made by Mr R P Parrott, of West Point Foundry, in America, were of this construction; but they burst to such an extent, when employed as naval guns, as to disqualify them for service. At the attack on Fort Fisher, more men were killed by the bursting of the Parrott guns than were killed by their fire. Captain Blakely some considerable time ago abandoned both cast-iron bores and wrought-iron jackets, substituting steel for both. All Blakely cannon are now, we believe, made of cast steel, cast by Messrs Thomas Firth and Sons, and Messrs Naylor, Vickers, and Co. of Sheffield, although the steel of other makers may be used. Very large guns have been made, and one of 15 inch calibre is now in course of construction at the Blakely Ordnance Works, Bear Lane, Southwark, the new works at East Greenwich not being yet completed. The 15 inch gun, of which we will soon give an engraving, will weigh 21 tons. We cannot say to where this gun will be shipped when completed, but when we recollect that, on the occasion of General Todlebens visit to England last year, the Blakely Company received on order to the extent of nearly 1,000,000 for guns for Kronstadt and other Russian fortresses, it is not unlikely that the great gun may yet find a home in some fortification on the banks of the Neva. General Ripley, who commanded the inner defences of Charleston, during the memorable siege of that town, lately informed us that he had, among other Blakely guns, one of 12 inch bore, the inner tube of cast iron and the jackets of steel. He fired it about 100 times in all, the service charges being 45 pounds of powder, afterwards increased to 60 pounds, and with a cylindrical shot of 600 pounds weight. The elevation did not exceed 5. After the close of the war, on his way to New York, the General learned that the gun had been purposely burst; but no less than 120 pounds of powder and 1,300 pounds of iron were required to effect this. The present Woolwich guns, with steel inner tubes and shrunk-on outer casings, are made generally in accordance with the specifications of Captain Blakely, although no credit is given; and, it is as well to say it, no royalty is paid to the patentee. The Last Blakely Guns Finally, Mechanics Magazine of February 10, 1871 gave a long and detailed description of how Blakelys last guns of 1866 were made, as well as of the introduction of the use of steel in ordnance: The guns, from 7 inches calibre and upwards, are manufactured entirely from mild cast steel, except the trunnion, which are of wrought iron. The inner tube of the guns is first rough bored and turned to within 2 to 3 10ths of an inch of the finished dimensions; it is then oil-tempered. The apparatus for oil-tempering consists of a vertical furnace for heating the tubes; at convenient distances round the exterior are arranged draughtholes; these holes can be opened or closed at will as the heat of the tube may require it. The fuel employed for heating the tube is wood. At a few yards from this furnace is placed the oil tank; the top of this tank being level with the top of the furnace for heating the tubes. This tank is supplied with an exterior water-tight casing, and when in use water is kept circulating between the exterior of the tank and the interior of the casing. The oil tank is also supplied with a pair of close-fitting iron doors or covers, with a hole in the centre only large enough to admit the chain carrying the tube. These doors are closed immediately after the tube is immersed, so as to at once smother the flame from the oil, should it be fired by the tube when it is being introduced. A crane is arranged over the furnace and tank, in such a manner that the gun can be plunged into the oil tank with the least possible delay when heated sufficiently. The gun tube is place vertically in the furnace for heating, and is also plunged vertically into the oil tank, and as rapidly as possible. The effect of this oil-tempering is to double the elastic limit of the steel, [as will be shown by the tables attached hereto,] and also to render it much more uniform. The tube after being oil-tempered is turned on the exterior, and fitted or adjusted to the jacket, the proper difference being allowed for shrinking. To adjust this shrinkages as accurately as possible, the jacket, after being bored to the required dimensions, is gauged every 2 to 12 inches of its own length, according to its size; and the tube is also divided longitudinally into corresponding divisions, and each point of the tube is adjusted to the corresponding part of the jacket, the desired difference for shrinkage being allowed between the internal diameter of the jacket and the external diameter of the tube. The jacket is the jacket is then placed over a pit, and a temporary furnace constructed around it by means of loose fire-bricks, arranged so as to leave draught-holes, in order that by closing or opening these holes, the jacket can be equally heated to the desired temperature; the jacket being placed over a pit, and the hole at the bottom of the jacket being kept open, the workman can, by descending into the pit, and looking through the inside of the jacket, readily ascertain when it is sufficiently heated, and also whether it is being heated equally all over. When the jacket is sufficiently hot, the fire is cleared for the top, and a plate covering the open end of the jacket is removed, and the tube being previously suspended by means of a crane over the jacket, is lowered as rapidly as possible into its place; the fire is then smothered by means of sand or ashes, and the whole is allowed to remain until cool. The front hoops are next put on, the gun is then put into the lathe and turned and adjusted to receive the trunnions, the rear hoops, and the front hoops. They are put on in the same manner as above described, and the gun is completed on the outside to the desired dimensions; then fine bored and rifled. It will be noticed that the tube is solid at the breech end, and also that it rests at the breech end against a shoulder on the inside of the jacket, while a corresponding shoulder at the other end
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of the jacket fits into a recess on the trunnion; this construction renders any movement longitudinally impossible without previous rupture of the metal, and provided amply for the longitudinal strength of the gun. The outer tier or tiers of hoops or rings are preferred in short lengths of 6 or 8 inches, for the following reasons: these rings are comparatively small pieces of steel, so that they can be well worked under the hammer, and in the rolling mill, being thus far more reliable than if made in one length, sufficient to reach from the trunnion to the breech. Defects existing in the metal can be more readily detected. The can be more readily and exactly adjusted to the outside of the gun, and they are considerably cheaper than if made in one piece. The advantages of steel as a material for the construction of heavy guns are so severe, that it is difficult to understand why it is not more extensively employed. Heavy guns have to resist such great and sudden strains that homogeneity of structure must be of the highest importance; the pressure of gas produced by the combustion of large charges of powder is so great, that it seems folly not to select for the construction of guns from all the metals at our command the one which has by far the greatest tensile strength and elasticity. The charge so often and so strongly urged against steel guns that they burst explosively is hardly borne out by practice. Steel guns that have been burst have almost invariably been solid steel guns. Since... building-up guns has been forced on... no large guns have burst. It is therefore an open question as to whether they will burst explosively or not; what experience there is on this question goes to show that they will fail, as the theory says they should, from the outside, and this opinion is strengthened by the following facts: On January 26, 1864 a 9 inch steel Blakely gun was submitted to proof at Woolwich; the charge was 45 pounds of RLG [Rifle Large Grain*] powder, and the projectile of 360 pounds weight. At the first round one of the exterior hoops cracked, notwithstanding this, the charge was, at Captain Blakelys request, increased to 50 pounds, and another round fired without any injury to the gun. The authorities at Woolwich, however, declined to give a certificate of proof with the gun, so the hoop was replaced by another, and the gun again submitted to proof on April 30, 1864, when it fired successfully two rounds with charges of 50 pounds, and projectiles weighing 360 pounds. On April 29, 1864, another 9 inch Blakely built-up steel gun was submitted to proof. At the second round the trunnion which was of cast iron cracked, this was replaced, and the gun again submitted to proof in December, 1864, when it passed. In December 1866, another 9 inch built-up steel gun was submitted to proof (one of a batch of eight guns); one of the exterior hoops cracked, this was replaced by another hoop, and the gun again submitted to proof in January 1867, when it passed;... a further instance that steel guns do not burst explosively - this gun failed from the outside, as all properly constructed guns should do. These guns, it must be remembered, were all fired with the strong RLG powder now abandoned as too brutal and destructive for Armstrong guns. Built-up steel guns can be made much lighter and not less strong than the [wrought-iron] guns now in use in the English service; this saving in the material will make the guns not more costly than guns of corresponding sizes, constructed on the Armstrong system, while there remains the advantage of a handier gun. The 11 inch built-up Blakely guns now at Callao [Peru] weigh only 14 tons, yet these guns were proved at Woolwich with charges of 60 pounds of powder, and projectiles of 480 pounds weight. These guns were used against the Spanish fleet in 1868, and fired a considerable number of rounds, some of them over 50 per gun. The 9 inch Blakely guns, also at Callao, though only of 8 tons weight, were proved with charges of 45 pounds, and projectiles of 240 pounds weight. None of these guns, 15 in all, sustained the slightest injury; although the tubes were not oil-tempered, and the strongest RLG powder was used. [*RLG or Rifle Large Grain powder was introduced in 1860 for Armstrong wrought-iron guns; it replaced LG or Large Grain in artillery. Small-arms used FG or Fine Grain, too powerful for ordnance. After reverting to LG in the late 1860s when damage was found in Armstrong guns, very large grain or Pebble powder was brought into British service in 1872.] _________________________________________________
5. First Manufacture
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lexander Blakely was a designer of ordnance and was only gradually drawn into the manufacture of cannon. Blakely had to wait until 1865 to acquire his own substantial ordnance works. Previous to then he had to license gun founders and engineering concerns to make cannon to his specifications. The pattern for the first Blakely field piece provided for the Confederate States in 1861 by George Forrester of Liverpool was a design dated May 15, 1860 prepared by Fawcett, Preston & Company. It had a 3.75 inch bore, firing a 16 pound bolt, an 84 inch long barrel, a 73.5 inch long bore, rifled with 6 grooves having a righthand twist, and a single 22 inch long, 3 inch thick steel breech sleeve or hoop. It was claimed, from experience, to be good for over 3,000 rounds. This was the piece used to fire on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. It had on its breech sleeve a brass plate that read: Presented to the Sovereign State of South Carolina by One of Her Citizens Residing Abroad, in Commemoration of the 20th December, 1860. The Citizen was Charles Kuhn Prioleau, partner in the firm of Fraser, Trenholm & Company, of Liverpool, who became treasury agents of the Confederate States. At Charleston this 3 inch gun, the first rifled artillery piece in the Americas, was located at Cummins Point Battery on Morris Island, 1,250 yards away from the island Fort Sumter. It was found that it penetrated the
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forts walls to 11 inches, the same as an 8 inch smoothbore in the same battery. Fawcett, Preston & Company Captain Blakelys gun with Mr Brittens projectile, combined, may safely be recommended as the most perfect system at present known. Fawcett, Preston & Company to Antony Gibbs & Sons, agents for the Republic of Peru, January 29, 1861 The principal maker of Blakely guns was the firm of Fawcett, Preston & Company, Phoenix Foundry, York Street, Liverpool; builders of steam machinery, engines and locomotives, since 1828. Fossets, as they were commonly known on the Mersey, were the closest of all the collaborators of the Agents of the Confederate States in England, allowing their name to be used to commission ships and machinery, as well as making for them iron ordnance to Blakelys and other designs. Fossets also made the greatest numbers of Blakely cannon, as well as those of their own pattern. Blakelys early relationship with Fawcett, Preston & Company is exemplified in August 1860, when the screw steamer Queen of England, 985 tons, was outfitted in Britain for the Italian revolutionary, Giuseppe Garibaldi. The vessel itself was armed with twelve or thirteen cannon with a value of 1,200, provided by Fossets, several were said to be of six or seven inches calibre to Blakelys designs, one was a large pivot piece on the forecastle. In the holds were two 6 inch Blakely rifled guns and carriages, costing 540, fourteen 12 pounder smooth-bore cannon, 700, forty cases of shells, 360, and 336 loose shells, 25, as well as small arms and military stores. This was to be the model for their activities with the southern states. On August 17, 1860 Mechanics Magazine claimed that the firm had commenced production of 70 pounder (i.e. 6.4 inch) Blakely rifles for Garibaldi two weeks after receiving the order and was making three a week for the revolutionary leader. The magazine also observed that the 70 pounders in course of manufacture cost absolutely less than the Armstrong 12 pounders. Curiously, Fawcett, Preston & Company had during the 1840s manufactured iron guns for the Mexican Army, used against the invading American forces in 1848. Even more curious is the claim in the diary of Sir Richard Burton, the legendary explorer recently returned from Africa, also a retired military officer, that he and my friend Blakely of the Guns formed a plan to supply cannon to King Francesco II of the Two Sicilies in May 1860. It was this monarch that Garibaldi intended to overthrow. Between April 27 and May 2, 1860, along with Fawcetts, Captain Blakely organised the first of a great series of artillery trials on Hightown Sands, near Crosby, north of Liverpool. The first private trial was undertaken on April 27, with Captain Blakelys experimental large gun. It was then described as a 50 pounder, and with an elevation of 5 degrees and a light charge of powder threw a 48 pound shell 2,300 yards. It was claimed that this 50 pounder would cost less than a 12 pounder field gun made to W G Armstrongs principles. It was tried again on May 15, 1860, when it was described as having a 6 inch bore, being 8 feet long and weighing 5,376 pounds weight. It achieved then a range of 2,640 yards firing 58 pound Bashley Britten shells. A further trial took place on July 21, 1860, lasting a week, when a new, larger Blakely 6.4 inch calibre muzzle-loading piece, 11 feet in length, of cast iron with a wrought iron breech band, weighing 6,800 pounds, threw a 68 pound Bashley Britten patent explosive shell 3,300 yards with a deviation of only two yards, before Captains Luckraft and Egerton of the Royal Navy, Captain Pigeard, the French Naval attach, the Marquis dAudigy, the French military commissioner, Colonel Filipi of the Austrian Marine Artillery, Captain Schwartz of the Russian Fleet, Mr Orlando, a Sardinian cannon-maker, and several others. The piece cost 250. In comparison the Whitworth 80 pounder weighed 9,400 pounds and cost 1,000, but only achieved 2,550 yards, whilst Armstrongs 70 pounder reached just 2,400 yards. Also tested in July 1860 was a 6 inch screw breechloader made to Blakelys patent by Fawcett Preston for a foreign government, 68 inches long in the bore, which had a range of 2,400 yards when firing a 56 pound shell using 7 pounds of powder. There was another demonstration on August 1, 1860. Delegations from Russia, Austria, France and Piedmont (Italy) were again all present. The two Fosset-made cannon from July were demonstrated: the 6 inch piece fitted with the French breech-loading mechanism, eight feet long, and the 6.4 inch piece. Similar long range results were achieved and widely publicised. Finally in that year, on November 3, 1860, there was a trial at Hightown between three of Clays 3 inch breech-loading field guns, having 84 inch rolled-steel barrels rifled with 15 fine grooves, made by the Mersey Steel & Iron Company to Hugo Forbes patent, and one of Blakelys 3 inch muzzle-loaders, with a 72 inch cast-iron, steel-hooped barrel and five Scott-pattern ratchet grooves, weighing 1,176 pounds, made by Fawcett Preston. The Mersey guns fired governmentpattern 12 pound lead-covered solid bolts, Blakelys gun used Bashley Britten patent 11 pound shells with a 2 pound propellant charge. They fired over a mile range at a 12 feet square target which could scarcely be seen in the thick weather. Blakelys gun had the severe disadvantage of being on a naval truck mount rather than a manoeuvrable field carriage so did not perform well. Joseph Whitworth of Manchester was meant to compete with one of his all-steel breechloading field guns, but did not make an appearance. On January 17, 1861 yet another Blakely gun was tried at Hightown proving ground. It was a 12 pounder rifle, weighing 1,008 pounds and threw a Bashley Britten shell 1,670 yards with 1 pounds of powder, having marvellous accuracy. The British Army 12 pounder smooth-bore weighed 3,808 pounds and had a range of
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1,400 yards, which required four pounds of powder. The gun was bought by a gentleman who was on the ground. The purchaser further tested the gun, firing it point blank through a small wicker hamper at 440 yards distance at the first shot. There was an audience of foreigners for the trial, presumably from among the military attachs in London. The same reports noted that Fawcetts had in hand in January guns ranging from a beautifully light steel 6 pounder of 224 pounds weight to a wrought-iron and steel 200 pounder of 5 tons. The November 1860 gun trials introduced for the first time the 3 inch calibre field gun, a light weapon designed from the outset to fire elongated explosive projectiles. This was to be a bore almost unique to Captain Blakely; known also as a 12 pounder from its use of Bashley Brittens patent shells, and, in America, as the 3.5 inch gun or the three-fifty. Subsequently, the Engineer magazine gave an account of the trials of Blakelys production model rifled field guns in its issue of June 28, 1861, at Hightown Sands, once again. There were three pieces being tested, a 12 pounder, a 9 pounder and a 4 pounder. It explained that they were built up of concentric tubes shrunk on an inner body at a white heat, upon a plan which is exclusively the inventors. There are no rings, the guns having a clear run from vent to trunnion and from trunnion to muzzle. All three had six groove, centrical or ratchet rifling. Blakelys associate, Bashley Britten, was on the Sands, his patent shot and shell were being used in the demonstration. At Hightown on June 18, 1861 the 12 pounder rifle was fired with a 1 pound powder charge, the service charge for a 12 pounder smooth-bore being 4 pounds. With this, at progressive increases of barrel elevation, it achieved a first graze range of 2,320 yards, well over one-and-a-quarter miles. It was said in the newspapers to be 54 inches long and weigh 728 pounds. The two smaller guns were intended for mountain service; each can be lifted by one man, and easily carried anywhere by two, with slings. The 9 pounder rifle was described as a howitzer, weighing 214 pounds, so presumably had a short barrel and high angle of elevation; loaded with a very small pound powder charge, one-sixth the ordinary service quantity for the old smooth-bore gun, achieved a range of 2,200 yards. The little 4 pounder rifle, weighing under 224 pounds and 41 inches long, with an equally trivial powder charge, reached 2,740 yards! The lateral deviation, the Engineer noted, was so inconsiderable as not to require notice. These three types of gun, 12, 9 and 4 pounder, fit the description of the ordnance being procured by the Republic of Peru, and were probably being tested for the benefit of Colonel Francisco Bolognesi, their representative in Europe. On Saturday, September 28, 1861, the London newspapers reported from Fawcett, Preston & Companys works in Liverpool, on Thursday and Friday no fewer than fourteen batteries of four field guns each were despatched for shipment. These guns were complete in all their details and furnishings. They were fully supplied with carriages, and had also equipments of elongated explosive shells. Besides the guns sent away, there were also on the premises, in various stages of forwardness, a number of pieces of all dimensions, from guns light enough for mountain service up to some of the largest in use, including one 400 pounder, 11 feet long, with a 10 inch bore; two 200 pounders, each 10 feet long, with an 8 inch bore, and 2 feet 6 inches in diameter at the breech. The destination of these pieces was not reported, but it is likely that that the bulk of the field guns were shipped to Peru, and that others were to the order of Captain Caleb Huse CSA, or Major Edward Anderson CSA, purchasing agents of the Confederate States in England. However US General John Frmont had already beaten the two southerners by having eight of the new field guns shipped to New York in August for use in Missouri! Blakelys relationship with Captain Huse did not commence well. Huse writing from London to Major Josiah Gorgas, Chief of Ordnance of the Confederate Army, on May 21, 1861, said: I have met Captain Blakely and have conversed with him about his gun. As yet I have failed to see anything in his principle which would cause me to purchase his cannon. He uses the same principle that Armstrong employs - of wrapping an interior core with wrought-iron spirals - and in fact he claims the merit of the invention. The chief difference appears to be that Captain Blakely uses a cast-iron core, while Sir William has a wrought-iron centrepiece. By that summer things had changed. Huses colleague, Major Edward Anderson CSA, visited Fawcett Preston in Liverpool on August 3, 1861, accompanied by Commander J D Bulloch and Lieutenant J H North of the Confederate States Navy, and placed an order for three batteries of 12 pounder Blakely rifled field guns, each weighing around 780 pounds. These twelve pieces were shipped in one lot on board the large screw steamer Bermuda on her first run through the abolitionist blockade in late in September, direct from Liverpool to Savannah, Georgia. Anderson made his purchase directly with Fawcett Preston rather than through Captain Blakely, and manufacture was completed within a month. The Bermuda also carried several, possibly six, 7 inch heavy cannon cast by the Low Moor company in Bradford, rifled and banded at the breech to Blakelys instructions. On September 26, 1861, Major Anderson was visiting Bashley Britten, the civil engineer, who had patented the explosive shells used in Blakelys guns, at his home in Brixton, in South London. Both Commander Bulloch and Lieutenant North were to purchase ordnance from Blakely for the many ships, ironclads and cruisers, which they were having built for the Confederate States in Britain. But even before these official naval acquisitions the first Confederate warship had entered European waters; the large auxiliary cruiser Nashville arrived at Southamp-
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ton, England, on November 21, 1861, armed with two 6 pounder Blakely rifles donated by the State of South Carolina! On December 8, 1861 Captain Blakely announced that he had three 9 inch calibre guns, firing 200 pound bolts, and weighing from 16,000 to 20,000 pounds; two 7 inch, 120 pounders weighing 8,400 pounds; eight or ten 6 inch, 58 pounders and many 40 pounders, ready for delivery to several countries. The screw steamer Bermuda, which was owned by agents of the Confederate government, was not so lucky on her next voyage in February 1862. She was captured; in her holds were five finished Blakely guns in cases, with carriages. These comprised three 7 inch Blakely-Low Moor rifled conversions with 325 cases of 110 pound shells and two 2.9 inch Blakely field guns with 100 cases of shells. Also reported on board were two 5 inch Whitworth guns and three Whitworth breech-loaders, with ammunition and carriages. Blakely appealed to the US Supreme Court for the return of these guns, which he claimed as his property, bound for Hayti by way of Nassau in the Bahamas. The suit went on until December 1865, when both steamer and cargo were condemned as contraband. An early sample contract with Fawcett, Preston & Company is that for the 4.6 inch Blakely muzzleloading guns numbered 193 and 194, as Order No 306, commenced on October 1, 1862, intended for sea service. As well as the barrels the works provided over the next few months iron sights, iron pivot mountings and slides, brass deck sweeps for the pivot mounts, shells, shell lighters, grape shot, shell extractors, powder scoops, and other accessories for both pieces. A larger 6.4 inch gun, No 187, was provided as part of the same order for sea service in the following year, all three intended for the Confederate gunboat Alexandra, for which the firm also provided the engines. Fawcetts Guns No 188 and 189 of 1862 were to Captain Blakelys order as well, and may have been sister pieces. The 6.4 inch rifle and two of the 4.6 inch rifles, Order No 306, listed above, were transferred from Liverpool to London late in March 1863 after the Alexandra was seized by the British courts and used to outfit the new Confederate cruiser Georgia. As well as great guns Fawcetts were commissioned by Blakely to make twelve cast-iron rifled field guns with steel sleeves to the breech in July 1862. These were numbered as Guns No 162 to 174. As late as February 1864 they made a battery of two light 2.9 inch field guns for the Blakely Ordnance Company, including carriages and ammunition limbers, although one carriage was cancelled and substituted with a slide mount for a boat in March. Their first 2.9 inch Blakely gun, with a 36 inch, 212 pound barrel of steel with a single trunnion ring was made in 1861. These small pieces, with long steel sleeves or breech cups, reaching the trunnion ring, and commonly termed 9 pounders, were also made to the identical specification, by Blakelys own works at Bear Lane, Southwark. Regarding their ordnance work, Fossets adopted a policy of concealment even in their own books: many artillery pieces, even some of the largest, were made for stock rather than being attributable to a particular purchaser as was usual in their record-keeping. It was just as well that they were furtive. On June 4, 1861 Fawcetts agreed to provide the Union General J C Frmont with eight 12 pounder Blakely rifled cannon, with carriages complete, which were furnished with Bashley Brittens patent shells. They were shipped to New York in August 1861 and ended up in St Louis, where they were issued to the First Missouri Light Artillery. The purchase served the Union well, from 1862 until 1865. However Fawcetts were to charge Frmont 230 per gun, compared to their price of 109 for similar pieces for Peru! Although making Blakelys rifled gun Fawcetts did not produce their accompanying shells. Manufacture of the Britten projectiles was licensed to Maudslay, Sons & Field, engineers, of Lambeth, London. Fawcett, Preston & Company are known from their records to have made the following guns for Captain Blakely between 1860 and 1864. The numbers shown are those cast into each piece in a sequence that Fawcetts, and other makers, recorded as Blakely patent guns, though not all they made followed his banded design: Numbers 24 to 36, 12 pounders, twelve field pieces, cast-iron with flush trunnion rings and steel sleeves, 1861 (The Confederate Cannon) Number 37, 7 inch, naval piece, cast-iron with steel breech band, for CSS Florida, 1861 Numbers 41 to 43, 4 inch or 30 pounders, three pieces, cast-iron with steel sleeves, 1861 (The Pulaski Cannon, originally four for CSS Florida) Numbers 47 to 50, 12 pounders, four pieces, castiron with steel hoops, 1861 (The Beaufort Cannon) Number 67, 20 pounder, cast-iron with a steel breech band, 1862 (The Chatham Gun) Number 69, 20 pounder, cast-iron with a steel breech band, 1862 (The Fort Nelson Gun) Numbers 97 and 98, 6.5 inch conversions with Bashley Brittens rifling for trials by Woolwich Arsenal, cast-iron with a steel hoop, February 1862 Number 108, 9 pounder, cast-iron with a steel sleeve, 1862 Numbers 116 to 121, 3 inch, six pieces, April 1862 Number 132, unknown type of Blakely exhibition gun, March 1862 Numbers 134 to 139, 4 inch, six pieces, April 1862 Numbers 140 to 143, 12 pounders, smooth-bore, four pieces, March 1862 Number 144, 8 inch or 68 pounder smooth-bore, naval piece, cast-iron for CSS Alabama, April 1862
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Number 145, 7 inch, naval piece, cast-iron with steel breech band, for CSS Alabama, June 1862 Number 146, unknown type of Blakely gun supplied to B & J H Thompson, April 1862 Numbers 147 to 150, 3 inch, four pieces, all-steel, May 1862 Numbers 151 and 152, 12 pounders, two pieces [Order 91] Numbers 153 to 156, 32 pounder smooth-bore, four naval pieces, cast-iron, for CSS Alabama, June 1862 Number 162, 4 inch, probably a naval piece, castiron with steel breech band (The New Canaan Gun), June or July 1862 Numbers 163 to 174, (probably 3 inch), twelve pieces, cast-iron with steel hoops, July 1862 Number 187, 6.4 inch naval gun, probably cast-iron with a steel hoop, for gunboat CSS Alexandra, October 1862, ended up on the CSS Georgia Number 188, unknown type of Blakely gun, probably a 6.4 inch naval gun, 1862 Number 189, 6.4 inch naval gun, cast-iron with a steel hoop, June 1862 Numbers 193 and 194, 4.6 inch naval guns, two pieces, probably cast-iron with steel hoops, for gunboat CSS Alexandra, February 1863, both ended up on the CSS Georgia Numbers 195 and 196, 9 inch naval guns, two pieces, cast-iron with steel hoops, part of an order for five pieces, September 1863 Numbers 221 to 223, 9 inch naval gun, three pieces, cast-steel with cast-iron breech sleeves, part of an order for five pieces, including four for the Laird rams, CSS North Carolina and CSS Mississippi, September 1863 Numbers 260 and 261, 9 pounder smooth-bore, cast-steel guns, two pieces for Laird Brothers, probably a yacht battery (1863?) From their patent numbers it known that these three 3 inch, 12 pounder batteries were the commonest Confederate model of Blakely field gun, with the long breech-sleeve and flush fitted trunnion ring. Several are preserved on the battlefield site at Shiloh, Tennessee. On November 12, 1861 Captain Blakely personally invoiced Huse for: Four long (63 inch) rifled steel nine-pounder cannon at 360 (90 each) 1,008 shells, loaded and fitted with percussion tubes at 340
The long 2.9 inch bore, 9 pounders arrived safely and were recorded by the Army Ordnance Bureau in Richmond. Curiously, though, a similar battery of four 2.75 inch bore, 6 pounders and 1,008 shells were loaded on to the blockade running schooner, Stephen Hart, for the firm of S Isaacs, Campbell & Company, the souths primary supplier of army goods in November 1861. The vessel was captured and that cargo lost to the enemy on January 29, 1862. It is not known who made either of these batteries. On March 4, 1862 the Blakely Cannon Company invoiced Huse for: Six rifled cast-iron cannon, 6 3/10 inch bore, with brass front and tangent sights for 480 (80 each) Six strong elm carriages for the cannon for 93 (15 10s each) 1,800 elongated shells for same cannon, fitted with brass bouches for the reception of percussion fuzes, with 2,000 percussion fuzes, for 2,220
These six pieces and their ammunition also were noted in the files of the Army as having been delivered. From their brief description and their low price it appears that these 6.3 inch cast-iron guns were not made to Blakelys patent, although it is recorded elsewhere that they were rifled, so could fire bolts of between 54 and 70 pounds weight; nor is it known who cast them. In the all of the above three invoices the explosive shells were made to Bashley Brittens patent. Blakely guns without a recorded serial include a 5 inch cast-iron, steel-banded rifle, with a garrison or fortress carriage, ordered in July 1862, a 5 inch piece for field service of January 1862, and an 8 inch wroughtiron lined gun of October 1860. Among the most interesting orders placed by Blakely with Fossets were those made on behalf of Commander Bulloch of the Confederate States Navy. Order 81 was for an 8 inch smooth-bore cast-iron gun No 144 and a 7 inch rifled banded gun No 145; Order 107 was for four 32 pounder smooth-bore cast-iron guns Nos 153 to 156. These were for the new cruiser, the CSS Alabama, being built by Laird Brothers at Birkenhead. Blakely, as a dealer in ordnance, was clearly quite happy to order guns that did not fall within his patent. All five of the unbanded smooth-bores were pressurecurved, something of a novelty to Fawcetts foundrymen the large 8 inch was cast with inadequate pre-
Fawcett, Preston & Company billed Caleb Huse for Blakely patent guns No 25 to 36 during August 1861. They, and other ordnance stores, were forwarded by railway to West Hartlepool for shipment: Twelve steel rifled field pieces strengthened with iron hoops on Captain Blakelys principle, to carry 12 pound elongated shot, length of guns 4 foot 6 inches, each fitted with brass tangent sights, also 12 iron elevating screws, et cetera, at 110 each, totalling 1,320 1,600 solid compound shot for 3 inch guns, 3,200 segmented shells for the same, 3,200 brass concussion fuzes, shipped from London, totalling 2,425 24 sets of rammers & sponges and worms & ladles for 12 pounder steel guns at 30s 0d per set, totalling 36
The London supplier of shells was the engineering firm of Maudslay, Sons & Field.
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ponderance and had to have the tube machined down to reduce the weight at the muzzle end. It is likely that two or more 12 pounder boat howitzers were also provided. Also supplied to the Alabama were 70 round shot and 70 round shell for the 8 inch, 70 elongated bolts and 70 elongated shell to Bashley Brittens patent and 70 armour-piercing spherical steel shot for the 7 inch rifle, together with 40 shot and 40 shell for each of the Fawcett 32 pounders. Another curious order in Blakelys name is that numbered 66 made in March 1862. This consisted of six 3 inch rifled guns, serials 116 to 121; six 4 inch rifled guns, 134 to 139, and four 12 pounder smooth-bore howitzer-guns, 140 to 143, on behalf of A & E Cropstick. This is probably A & E Crosskill, agricultural engineers of Beverley in Yorkshire, who also manufactured army wagons and ordnance equipment. Croskills may have made the field carriages for these pieces. It is possible that this was an artillery train provided for the Emperor of Morocco and delivered in October 1862. Orders to Fawcett Preston from the Blakely Ordnance Company from the beginning of 1864 do not record the serial number. One of the first large orders received was from Peru in South America. In 1861 the Peruvian Director of Artillery, Colonel Francisco Bolognesi Cervantes was in England on a purchasing mission. Some fifty-four Blakely patent rifled, muzzle-loading steel guns were provided in 1861, along with Bashley Brittens patent projectiles, to his order. He purchased both the guns and projectiles from Fawcett, Preston & Company in Liverpool: Fourteen 12 pounders for sea-service Twelve 12 pounder field guns Fourteen 9 pounder mountain guns Fourteen 4 pounder mountain guns having carriages with shafts they were provided with pack saddles and so could be carried on three mules; one each for the barrel, the wheels and carriage, and the ammunition. The 12 and 9 pounder field and mountain guns of identical design but of different lengths were kept in production until 1866 by Fawcetts, Bear Lane and other manufactories. The long 4 pounder mountain guns seem to have been unique to Peru. The fourteen 12 pounder naval guns were originally used to outfit the transport Guise in 1861. By 1864 they were distributed among four sailing transports, Lerzundi (6), Chalaco (2), Mayro (2) and Guise (4). With the coming of war in 1866 at least two were to be transferred to the army, keeping their navy truck carriages. The Peruvians had also ordered a single 4 pounder Krupp cast-steel breech-loader in May 1860 before commissioning guns in England. About 1864, four 9 pounder Armstrong muzzle-loading guns were acquired, called 8 pounders in Peru to avoid confusion with the Blakelys. The Blakelys served Peru well, the field and mountain guns forming the bulk of its two regiments of artillery in the wars with Spain and Chili in the late 1860s and 1870s, a few surviving in use until the 1880s. As a satisfied customer, Colonel Bolognesi was to return to visit Captain Blakely in England in 1863. On December 16, 1862 it was reported that a large number of 40 pounder Blakely cast-iron banded pieces had been despatched to Egypt from Fawcetts on the order of the Captains associate, Commander Robert Scott RN, the Pashas agent in England. Blakely stated in December that three different nations had adopted his 300 pounder guns for their ships. It is not known which nations. Fawcett, Preston introduced Blakely to the work of his fellow Irishman and British Army veteran Captain John Norton, probably best known for his invention of the explosive musket ball, a fearsome device used to kill very large game animals. At the time of his development of this, in 1832, Norton had also devised the flatheaded musket shell for piercing cavalry armour. In the Engineer magazine of November 21, 1862, Captain Blakely claimed to have been making flat-headed steel shells for rifled cannon, for several years, able to pierce the armour of any ship and explode within the hull. He said that he had large contracts open for 300, 600 and 900 pound flat-headed shell, inspired by Nortons design. David Thomas, one of the partners in Fawcetts, had resurrected the flat-headed shell in 1855 for whale-hunting as they did not ricochet off water. It should be noted that Fawcetts also manufactured twelve cast-steel field guns under Henry Bessemers patents in 1861 before he established his own works in Sheffield, Yorkshire. In 1862 they provided the Confederate States with at least one battery, four pieces, of 4 inch calibre cast-iron rifles, similar in appearance to the
Bashley Britten contracted to provide 2,800 solid bolts and segmented shells for the fourteen naval guns, and 4,800 solid bolts, segmented shell and common shell in equal quantities for the forty army pieces to his patent design. The 12 pounders had cast-iron barrels of 67 inch length, with a long, very discrete steel or wrought-iron breech sleeve having a pierced cascabel for an elevating screw and a massive trunnion ring, with Bashley Brittens shallow, square rifling of seven grooves. The Peruvian 12 pounders are different in specification from most of those supplied to the Confederate States. The 9 pounder mountain gun barrels were short, as with a howitzer, with a 3 inch bore, a 36 inch length, 6 inch maximum tube diameter, with a slender steel sleeve, a pierced cascabel, a massive trunnion ring and weighed 208 pounds. They were rifled with six Scott centrical grooves. The barrels of the 4 pounders were 41 inches long, weighing 226 pounds, with the same thin steel sleeve but lacked a cascabel at the breech. These also had six Scott-pattern rifle grooves. As well as
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10 pounder US Ordnance Rifle. Without breech reinforcing bands, these are not Blakely patent guns. Fawcett, Preston & Company undertook to proof test all their ordnance, at the customers expense, on Hightown Sands, Liverpool, rather than have their guns undergo the government trial at Woolwich Arsenal in London. In 1863, Patrick Barry, in his book Dockyard Economy, gave a history of Fossets to that year: The Phoenix Foundry, Liverpool Among the leading engineering works in the town of Liverpool are those of Messrs Fawcett, Preston, and Co, and so long have they been established that at one period there was no other in the town. Some eighty years ago the foundry was not in existence; but in small premises at the corner of York Street the Coalbrookdale Foundry (in Shropshire) had a depot, managed by Mr Rathbone, the maternal uncle of the late Mr Fawcett. On the death of Mr Rathbone Mr Fawcett became his successor. Mr Fawcett during the greater part of his life resided in the old house at the corner of Lydia Ann Street, now a portion of the works; he was born in 1761, and died in 1844, in the eighty-third year of his age. During the long war, a great demand having arisen for iron guns to enable merchant ships to cope with privateers and vessels sailing under letters-of-marque, Mr Fawcett introduced the highly important improvement of casting the guns solid and boring them, as is the practice still, the previous custom, however, having been to cast them hollow. Mr Fawcett's innovation was so favourably received by the public that the annual value of the guns turned out by him was not less than 10,000 - a very large sum for such a purpose in those days. The carronades marked solid on one trunnion and F on the other may be seen now all over the world, and their origin identified. Progress of the establishment Guns The establishment increased and prospered, shop after shop being added to it, with appliance on appliance, until the present large proportions have been reached. In addition to the foundry, there are now the brass foundry in York Street, and the extensive boiler yard and copper shop in Lightbody Street. Castings of the heaviest description are run in the foundry, among which are anvil-blocks for the Mersey forge, the heaviest weighing no less than 62 tons, and standing on a base of 110 square feet, foundation-plates for the cranes, and the fly-wheel weighing 60 tons. At this foundry the manufacture of guns is carried on extensively,not the simple ship guns of former days, but every description of improved artillery, from the light steel mountain gun on its wrought-iron carriage to the heavy-built rifled Blakely 300-pounder. At present Messrs. Fawcett, Preston, and Co have several 9-inch guns in various stages of manufacture, as well as numerous others of all classes. To the Peruvian and other foreign Governments they have supplied large quantities; and during the Crimean war our own Government was supplied by the firm with a large quantity of heavy sea-service mortars, weighing each 5 tons. Land and Marine Engines, &c. Beyond the foundry, there are various workshops for the manufacture of the largest land and marine engines, hydraulic and other presses, rice and sawing machinery, water-wheels, caloric engines, and all the varieties of sugar apparatus for the refineries of Cuba, Java, the Mauritius and the world, from the little cattle cane mill up to that with 7-feet rolls, each weighing as many tons, and from the open iron teache [sugar boiler] to the largest vacuum apparatus. In fact, the manufacture of sugar apparatus may be said to be a speciality of the firm, and Liverpool will say that their reputation has been earned deservedly. Of marine engines the firm have made many. Among other vessels of mark, they fitted the Leeds with engines in 1826. This vessel was built for the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, to ply between Dublin and Bordeaux, and her performances so well pleased the French Government that they ordered several pairs of engines for war steamers, the Sphinx, the Gomer, the Asmodee, and others, the two last of 450horse power. The Messageries Imperiales have also recently supplied a large portion of their fleet with engines made by this firm. The firm also made the engines for the following well-known ships: The Quorra, the first iron steamer ever built; the engines for the ill-fated President; the engines for the Royal William, the first steamer that ever crossed the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York; the engines for the Tigris, the Euphrates; the engines for the Merlin, Medusa, Medina, mail steamers for the City of Dublin Company; and a whole fleet for the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company - the Oriental, Hindostan, Bentinck, Orissa, Behar, Ottawa, Malta, Nubia, and Alma; and last, but not least, the engines for her Majesty's frigates Inflexible, Resolute, and Assistance: the engines for the Ganges and Jumna, for the Oriental and Inland Steam Navigation Company, are also the work of the firm, and at present several pairs of very handsome engines of high power are in hand. Contract steamers In addition to fitting engines for others, they also contract for steamers complete, and of those they have already supplied are the San Luis, Pindari, Itapicuni, Capias, and Camossim, for the Brazils. The Oreto, for Palermo, is another of the steamers contracted for by this firm, and it is scarcely necessary to remark that she has since changed hands and is now sailing under the flag of the Confederate States as the Florida. There are still others: the Phantom, a steel steamer of great speed and beauty, which, by recent accounts, had found its way into Wilmington, N.C.; the Alexandra, still detained by Government until the legality of her construction is tested on appeal; the Great Victoria, for the Australian line; and also two beautiful and swift steel steamers on the stocks. Of steam tugs, dredge boats, and barges it is unnecessary to speak, these having been supplied in great numbers. Altogether, of the capabilities of the engineering works of Messrs Fawcett, Preston, and Co., it is impossible to convey an impression. The machinery for boring, turning, and other purposes, is on a scale of the first importance, and the last order for engines on the books is 2,307. Rightly has the establishment been
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called the Phoenix Foundry, for in 1843 it was burnt to the ground, which, although a serious injury at the time, ultimately proved an advantage, as in rebuilding the premises they were much improved in arrangement and convenience, and the antiquated tools replaced by others of the latest and most effective description. Fawcett, Preston & Company continued to make guns for Blakely, advertising for sale on February 15, 1866, four of his 2 inch bore steel rifles, with 48 inch barrels, on mahogany, brass-mounted carriages, with equipments and suitable projectiles. They had been made for a gentlemans yacht, which then all carried a small battery of guns, classing them as naval auxiliaries and so being free of harbour dues. Other Gunfounders Other ironworks commissioned by Blakely to make his guns included George Forrester & Company, Vauxhall Ironworks, Vauxhall Road, Liverpool, who cast, among others, the original 16 pounder piece that bombarded Fort Sumter in 1861 and the two great 13 inch guns for Charleston in 1863; the Low Moor Iron Company of Bradford who converted old guns to new on Blakelys principles in 1861 and 1862 and made new guns under his patent for Russia in 1863 and 1864; and Jean Voruz of Nantes, who made the guns for the forfeited southern cruisers in 1864. The guns of George Forrester and the Low Moor company were not numbered. It is likely that their licence with Blakely was per ton of ordnance made, rather than per piece as with the more complex cannon made by Fawcett, Preston. Costing by the ton was an historic measure in ordnance. Samuel Bastow, of Cliff House Ironworks, West Hartlepool, was sub-contracted to make one battery of the 9 pounder Blakely mountain guns ordered by Peru in 1861, either by Captain Blakely or by Fawcett Preston. Josiah Vavasseur made a battery of long 9 pounders, with 2.9 inch calibre, 60 inch barrels, for Blakely in 1862 at his Gravel Lane works in Southwark. These had steel breech bands, quite unlike the common 12 pounder or 3 inch Blakely Confederate field guns with their breech sleeves, and had sea-service breeching rings rather than cascabel knobs. They were shipped to Charleston, SC, with appropriate Bashley Britten shells, on the government steamer Georgiana. The ship, unfortunately, sank on the South Carolina coast. Equally unlucky were the four 2.75 inch calibre, 6 pounder Blakely rifles, 2,000 cartridge bags and 1,008 shells, loaded and capped, shipped on board the schooner Stephen Hart in London, bound for Cardenas in Cuba on November 19, 1861. They were seized by the abolitionist navy off Key West, Florida, on January 29, 1862, along with a haul of rifles and clothing, and condemned as contraband for the Confederate States. In 1863 Captain Blakely observed to Parliament that Cameron & Company, of Charleston, South Carolina, had commenced making field guns to his model. Archibald Cameron & Company, engineers and machinists, of Hasell Street, Charleston, indeed constructed a 3.5 inch calibre cast-iron gun with a long wrought-iron breech sleeve, rifled with six Bashley Britten type square grooves, in May 1861 to Blakelys pattern. Unfortunately Camerons works were burnt down in December 1861, and although rebuilt as the Phoenix Ironworks in King Street, Charleston, during 1862, rifling heavy cannon, casting artillery projectiles, and making steam machinery, they did not resume cannon making. The redoubtable Mr Cameron saw his works utterly destroyed once again in 1865, this time by the enemy, but again restored them to prosperity. After service at Cat Island, near Charleston, on the Waccamaw river and at Colombia, South Carolina, and capture, his single Blakely gun was returned to Charleston. Blakely was continually improving the specification and materials used in his cannon. His use of steel in making the reinforcing breech-hoops on the cast-iron barrel tubes of his muzzle-loading rifles before 1864 might be better interpreted, more accurately as using wrought-iron. These hoops were made from spiral wound bars hammered into a cylinder and applied when hot on to the breech end of the inner tube. The early rifling was commonly of saw-tooth or ratchet form, as devised by Blakelys early collaborator, Commander Robert Scott RN, he also used in larger pieces the square rifling of Bashley Britten, who designed shot and shell for his ordnance. Curiously, in June 1862 Blakely approached the old established firm of Thomas Astbury & Son, Smethwick Foundry, Rolfe Street, Birmingham, engineers, ironfounders and manufacturers of ordnance to her Majestys and foreign governments. They were to provide a sample of their 6.3 inch American cast-iron rifled guns to Blakelys order for 75, as he had a large number of projectiles on hand to fit that size. The foundry unfortunately provided a 6.5 inch Sardinian pattern gun on July 1, 1862, which was rejected. Much later, in April 1868, the Regents Canal Ironworks Company of Eagle Wharf Road, New North Road, London EC, on its dissolution, had in its possession, among many other of its manufactures, three Blakely Ordnance guns with jackets complete, 12 guns and 12 jackets. This would seem to be yet another source commissioned by Blakely for components and finished guns. No size is given but from the quantity they would seem likely to be field pieces, rather than great guns. The Putnam Machine Company were constructing guns to Blakelys patents in 1865 in Massachusetts. Blakely Cannon Company To manage his many patents and to take the many orders from governments that he was starting to receive, in 1860 the Blakely Cannon Company was formed. This was a simple firm, in which Alexander Blakely was the sole member, with an office at 35 Parliament Street, Westminster. It occupied one floor of a house in the lobbying district, close to the government ministries. As well as a clerk or two the Cannon Company employed W G P Britten, brother of Bashley Britten, one of Blakelys earliest collaborators, to work on developing shells for the new guns in May 1861.
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In January 1861 the firm of Owen, Richardson & Company, of 3 Newmans Court at 73 Cornhill, London, were appointed agents for the sale of Blakelys ordnance. They were machinery and hardware commission merchants who specialised in trade with the Baltic and with the north-of-Europe. It had Arthur Smith Owen as the managing partner, he was a former East India merchant and ship broker; it is likely that he led to Blakelys successful connection with Russia. Although the connection did not do Owen much good; he failed in December 1864. A new, important, character now appears. Sometime in December 1860 Josiah Vavasseur acquired the freehold of a small ironworks at what was then numbered 33 Bear Lane, Christchurch, Southwark, in the hands of David Davies, a smith and engineer, occupying a space of 60 feet fronting Bear Lane, by a depth of 150 feet, having thereon a dwelling house, counting house, pattern room, large smiths shop, and lofts over sheds, extensive foundry with several forges, &c.. It had a rental value in 1860 of 110, indicating that Vavasseur paid around 2,000 for the site. The foundry also had a house and entry at 28 Gravel Lane, Southwark, next to the White Hart public house, which in 1860 became the address of the works. Blakely and Vavasseur came together when the new rifling machine devised by the latter was used to finish the largest of Blakelys guns. Soon Vavasseur and Blakely began to co-operate in developing guns, projectiles and, especially, mountings and carriages to absorb the strains of new cannon. At least one battery of field pieces was made by Vavasseur at his Gravel Lane works to Blakelys patents in 1862. The odd 6.3 inch American gun ordered by Blakely of Thomas Astburys works in Smethwick was to be delivered to J Vavasseur & Co. in Southwark in July 1862. In October 1862 Vavasseur leased the adjacent timber yard of Samuel Rutt, adding to his works an area of 80 feet north to south, and 35 feet east to west, including another house and a large yard, so that the factory site became triangular in plan. With its new waggon entrance from Rutts yard to the south, giving access to large gun barrels for the first time, the address became No 1 Bear Lane, Southwark. The site was then surrounded on the three sides by small, mean houses in multiple occupancy. To the west was Bear Lane, to the east was Gravel Lane, to the north two small courts. Between 1861 and June 1864 the high brick arches carrying the tracks of the London, Chatham & Dover Railway to the Blackfriars station on the Thames were built, overlooking the new gun manufactory that maps of London indicated. One of the unique ordnance products that Blakely and Vavasseur started to produce in 1863 were spherical steel shot for breaking iron armour. These were introduced by Henry Bessemer in 1862 as a way of upgrading elderly smooth-bored naval cannon to counter-act the new ironclad warships. It was claimed that spherical steel shot could penetrate any armour then existing. Their manufacture was described by William Fairbairn in his book Iron of 1865: The mass to be operated upon is cut by a saw from a solid cylinder. The angles of the cylindrical lump are then reduced by pressure between curved surfaces. In this approximate form they are put at a bright red-heat into the rolling-mill, which consists simply of a revolving table in which an annular channel is formed. The channel being in section part of a circle of the diameter of the intended shot, a similarly grooved table is fixed above it. The axis of the lower one may be moved endwise by an hydraulic ram, there being a recess formed in the ram to receive the end of the axis. Now, when a mass of steel is put into this annular channel, and the table set in motion by powerful gearing, the hydraulic ram is made to act on the lower end of the axis, and compress the revolving mass between the grooved surfaces. The lump of steel in its passage round the central shaft also revolves on its own axis, which constantly varies in position, and thus insures the most perfectly spherical form. By February 1864 the Bear Lane works was making 104 pound steel spheres for 9 inch guns, and 198 pound spheres for 11 inch guns, good for rifles or smoothbores, using metal from Naylor, Vickers and Kenyon in Sheffield. Thousands were being produced to Russian order by Bessemer and Blakely. As with all such independent ideas the War Office, in charge of both army and naval ordnance, refused to believe in the efficacy of spherical steel shot; fortunately they were never tried against the Royal Navy. Josiah Vavasseurs elder brother, James, was a figure of considerable influence in the silk trade. It can be speculated that Blakelys subsequent dealings with Henry Leighton and, more unfortunately, with Dent & Company in the China trade came through this connection. In September 1863 Blakely, through an intermediary, offered the Confederate States ten 9 inch cast-steel rifles and ten 11 inch rifles, able to penetrate two 4 inch iron plates, for immediate delivery. This offer, by Joseph Walker, agent of the state of South Carolina, through General P G T Beauregard in Charleston, was not taken up, and the 9 inch guns made for the Confederate States Navys Laird Rams were not delivered either. This suggests that there was a falling-out between Blakely and the Richmond government. It possibly came about over the extremely high prices of his new steel ordnance, or, alternately, because of his association with S Isaac, Campbell & Company, the governments most favoured (as well as being the most enthusiastic and successful) contractor for army goods in Europe, who were found to be overcharging. Also, the initial failure, through no fault of Blakelys, of his 13 inch gun at Charleston would not have helped the relationship. Whatever the cause, no more orders were placed by the south with Blakely after the autumn of 1863; the last being through Jean Voruz in France. Blakely was then well occupied in making great guns for Peru and for Russia.
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Blakely Ordnance Company (a partnership) The Blakely Cannon Company of 35 Parliament Street, Westminster, merged in 1863 with Josiah Vavasseur & Company, and Vavasseur became engineer and manager of a new partnership, called the Blakely Ordnance Company. This company was formed in a debenture between Alexander Theophilus Blakely of Bear Lane, Surrey, and John Dent of 35 Grosvenor Square. It continued the existing business in managing patents, designing guns, making field guns and commissioning large cannon of ironfounders. From about this time Lieutenant Frederick William Platt, an infantry officer, became private secretary to Alexander Blakely. He had entered the Army by purchase as an Ensign in April 1851, in the 7 th Foot, becoming a Lieutenant in the 95th Foot. His history is opaque, but Platt stayed with Blakely until 1866. The firm was a simple partnership between Blakely and Dent, with offices and works at Bear Lane, Southwark. The latter became Blakelys business address henceforth as a Manufacturer of Ordnance. John Dent of the mercantile firms of Dent & Company of Hong Kong, China, and of Palmer, McKillop & Dent, 11 Kings Arms Yard, Lothbury, London, provided funds for Blakely to acquire and extend the engineering works of Josiah Vavasseur in Southwark. These works, the buildings of which, incidentally, existed until the year 2000, were confined and inconvenient; only after they were expanded in 1863 were they capable of making any but the smallest of pieces. The rooms at 35 Parliament Street, Westminster, near the Houses of Parliament and the offices of government, were kept on for several months until Blakely finally gave up trying to sell his guns to the War Office. Palmer, McKillop & Dent were old-established East India and China Merchants, the firm dating from the early part of the century. The firms title altered over the years as the partners came and went. The three families provided Members of Parliament and Lord Mayors of London throughout the period, the latter a significant honour. Coincidentally the firm had acted for South Carolina and Florida in floating their State Bonds in the 1840s on the London financial market. John Dent, whose personal history is outlined in the chapter on Blakelys Associates, was senior partner in Dent & Company, of Hong Kong. He had only recently arrived in London from the Indies, age 41. From 1863 onwards Blakely concentrated on manufacturing ordnance from steel. In this he, once again, outsourced production, relying on the few producers of crucible steel for raw stock for the Bear Lane works and for forging and finishing components for guns and, increasingly, for more sophisticated carriages to manage his great guns. The Sheffield firms of Naylor, Vickers & Company, John Kenyon & Company, and Thomas Firth & Sons all produced tubes and hoops in steel for Blakelys new range of ever larger guns. The novel process of ordnance manufacture adopted by Captain Blakely in the mid-1860s deserves better recognition as it is a triumph of modern logistics using railways as much as of technical ability. By 1863 the steel industry in Britain had come of age, and cast-steel was just about to become available in sufficient quantity to make its use economically viable for ordnance and armour plate. Rather than develop a complete vertically-integrated plant on a single site Blakely chose, or more probably had no option but to use, a production process that had the several components of his great guns made in multiple locations and shipped to his small Bear Lane factory for finishing and assembly. This involved the co-ordination of component manufacture at at least eight sub-contractors; ensuring precise specifications and tolerances were maintained, and shipping massive pieces of metal, gun tubes, jackets and trunnion rings, in steel and iron, from many locations about the country into London. The suppliers of large scale components such as castings and forgings included: John Brown & Company, Atlas Works, Sheffield Fawcett, Preston & Company, Liverpool Thomas Firth & Sons, Norfolk Works, Sheffield Friedrich Krupp Cast Steel Works , Essen, RhenishPrussia John Kenyon & Company, Millsands, Sheffield Lancefield Forge Company, Anderston, Glasgow Low Moor Iron Company, Low Moor, Bradford Naylor, Vickers & Company, River Don Works, Sheffield (from Millsands, Sheffield, in 1863)
Gun carriages were also sub-contracted, at least in part, in this period to other firms: J & G Rennie, Albion Works, Blackfriars Road, Southwark (wrought-iron) C E & T Ferguson, Mast House, Millwall, Poplar, London (wooden)
This method of sub-contracting continued even after Blakely established his own much larger ordnance works in 1865. One of Blakelys longest business relationships was that with William Needham, a partner in the Butterley Company, iron and coal masters of Butterley and Codnor Park in Derbyshire. This venerable firm had been formed in 1779; the partnership of Needham and William Jessop dating from June 1830. It was a very large scale enterprise, owning coal-pits, iron foundries and iron works. Butterley had made Blakelys earliest field pieces in 1855 and Needham assisted him in forming his manufacturing concerns. When Britain was at war with Russia in 1856 the firm backed Blakely to the extent of promising to manufacture for the government, 16 inch (!) guns formed in a number of layers to his design for 800 each when their actual cost would be 860. The offer was ignored by the War Office. A small insight into Blakelys production is revealed in an article in the Kentish Chronicle newspaper of February 6, 1864. It states that in the last fortnight exports by the Blakely Ordnance Company were one 9 pounder,
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three 500 pounders, six 300 pounders, four 100 pounders, one 140 pounder, two 18 pounders, one 42 pounder and 300 tons of shot and shell. All made in steel. The same paper reported two weeks later that Blakely had orders for 1,000 tons of steel shot and shell for export to the Continent, worth 40,000. Tavistock Ironworks & Steel Ordnance Company, Limited (a corporation) Blakelys first effort to create an industrial base similar to that of his competitor, William Armstrong, occurred in 1864 with guidance of William Needham. He assembled a range of financial and industrial interests to launch the Tavistock Ironworks & Steel Ordnance Company, Limited, on April 27, 1864, with a capital of 200,000, one half to be called up, in 5,000 shares of 20 on which 10 was to be subscribed. This would leave 50,000 available to acquire the 60 year old engineering and ironfounding business of Gill & Company in Tavistock, Devon. These works had been established as the Mount Foundry Ironworks by Gill, Bray & Hornbrook around the year 1809. John Gill became the sole owner in 1818, and in the 1830s was joined by John Rundle. It had manufactured steam engines and boilers, chains, hammered iron and edge tools, as well as mining and other machinery. The works already had the patent rights to Edward Smith Creases pneumatic tunnelling engines, to effect a complete revolution in the scientific working of mines, from which much was expected. The directors of the Tavistock Ironworks were Captain T A Blakely of Southwark and St Petersburg, Henry Alers Hankey, chairman of the New Zealand Banking Corporation, Philip Henry Benett of Henry Leighton & Co., George Payne Kitson, a getter-up of financial companies and banks, Charles Burn, a civil engineer, and J J Russell, of Wednesbury, a large-scale maker of iron tubing. As well as the works it maintained offices at 14 Gresham House, Old Broad Street, London. The firm had its account with the Agra Bank in London, of which more later. The firm of Henry Leighton & Company of London and Shanghai, had commissioned Blakely to make cannon for the Emperor of China. The Tavistock Ironworks was established to carry out on an important scale the manufacture of steel, under Bessemers or other patents, to construct steel ordnance, manufacture steel shot and shell, draw steel wire, manufacture and erect steam engines, boilers and all kinds of machinery and implements. The property had thirteen acres of land with the works, a mansion with plantations and grounds, a managers house, and cottages and gardens for the workers. It had its own water power for machinery. Its profits were to derive from several patent rights and contracts and a licence to manufacture Blakely guns. The works was said to be accessible by canal with Plymouth Sound and the ocean, and by railway to the rest of the country. The new company anticipated taking possession of the works from Gill & Company on April 30, 1864. It was a poorly-sited facility, with, as it turned out, very bad access for materials and for large iron work such as cannon barrels; the City investors were not convinced of its viability. It never was operational in making steel or in any of the advanced manufactures proposed in the initial promotion. A fair sum of money was invested in the Tavistock property but it remained a small-scale tool works as the inventory of 1868 indicates. The buildings then comprised a forge, fitting shop, plating mill, patternmakers shops, two foundries, a smiths shop, an iron store, general store, gatekeepers lodge, seventeen workmens dwellings, a managers house and larger house for the owners family, as well as stabling, meadow land, and large yards. The works were equipped with four tilt hammers, cranes and furnaces, shears, plate bending rolls, a large surfacing and boring lathe, self-acting turning and screw-cutting lathes, shaping, planing, drilling and screwing machines, hydraulic proving apparatus, grindery, three cupolas with fan blast, three core stoves, two foundry cranes, a large iron-casting pit, smiths forges, and a five-ton weigh-bridge. The machinery was driven by six overshot waterwheels, equal to 200 horsepower. A new foundry and a new smithy had been added since 1864, but nothing to make either steel or cannon. Eventually, by mid-1866 the Tavistock company had a paid-up capital of 32,374 with outstanding liabilities to creditors of around 14,000. As 15 on each share had then been called up, this would require a call of 5 to cover all of its debts. On the petition of the then directors, Alexander Blakely, Charles Burn, a civil engineer, and William Gill, an order was made to wind-up the Tavistock Ironworks & Steel Ordnance Company, and a liquidator appointed on December 22, 1866. The property was taken over in 1869 by Nicholls, Mathews & Co. of Bedford Iron Foundry, all Bedford activities transferred to the Tavistock Foundry, where more and reliable water power for the machinery was available. By 1880s ownership had passed to Joseph Mathews & Co., general engineers. William Gill involved Blakely in a shady deal regarding the Perran Iron Mine at Perranzabuloe near Newquay, Cornwall, between June and November 1865. Also known as the Mount Mine, it was one of many mining properties that had fallen into the hands of Edward Carter & Company, bankers of St Columb. Gill was convinced that the Perran ore was particularly good for steel making in the Bessemer blast process and Blakely agreed to buy the iron mine for 65,000. It then transpired that Gill and Carter were forming a syndicate that would buy the mine for 75,000, and, with the assistance of Captain Blakely, set up a jointstock mining company to which they would sell the property for 125,000! The finance for the formation of the firm and for the purchase of the Perran mine would come from the Crdit Foncier et Mobilier of England, Limited, a London firm of money dealers and company promoters. It was quickly discovered that Carter did not have right of sale, and was involved with a band of
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fixers and middle-men. Crdit Foncier and Blakely both abandoned the scheme. Gill also contrived to associate Captain Blakely with the Old Gunnislake Mining Company, a copper extractor, of Calstock, Cornwall, a few miles away from Tavistock. It was another joint-stock promotion of the year 1864, with a capital of 45,000. William Gill was banker to the firm. The company bought the old, run-down mine and installed new steam pumping and winding machinery. It also introduced Creases tunnelling machine in 1867. Blakely became the chairman of the board of directors in March 1866; it is not know what his capital participation was. It had failed by 1870. It should be added that Captain Blakely attempted to become the Member of Parliament for Tavistock in the general election of 1865. Captain Blakely was also a director of the South Kensington Hotel Company, a joint stock venture promoted in February 1863 to convert six mansion houses in Queens Gate Terrace, London, into a 100 room hotel and club-house. It was to raise 100,000 and opened for business on October 20, 1864. Blakely Ordnance Company, Limited (a corporation) In 1865 Captain Blakely was a Manufacturer of Ordnance with customers around the world demanding ever larger cannon and more massive, sophisticated iron carriages to manage the recoil of these pieces. He needed capital to create a foundry, forges, rolling mills and rifling machines. In that year he promoted to the public the Blakely Ordnance Company, Limited, a joint stock company offering limited liability to its shareholders, seeking several hundred thousand pounds in money with which to build a new ordnance works on the banks of the Thames river in London. The story of the Blakely Ordnance Company, Limited, merits a chapter of its own... _________________________________________________ breech-loading guns and then to Joseph Whitworth & Company in Manchester. Armstrong responded that he could only make guns for the British government and Whitworth that he would not make sample guns. By preference the Peruvian government sought rifled guns to the French system of General Treuille de Beaulieu, also they desired breech-loading pieces. On August 8, 1860 the government wrote that it wanted to acquire a mountain battery of twelve rifled 4 pounders, a 32 pounder naval gun and a large coastal gun using the French system. These were to be financed with the revenues generated in Europe by the guano trade through their financial agents, Antony Gibbs & Sons, merchants, of 15 Bishopsgate Street, London. Progress was so slow that the Lima government despatched Colonel Francisco Bolognesi Cervantes, an artillery officer, to Europe late in 1860 to replace Major Pareja in negotiating for artillery and ammunition. When Bolognesi arrived in London he found that Antony Gibbs & Sons had already obtained new proposals from Joseph Whitworth and from an additional source, Fawcett, Preston & Company of Liverpool. In December 1860 Whitworth quoted Gibbs 2,400 for twelve 1 pounder guns if breech-loading or 2,300 muzzle-loading, with 100 shot and shell per piece. If the guns were 3 pounders the cost would increase to 2,700 for breech-loaders and to 2,500 for muzzle-loaders. On January 11, 1861 Fawcett Preston quoted Gibbs for making twelve 3 pounder brass smooth-bore mountain guns for 1,032; and one 12 pounder mountain howitzer at 89, along with shot, shell and canister. The pieces were on carriages with shafts, without limbers the ammunition was carried by pack animals. In the same document they also quoted for making, and strongly recommended, twelve 3 pounder, 2.1 inch bore, rifled mountain guns to Captain Blakelys system, for 996. Fawcetts justified their recommendation by stating that the customary addition of a shell-firing howitzer to each mountain battery would no longer be necessary as the Blakely rifles fired both shot and shell; and that the rifled muzzle-loading gun is in point of range and accuracy of fire... beyond all comparison superior to the old fashioned smooth-bore gun. Fawcetts detailed the requirements for pack saddles required to transport the barrels, carriages and ammunition boxes on horse or mule back in mountain terrain. They would also provide a special mould for the rifled guns so that cylindrical lead shot could be cast in the field should the specially-made iron bolts run out. The lead shot would be cheaper than iron. The detail of their two quotes follows: Twelve mountain guns in brass, 3 pounders, 3 inch calibre, weighing 250 pounds Twelve carriages with shafts, elevating screws, rammers, sponges, shell extractors and powder scoops, and copper powder measures Twenty-four ammunition boxes
6. Cannon for Peru

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he following chapter is based on original information generously provided by Sr. Carlos Carrera and Admiral Reynaldo Pizarro of the Peruvian Navy. Their sources in Peru are the Archives of the Foreign Ministry, the Military Archives and the Archive of the Museo de los Combatientes del Morro. During 1858 the President of Peru, Ramn Castilla y Marquesado, instructed the Peruvian Legation in London to investigate the purchase of modern artillery for the Army. The military attach at the Legation, Sargento-Mayor [Major] Emeterio Pareja, approached ordnance manufacturers in Prussia, France and Britain with a view to buying sample guns for testing. The process proved slow: the Prussian government was not interested in providing its new cast-steel weapons; similarly the French government with their state-of-theart rifled brass guns. In March 1860 an approach was made to W G Armstrongs Elswick Ordnance Company in Newcastle-upon-Tyne to buy one or two of their new
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Forty-eight pack saddles for the guns, carriages and ammunition boxes One mountain howitzer, 12 pounder, 4.2 inch calibre, weighing 280 pounds One mountain carriage, ammunition boxes, pack saddles, as before is comparatively trifling, if incurred for a single gun materially enhances its expense. The prices include a patent right which would have to be paid to Captain Blakely. Expenses of proof would have to be paid by the purchaser, we undertaking all risk. The shell we give according to quotations from the inventor, we do not ourselves make them, the prices are for shell complete exclusive of loading fuses and packing. We are now making a small gun for mountain service and also a 12 pr field piece, when these are ready, we shall have much pleasure in letting you know should the Peruvian minister desire any one to attend the trials upon behalf of his government. We remain gentlemen your obedient servants Fawcett Preston & Co Enclosure 1 [Edited] Rifled Ordnance The following remarks upon rifled ordnance are based partly upon our own observation and partly upon information collected from various sources which we have every reason to consider authentic and we believe that they may be accepted as correctly representing the position of the subject at this time. It is only of late years that practical artillerists and engineers have been induced by the success attending the substitution of the rifled arm for the old fashioned smooth bore musket to devote their attention to the application of similar principles to ordnance. Our own and foreign governments as well as many private individuals have been engaged for some years in making experiments with rifled guns of various forms upon a great variety of systems; it appears however that up to the present time no gun has been brought before the public which is entitled to claim a marked superiority over all others, the opinions of professional men, as to the best system for proportioning and making rifled ordnance, vary so much that no conclusion can be come to upon this point. The rifled guns hitherto experimented upon may be divided into two classes breech loaders and muzzle loaders. The breech loading guns of Armstrong and of Whitworth may be taken as representing the former class, of the many others which have been designed and tried, none have been sufficiently experimented upon or brought to a degree of excellence to entitle them to special mention. The Armstrong gun has been adopted by the British Government and extensive arrangements for its production have been established at Woolwich and at the Elswick works in the North of England. Frequent reports appear in the public prints giving account of the extraordinary powers of these guns - in point of fact however their performance appears exceptional only because few authenticated results are available, upon which to make comparisons between them and other rifled guns, the merits of which are less prominently put forward
Cost for brass guns and accessories at 86 - 1,032
Cost for the howitzer 89 It was customary to provide one 12 pounder howitzer in each mountain battery of four pieces. Alternatively: Twelve rifled mountain guns, wrought-iron, 3 pounders, 2.1 inch calibre, to Captain Blakelys system, with brass tangent sights, weighing 245 pounds Twelve mountain carriages, twenty-four ammunition boxes, forty-eight pack saddles, with accessories, as before One mould for making lead shot, costing 7 3 pound iron round shot for brass guns, 12s 0d per hundredweight 3 pound canister shot, 8d each 12 pound shell for the howitzer, 1s 2d each Cylindrical lead projectiles for the rifled pieces, 4d per pound or 1s 2d each
Cost for each set of Blakely guns 83, total 996 Ammunition would be supplied at the following cost:
Fawcetts followed this up on January 29, 1861 with a long analysis of the ordnance market in Europe, indicating they would only proceed with a manufacturing contract and not for samples: Liverpool 29th January 1861 To Messrs A. Gibbs & Sons, London We herewith beg to hand you an estimate for rifled ordnance in accordance with an inquiry received from you early in this month. The drawing accompanying our estimate represents guns of the description offered, mounted upon the traversing carriage and upon the ordinary carriage, and will serve to shew their general appearances. The accompanying report upon rifled ordnance gives the views upon which our estimates have been based and will we trust be found sufficiently explicit for your purpose. We are at all times ready to give any further information at our command should such be required. We think there can be no doubt that the mortars referred to are the small 12 pr brass mortars described. We have no 12 inch mortars, the larger ones used in the British service are of cast iron, 13 inch, 10 inch, 8 inch, &c. The prices quoted are for guns in quantity we cannot undertake to supply single guns for experiments at these prices, as the cost of patterns, tools for rifling, boring &c which when divided over a number of guns
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The Armstrong gun does not surpass many other rifled guns of simpler and less expensive construction in regard to extent and accuracy of range, whilst from its peculiar arrangement for loading at the breech it is open to many well founded objections. The breech is composed of several distinct moveable parts which require to be fitted with a very great amount of accuracy to ensure the efficiency of the gun. So essential is this great exactness of fit that special tools are carried with each gun upon actual service with which certain parts of the breech are readjusted at intervals; the instruction issued by the War Office for the care and use of the Armstrong gun directing that these parts are to be regulated after every hundred rounds or more frequently when practicable. A comparatively very trifling damage to any part of the breech apparatus may render the gun useless, it is absolutely necessary that these parts are kept perfectly clean, free from fouling or grit or the vent piece lets gas pass, on the other hand if not carefully adjusted in loading the vent piece blows away, in either case the gun is disabled because its peculiar construction does not admit of its being applied as a muzzle loader. It is reported that two of the guns recently used in China were rendered for the time useless by the vent piece, which in the heat of action was not sufficiently secured in loading, blowing away. Two similar instances have occurred within our own experience with guns of similar construction, we have also witnessed the difficulty in loading when the breech gets foul or is not adjusted with the greatest nicety. The particular shell used with these guns frequently after leaving the piece loses the lead coating with which they are enveloped; rendering them scarcely less dangerous to friends, under certain circumstances, than to enemies. Having seen frequent instances of this we are disposed to believe the report that upon one occasion out in China a number of men of the 44th Regt. were killed by lead flying off from shell from the Armstrong guns which were being fired over them. The recoil of these guns is very heavy on account of the great spirality which is given to the grooving and from the peculiar manner in which the shot is made to take the rifling. It is only recently that heavy guns upon this principle have been made to stand proof, none of these have hitherto been used excepting for experimental purposes. The difficulty in loading must be greatly increased with these guns, the moveable parts of the breech being much more [word unclear] and difficult to manipulate than the corresponding parts of similar guns upon the smaller seats. It is intended to arm several ships of war now fitting with these guns. We understand however that they are not approved of at the Admiralty partly upon the ground that they cannot be used between decks as they fill these confined spaces with smoke from the breech. For marine purposes they appear also to be specialty unsuited on account of the damage to which they are exposed from the action of salt, air and water upon the nicely adjusted breech apparatus. The annexed list of frigates [not included here] now fitting gives some particulars of the armaments proposed, these may however be considerably modified before the vessels named are put in commission. The Whitworth breech loader, we consider superior to the Armstrong in mechanical arrangements, it being simpler in construction and having the moveable parts comparatively less exposed. It answers very well for small guns, the practice made in this vicinity early in 1860 with 3 and 12 pr guns being conclusive upon this points we believe that Mr. Whitworth has however not yet succeeded in making heavy guns upon his system to stand. The shot require planing and the powder is introduced into the breech in specially constructed tin canister[s] which are withdrawn after each discharge. The French used some breech loading rifled field pieces in the Italian War, the accounts of their wonderful precision at long distances will be remembered as will also the report that it required half an hour to load them after each discharge. We understand that they have since returned to the muzzle loading system as being preferable. Their iron cased frigate Gloire of which so many conflicting reports are in circulation is armed with muzzle loading rifled guns upon a system to which we shall especially refer later on. We have a drawing of this gun which in calibre is about equal to the smooth bore 32 pr and will carry an elongated projectile of about 68 lbs. Our information as to what the French are doing in rifled guns is to some extent corroborated by the circumstance that last year we made a breech loading 6 in gun for the Russian Government after a design which was supplied to us and which had been procured in France. Several experiments were made by us with this gun under direction of Russian officers with a view of testing the breech apparatus. The gun was ultimately sent to Cronstad for further experiments. In our opinion it will not answer, and in this view we were confirmed by an observation from a French naval officer who passing through our works recognized the design and stated that the arrangement had been tried in France and abandoned as impracticable. Muzzle loading rifled guns, in great variety, have been recommended and experimented upon. Of the systems which have come under our observation those of the Bashley Britten and of Captain Blakely appear to us as deserving of particular [attention]. Mr. Britten advocates the application of ordinary service guns of which large stores are on hand for rifled ordnance. He has recently completed a series of experiments with guns of this description committed to him for trial by Governments and the results of these experiments is now, before the select Ordnance Committee for reports. Mr. Britten has succeeded in producing a projectile a combination of lead and iron applicable for muzzle loading guns, which can hardly be surpassed. The loading is performed with as much facility as with ordinary round shot and in a considerable number of trials which we have superintended of shell and shot of this description, with guns of various calibre, we have uniformly found that they expand and take the rifling perfectly and in no instance has there been any sign of the lead stripping as is the case with Armstrongs projectile. He
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proposes that guns at present in store shall be rifled with a moderate amount of spirality and that the charge of powder shall be reduced to an extent which these guns will bear with safety. We have particulars of his experiments, the results of which are verified by trials of his projectiles made by ourselves, they have undoubtedly been eminently successful and will bear comparison with the best practice made with the much vaunted Armstrong and Whitworth guns. Captain Blakely recommends the use of rifled guns [reinforced] by application of hoops or bands at the breech end so as to enable them to resist the increased strain to which they are subjected, he has a patent for guns so constructed. Our own and foreign governments have extensively experimented upon these guns and we understand that the system has been adopted in France. The guns of the frigate Gloire, previously referred to, are upon this plan. We have within this last year made guns strengthened upon this principle for the Russian Government for experiments and we understand also, that rifled cast iron guns are being introduced into the American navy. All rifled guns which we have ourselves hitherto tried are upon this construction and they have without exception with stood the severest tests put upon them. Several pieces of ordnance made of single solid forgings or in which very large forgings form an important part having been constructed and much discussed we may state that we do not consider these to have been sufficiently successful to under their adoption advisable. The monster mortars known as Lord Palmerstons Mortars carrying a 36 inch shell, which were made about the close of the Crimean war and which have since been tried at Shoeburyness were partly fitted in our works. We at that time had an opportunity of forming an opinion which has been confirmed by subsequent experience and which is corroborated by the fact that the trials referred to have led to these mortars being abandoned. It appears to us that large solid forgings are not applicable for guns because there is at present no means of producing these masses of wrought material of that uniformity of strength and soundness, essential for the purpose required. The considerations of which we have endeavoured to give an outline, lead us to the conclusion, that Captain Blakelys gun with Mr Brittens projectile, combined, may safely be recommended as the most perfect system at present known. The drawings herewith represent a 7 inch gun upon the Blakely principle mounted upon a traversing platform and a 6 inch gun of similar construction upon an ordinary ships carriage. Guns of larger and smaller calibre presents the same general outline as these whether constructed of a combination of cast and wrought iron or entirely of wrought iron as is the case with guns used as field pieces. These guns may be used, should occasion require, with ordinary round shot although of course this practice could not be continued for any length of time without injury to the grooving and materially impairing their efficiency as rifled guns. Rifled mortars have not hitherto been employed, some few experiments have been made with them which have however led to no definite results. Up to the present time no British ships of war have been armed with rifled guns, single guns have however been put on board in some instances for experimental purpose only. It is contemplated to arm the iron cased frigate Warrior partly with Armstrong guns as also some of the larger class of frigates. Enclosure 2 [Edited] Memorandum of the Cost of Guns, Carriages, enclosed in our letter of 29th January 1861, to Messrs Antony Gibbs & Sons, London No 1 2 2* 3 3* 4 4* 5 6 7 8 Nature Calibre Length Weight Cost pounds inches feet cwt 84 56 56 32 32 20 20 20 9 3.5 12 7.0 6.0 6.0 5.0 5.0 4.5 4.5 4.5 3.0 2.1 4.4 11.00 9.50 9.50 9.00 9.00 9.00 9.00 7.50 6.00 4.00 105 68 68 48 48 38 38 30 5.5 455 275 220 205 165 160 135 105 150 17
240 lbs 83
Mortar 1
NB No 1 to 5 inclusive, are constructed of a combination of cast and wrought iron. 1. Suitable for ships pivot gun or for marine fortresses, with traversing carriage, rammers, tangent sight, hammer lock, &c 2. Ships broadside gun, pivot gun for small vessel or for ports, with traversing carriage, as above, or * with ordinary ship carriage 3. Ships broadside gun, or for forts, with traversing carriage, as above, or * with ordinary ship carriage 4. Inland forts, or small batteries, with traversing carriage, as above, or * with ordinary ship carriage 5. Idem, Idem, or for boat gun, with ordinary ship carriage 6. Field piece, mounted on suitable carriage for field piece, trail, limber, ammunition boxes, spare wheel, rammer, sights, elevating screw and appurtenances complete 7. Field piece for Mountain service, as per our estimate of 7th January 1861, on carriage for mountain service 8. Brass Coehorn mortar, adapted for service in the field, brass with bed and quoin 7 inch shell for 84 pounders for not less than 15 tons, 26 10s per ton 6 inch shell for 56 pounders, in same quantity 29 per ton 5 inch shell for 32 pounders for not less than 15 tons, 35 per ton
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4 inch shell for 20 pounders, not less than 1,000, 37 10s per hundred 3 inch shell for 9 pounder for not less than a thousand, 20 per hundred 2.1 inch shell for 3 pounder, not less than a thousand, 14 per hundred 12 pounder cast shell for brass mortar, 5 15s per hundred Liverpool, 29th January, 1861 (signed) Fawcett, Preston & Co [Note: Nineteenth century currency, 1 () pound = 20 (s) shillings; 1 (s) shilling = 12 (d) pence. 1 () pound = 5 ($) US dollars in 1860. Weights: cwt or hundredweight of 112 pounds. 20 (cwt) hundredweight = 1 long ton] Colonel Bolognesi received four pages of detailed instructions on December 29, 1860, just before he left Lima for London. He was required to source six batteries each of four mountain guns, with 300 projectiles per piece, a mixture of solid shot, common shell and shrapnel; and three batteries of four field guns. Each mountain piece was to weigh less than 225 pounds. All of the ordnance had to be despatched within 90 days of the order being placed. Bolognesi was to personally view the trials of the guns selected. In addition to artillery he was authorised to contract for Mini rifles and Sharps carbines. As observed above, when he arrived in Europe in February 1861 Bolognesi found that the Peruvian Legation in London had two proposals on hand, obtained through Antony Gibbs & Sons; one from Fawcett Preston (Blakely) and one from Whitworth. On January 21, 1861 Whitworth had already informed the Legation that he could deliver just two pieces a month, which according to Bolognesis instructions, left only Blakely able to fulfil the order on time. It is likely that the widely reported trials of Blakely guns on Hightown Sands, north of Liverpool, in June 1861 were conducted for Colonel Bolognesi. He wrote to the Foreign Ministry on August 29, 1861 that trials of 4, 9 and 12 pounder pieces had, as instructed, by then successfully taken place. There were several contracts, not just for ordnance. The Legation wrote on September 16, 1861 to the Foreign Ministry in Lima summarising the approximate cost of the artillery materials to be acquired by the Government in London: Contract with Fawcett, Preston & Company 14 pieces of artillery for sea service, 12 pounder calibre, with carriages and accessories 12 pieces of artillery for field service, 12 pounder calibre, sistema Blakely, with carriages and accessories Total 2,842 Contract with Bashley Britten (Maudslay, Sons & Field) 2,800 solid and segmental projectiles for the seaservice pieces 4,800 projectiles, 1/3 solid shot, 1/3 segmental, 1/3 shell, for the field pieces Total 3,761 Contract with Captain Blakely 28 pieces of mountain artillery with accessories, 4,840 11,200 projectiles for these pieces, 2/3 segmental, 1/3 solid shot, 4,367 32 cases for the mountain guns, 290 Tools for making lead projectiles, 50 Total 9,547 Payment for having carriages reinforced with iron Total 400 Contract with Robert Gibson & Co, (saddlers and harness makers, London) 12 sets of harness for two horses for the mountain artillery 12 sets of harness for four horses for the field artillery Total 778 10s Contract in Paris through M Auregan 100 pack saddles for the mountain guns, their carriages and ammunition boxes 70 tents Total 2,080 Contract for 250 sabres for bombardiers and 250 sets of belts, helmets and epaulettes Total 307 GRAND TOTAL 19,715 10s The contract prices are somewhat different from those quoted by Fawcett Preston on January 11, 1861 as the quantities had changed, and new requirements for naval and field guns, and the use of Bashley Brittens patent shells, were added. It can be noted that Fawcetts recommendation for a mould for every battery of four mountain guns to make lead shot in the field has been accepted. The gun costs included a payment for the patent right to Captain Blakely. On October 19, 1861 the Legation advised Lima that the bulk of the ordnance materials had left Liverpool a few days previously. This shipment was reported in the English press without giving any accurate indication of its destination, but many journals guessed, wrongly, that the fifty-four guns mentioned were bound for the southern states in America. Curiously no records have survived of the correspondence, and there must have been many letters, between Captain Blakely and Colonel Bolognesi. The technical details of the fifty-four guns delivered to Peru are scarce. Of the 12 pounders for sea service only one survives and that without markings. None survive of the similar pieces for field use. It is known that the naval guns were mounted on the conventional wooden truck carriages of the time; and the army guns outfitted with field carriages and limbers in wood. The mountain guns are better recorded. Several exist in museums. There were two calibres, fourteen 9 pounder, 3 inch bore short guns or howitzers and fourteen 4
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pounder, 2.1 inch bore long guns, previously called 3 pounders. From an Artillery Memorandum of 1864 the weights of the army pieces are known, to these can be added the measurements from survivors: 12 pounder field gun by Fawcett Preston, 605 pounds weight, length not known 12 pounder naval gun by Fawcett Preston, 67 inches length, weight not known 9 pounder by Fawcett Preston, 36 inches length, 208 pounds weight 9 pounder by Bastow, 36 inches length, 212 pounds weight 4 pounder by Fawcett Preston, 41 inches length, 226 pounds weight Despite this the Army were careful to put all of their new artillery through a rigorous proving process. All fifty-four guns were fired for proof on August 17, 1862. On this occasion one of the short 9 pounder pieces burst on the fourth round, and one of the long 4 pounders burst on only its first firing. Both guns burst firing the supplied iron bolts and the usual charge, splitting longitudinally between the breech and the trunnion ring. The damaged guns were examined at the iron works of Navys Factora de Bellavista in Callao. Their report was critical of the manufacture of the two cannon: in particular it was thought that the metal bar that was formed into a spiral to make the breech reinforce or sleeve was not properly welded or forged into an homogenous whole; the navy also expressed doubts as to whether the metal used was actually steel as contracted for. The Armys Director of Artillery disputed the latter point, believing that the pieces were made within the contract terms, of forged iron and steel. The real problem that caused both the failures was more obvious, it was the extraordinarily poor standard of the boring of the guns: measurements showed that the cutters were not centred and the barrel thickness on one side equalled and the other side . The proof trials at Conchan were recommenced with the surviving guns. The charges were increased to try the guns for complete strength and safety. Another 9 pounder failed, cracking the bore inside the chamber, but not bursting. All three damaged pieces were returned to Fawcett, Preston & Company in Liverpool under the contract terms. On January 18, 1863, three new 9 pounder rifles were received at Callao in replacement of the defective guns. These were not to the original short pattern but were long, heavier field guns unsuitable for mountain warfare; they were rejected, too. A note is necessary here on proving ordnance. The government proof at Woolwich Arsenal, which was applied to guns supplied on private account as well as for the British Army and Navy, had three elements; 1] inspection by eye and instrument of the exterior and interior of the barrel, confirming true dimensions, as well as looking for flaws and blemishes, 2] water proof in which the bore was filled with liquid under pressure then emptied and dried, hairline cracks would then become visible as liquid seeped out, and 3] powder proof firing two rounds with iron bolts or shot and over-charges of powder. Fawcett Preston did not prove their guns at Woolwich, but undertook their own trials at the customers charge, warranting their work as good. The writer is deeply indebted to Carlos Carrera who provided the material on which this section is based. _________________________________________________
Most of the 9 pounders, marked with a serial starting A1 on the trunnions, were made by Fawcett Preston in Liverpool; the remainder, probably a battery of four pieces, marked B1 and so on, were sub-contracted to Samuel Bastow of the Cliff House Ironworks, West Hartlepool, Durham. All of the 4 pounders were manufactured by Fawcetts. None of these guns appear to have Blakely serial numbers cast upon them, although all the survivors are clearly dated 1861 on the trunnions. It was originally intended to have wooden mountain carriages with shafts for horse or mule traction, but the specification was altered and all the 9 pounders and some of the 4 pounders had iron carriages, made by Fawcett Preston. The iron carriages were most unusual for the period, when wooden trails, axles and wheels were almost universal for field and mountain guns. In construction they were straightforward, with two tapered, curved side frames in flat iron plate, joined by a bottom plate and cross rods. There were no separate cheek pieces but, to support the trunnions of the gun tube and the axle, the side frames had considerable L-section reinforcements riveted to top and bottom. Elevation was by an iron screw in the large version, by quoin in the smaller. Axles were in iron, the wheels, apparently, were conventional with wood spokes, wood hubs and iron tyres. The iron carriage for the 9 pounder short gun weighed 445 pounds, that for the long 4 pounder 312 pounds; in comparison the wooden alternative for the small carriage weighed 257 pounds. The fifty-four Blakely guns, carriages and ammunition arrived at Callao early in March 1862 on board the 150 ton barque Elfin after a six month voyage from Liverpool around Cape Horn. The munitions were delivered from the port to the Parque General de Artillera on March 12. The pack saddles being made in France were shipped separately and arrived later. On March 25, 1862 two 12 pounders, two 9 pounders and two 4 pounders were successfully demonstrated for President Ramn Castilla along the beach at Conchan, south of Lima and Callao.
7. Cannon for the South

_________________________________________________ At the beginning
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The day before I received orders to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter a vessel arrived from England with a small Blakely rifled-gun... I placed it at once behind a sand-bag parapet where it did opportune service with its ten-pound shell General P G T Beauregard, CSA. Commanding at Charleston, SC, April 1861 At the end I have the honor to make the following report of artillery received by the ordnance department, captured from and surrendered by the enemy in the recent campaign one 3 inch Blakely cannon. Lieutenant F H Parker, Chief Ordnance Officer, US Army of the Potomac, Appomattox, May 31 1865 _________________________________________________ he had shipped to the south twelve 12 pounder light Blakely guns with solid shot and segment shell. b] However, Judah Benjamin, then Secretary of War, appealed to President Davis on March 4, 1862 for funds for 500 Blakely guns as part of the additional measures required in the present year required by the Confederate Congress. c] General Josiah Gorgas reported to the Secretary of War that the following ordnance had been brought from Europe by February 1863 on government account to supplement home manufacture: 54 six-pounder bronze smoothbore guns 18 bronze smoothbore howitzers 6 twelve-pounder rifled iron guns 2 iron howitzers with carriages and caissons 6 6 3/10 inch Blakely rifled cannon with 1,800 shells and 2,000 fuses* 3 8-inch Blakely rifled cannon with 680 shells 12 twelve-pounder steel rifled guns with shot and shell* 32 Austrian bronze rifled guns with caissons and 10,000 shrapnel shells with fuses 2 bronze rifled guns with 200 shells and fuses and 756 shrapnel shells 4 nine-pounder steel rifled cannon with 1,008 shells and fuses*
e have a remarkable rifled cannon, a 12 pounder, superior to any other here. Others ought to be ordered, wrote General P G T Beauregard to Secretary of War L P Walker on April 15, 1861. The history and a description of this remarkable rifled cannon have been given here in First Manufacture. Despite its immediate success and this full-blooded endorsement it is strange to have to say that even an approximation of the numbers and the types of Blakely cannon imported and utilised by the Army of the Confederate States of America is impossible to reckon. It may be a surprise to many to know that the Confederate States of America imported relatively few pieces of ordnance for either its navy or its army. After the first twelve months of war it was virtually selfsufficient in manufacturing cannon, whether at the Tredegar works in Richmond, Virginia, or at the Selma works in Alabama. By July 12, 1862, Colonel Josiah Gorgas, Chief of Ordnance of the Army, was writing to G W Randolph, the Secretary of War, direct him (Caleb Huse in Europe) to make no more purchases of arms beyond that already made and contracted for... I have already instructed him that artillery is of secondary importance unless of special character. From then on the Confederate States needed only to import strategic raw materials, such as lead for Mini bullets and saltpetre for making gun powder. Rather than guns it was clothing, blankets, cloth and shoes that had priority. By the middle of 1864 clothing and provisions for the army were the main imports. On February 3, 1863 Colonel Gorgas reported that just 129 pieces of artillery had been imported into the South on behalf of the Bureau of Ordnance. This contrasts with the 130,230 stand of infantry rifled weapons that Huse had sent from Europe. Scarcely any cannon were imported on government account after that date. Blakely Cannon in the Confederate States Army The Official Records of the American War show these few entries regarding the import of cannon: a] On August 11, 1861 Caleb Huse writing from England reported to the Secretary of War in Richmond that
The list admits just nine Blakely guns then on hand. The descriptive parts of the invoices for the shipments marked with an * asterisk are detailed in the First Manufacture chapter. d] On November 15, 1863 Colonel Josiah Gorgas recorded as additional imports for the War Department just three 8 inch Blakely rifles and the two 13 inch great guns. Given the number of survivors still in existence, thirty-two pieces, this cannot represent the true state of affairs; some of the unclassified steel imports in the February 1863 list are likely to have been to Blakelys patent. Others will have been imported on State rather than War Department account. From the Official Reports, extracts of which are included later, it is clear that the State of South Carolina, under the influence of one of its leading sons, General Wade Hampton, imported a great many Blakely guns for its artillery. Wade Hampton had no military training but proved to be one of the most vigorous and steadiest of Generals in the Confederate States Army. A man of great wealth, he became a Colonel of Militia in South Carolina in 1861 and created his own military formation of volunteers. The Hampton Legion was formed on June 12, 1861 at Columbia, South Carolina. It comprised six companies of infantry, four troops of cavalry and one battery of light artillery. It originally had a strength of about 1,000 men. Their military equipment was bought personally by Wade Hampton, and consisted, in addition to locally bought arms, of 400 Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle muskets and four 3 inch Blakely rifled cannon, all acquired in England.
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The battery of Blakely guns was delivered at Savannah, Georgia, by the blockade-running steamer Bermuda in September 1861. They were issued to the Washington Artillery of the Hampton Legion on October 21, 1861. The legion was a rather archaic construct from the eighteenth century, just slightly larger than a regiment in numbers. It was customary in the age of mass warfare to have the infantry, cavalry and artillery organised in much larger independent units rather than combined in such a small mixed formation. However the legion gave its senior officer the pleasing effect of commanding an army in miniature. After a brilliant if bloody debut at the Battle of Manassas, literally alongside of Colonel T J Jacksons Virginian regiment, the Hampton Legion was reconstructed and divided. The infantry retained the title of the Hampton Legion; the horsed troops became the 2nd South Carolina Cavalry Regiment. The Legions ordnance became Captain James Franklin Harts Washington (South Carolina) Battery, and, still working its four 3 inch Blakely guns, attached to cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia. After the success at Manassas, in September 1861 a second battery had been raised for the Hampton Legion from Charleston; this became Captain William K Bachmans German Artillery. It, too, was equipped with 3 inch Blakely rifled guns, for service in Virginia. Wade Hampton was promoted from Colonel to Brigadier-General, and went on to lead ever larger units of cavalry. It is said that he paid eventually for the import of eight Blakely field guns. The abolitionist navy reported that the blockade runner Scotia had run into Charleston, South Carolina, on August 23, 1862 carrying 48 pieces of artillery. This cargo included 40 Blakely 12 pounder field guns, with carriages, harness and ammunition for the same. No imports of Blakely cannon for the Confederate States Army are recorded after the end of 1863. It should be said that there is no evidence that the Confederate States Navy ever imported Blakely guns; they used the Brooke gun, on a Blakely model. The Navy purchased several large pieces but only for use on its foreign-built ships. That is not to say, of course, that sailors did not serve with army batteries, particularly in coastal or riverine defence. The Confederate States Army issued its first Field Manual for Ordnance Officers in 1862. It referred to three patterns of Blakely ordnance in their service: 7.44 inch with a 2.75 pounds shell bursting charge and a 12 pounds propellant charge 3.5 inch with a 0.12 pounds shell bursting charge and a 1.25 pounds propellant charge 2.9 inch with a 0.12 pounds shell bursting charge and a 0.5 pounds propellant charge Captain Blakelys patents; with a single band of steel or wrought-iron strengthening the breech. Details: 7.5 inch bore, firing a 120 pound bolt, 124 inch barrel length overall, 6,500 pound weight, 12 groove right hand twist rifling
This large piece is more fully described here in the later section headed The Guns. The 12 pounder: or 3 inch Blakely rifle, also known as the three-fifty, was the modern equivalent of the 12 pounder Napoleon smoothbore field piece that accompanied the army into action. This was the commonest piece of imported ordnance used by, and was unique to, the Confederate States. It possessed a cast-iron barrel, 60 inches in length, weighing 600 pounds, with a breech jacket in steel, or, more accurately, wroughtiron, and a flush-fitting trunnion ring. It was shorter and lighter than the comparable smooth-bore ordnance, requiring a stronger carriage, but had a far greater range. In addition, at least one battery of full size 3.5 inch Blakely rifles was provided in 1862, having a heavier and longer 66 inch sleeved barrel, with the latest 6 groove ratchet rifling, and notably without a cascabel knob at the breech. Originally rifled on Royal Navy Commander R A E Scotts principle with six or seven centrical grooves, from 1862 the 3.5 inch guns had six of Blakelys patented ratchet grooves (also used by Commander J M Brooke of the Confederate States Navy). All of these field pieces commonly fired Bashley Brittens patent projectiles. These cannon, though not their projectiles, were chiefly, if not entirely, manufactured for the Confederacy by Fawcett, Preston & Company of Liverpool. At least eight batteries of four 3.5 inch Blakely pieces had been provided to the south by 1862. In Confederate service the 3.5 inch gun, due to its lightness and short barrel, was generally used to accompany cavalry. The use of the long version is not recorded; it may have been confined to coastal defence due to its weight. Details: 3.5 inch bore, firing a 12 pound bolt, 60 inch barrel length overall, breech sleeve, 600 pound weight, 7 groove right hand twist rifling, Fawcett, Preston, maker (also 66 inch barrelled) Details: 3.5 inch bore, firing a 12 pound bolt, 60 inch barrel length, breech band, 6 groove right hand twist rifling, Forrester, maker
The 120 pounder: or 7 inch, the largest piece of ordnance then in army service, was the pattern commonly called the Low Moor conversion of the British 48 pounder smooth-bore into a heavy rifled piece under
The 9 pounder: or 2.9 inch (actually made as a 3 inch) rifle is a rare piece of artillery in Confederate service. It was constructed by Fawcett Preston and later by the Blakely Ordnance Company at the Bear Lane gun manufactory in Southwark. From its size it would have been either a cavalry gun or a mountain gun. It was not built on the same principle as the short 3 inch Confederate field gun but had a slim jacket and a very large cast-iron trunnion ring. The two remaining Confederate survivors are remarkably similar to their 9 pounder relatives in Peru.
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Details: 2.9 inch (3 inch) bore, firing a 9 pound bolt, 36 inch barrel length overall, six-groove, Scott triangular rifling Hotchkisss patent, in 3 inch and 3 inch (2.9 inch) Blakely calibre. Blakely Guns in Service: There were serious problems in obtaining munitions for the armys Blakely guns. The battery with the Army of Tennessee reported curtly that domestic-made Blakely ammunition defective. Shells imperfect in casting. The 12 pounder shell is too heavy, weighing 16 pounds. A year earlier, in March 1863, in the Army of Northern Virginia, General Robert E Lee informed the cavalry General Wade Hampton, We shall be obliged to rely on imported ammunition for the use of the Blakely guns, as its manufacture requires so much expense and time as to prevent its preparation at our arsenals, and, in addition, it consumes so much lead... The Confederate army was then still using the imported Bashley Britten shell. There were seven Blakely field pieces accompanying the Army of Northern Virginia at Sharpsburg on September 17, 1862, two with Captain J B Brockenbroughs Baltimore (Maryland) Battery. In Virginia, the most famous of the army Blakelys were in Preston Chews (Virginia) Battery with General T J Jacksons corps in the Valley of the Shenandoah; and in John Pelhams Battery with General J E B Stuarts cavalry corps. Both were light artillery, and equipped with a single 3.5 inch field gun among their other pieces. The largest unit of Blakely field guns was Harts Washington (South Carolina) Battery, commanded by Captain James F Hart, accompanying General Wade Hamptons cavalry brigade. This had a full complement of four 3.5 inch Blakely field guns in 1862. Captain Hiram Miller Bledsoes 1st Missouri Battery in the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana possessed two 3.5 inch Blakely guns in the summer of 1863. Sam C. Mitchell, a private in Company A, 3rd Tennessee Infantry, at the battle of Port Hudson, Louisiana, in May and July 1863 recalled twenty-four years later, In the meantime Farragut had carried the [USS] Hartford below our batteries and occasionally would steam up in range and exchange shot with Capt Bledsoe who had two Blakely steel rifled cannons at the lowest battery. I remember one evening one of the gunboats came around the point and threw two shells up the river aimed at a little steamboat at the landing. Capt Bledsoe answered with his two guns and the sides of the gunboat looked like a streak of lightning had struck her. She floated down the river utterly helpless. I heard it said afterwards that if Capt B had had these two guns the night of the first assault he would have sunk the whole fleet. In his 1866 article, Confederate Artillery Service, General E P Alexander, late Chief of Artillery of Longstreets Corps in the Army of Northern Virginia, gave his blunt, and no doubt wholly accurate, opinion regarding the 3 inch field guns used by the cavalry, The Blakely guns were twelve-pounder rifles, muzzle-loaders, and fired very well with English ammunition (built-up shells with leaden bases [i.e. Bashley Brittens]), but with the Confederate substitute, they experienced the same difficulties which attended this ammunition in all
Other 2.9 inch Blakely rifle guns were apparently made for the Confederate States Navy or for privateers of small tonnage, much longer and with a breech ring. None seem to have got through the blockade. Blakely Guns in 1864: On January 20, 1864 the Bureau of Ordnance of the Confederate States Army listed bolts, shells, canister and charges available for the following Blakely guns: 7.44 inch 4.5 inch, 20 pounder 3.75 inch, 16 pounder 3.5 inch, 12 pounder
The Blakely 7 inch Low Moor guns and the 12 pounders had it seems been reinforced with two new types of Blakely heavy field artillery since 1862. The small 2.9 inch cavalry or mountain pieces were no longer provided for. Details: 4.5 inch bore, firing a 20 pound bolt, 96 inch barrel length overall, 7 groove right hand twist rifling, breech sleeve, Fawcett Preston, maker Details: 4.5 inch bore, firing a 20 pound bolt, as above except a breech band rather than a sleeve, Forrester, maker Details: 3.75 inch bore, firing a 16 pound shot, 83 inch barrel length overall, 6 groove right-hand twist rifling, breech sleeve, Forrester maker. There was, it seems, just one of these cannon, which was used to fire on Sumter in 1861.
Ammunition: The Blakely rifled field guns used by the south were all designed to use the patented shell design of Bashley Britten, made for him by Maudslay, Sons & Field in London. This had a lead flange or skirt sweated onto the base of the hollow iron body of the projectile, which was forced into the rifling on firing. These shells, and their patent metallic fuses, were imported from England. Attempts to manufacture Britten shells in America all failed as the process was complex. Instead the Richmond Arsenal began making John B Reads shell in 3 inch Blakely calibre. This had been patented in 1856 and had a wrought-iron cup inserted into the butt (as the patentee put it) of a cast-iron shell when still molten to act in the same manner as Brittens lead skirt. Read was an Alabamian and had licensed his design to the cannon founder Robert Parrott prior to 1861. The unprincipled Parrott immediately found ways to avoid paying royalties to Read, just as he had pirated Blakelys banding concept. The Read patent shell was cast in several calibres at Richmond for field ordnance, as well as for the Blakely guns. They used older wooden time fuses rather than patent metallic ones. Incidentally, guns captured by the enemy or seized by them at sea whilst running the blockade were provided with projectiles made to
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guns. The only advantage to be claimed for this gun is its lightness, but this was found to involve the very serious evil that no field-carriage could be made to withstand its recoil. It was continually splitting the trails or racking to pieces its carriages, though made of unusual strength and weight. _______________________________ The third fort commands the river in all directions. It mounted one splendid Blakely 100 pounder Rear-Admiral David D Porter, US Navy, Commanding Mississippi Squadron, to Gideon Welles, May 3, 1863, on examining the Confederate works at Grand Gulf _______________________________ During the siege of Vicksburg on the Mississippi river, the turning point of the American War, between May 25 and July 4, 1863, Lieutenant A L Slacks detachment, Company C of the 1st Louisiana Heavy Artillery Regiment, served the famous 7 inch Blakely cannon known as the Widow Blakely. The Widow survived the conflict and, after a long period in enemy custody, returned to Vicksburg. From 1863 the earthworks of Fort Fisher, defending the vital port of Wilmington, North Carolina, had an 8 inch cast-iron, steel-banded Blakely rifle in its North East Bastion. It had three groove rifling to Scotts centrical pattern, throwing flanged iron bolts up to 130 pounds weight. According to John Randolph Hamilton (late Captain, CSN and former Secretary of the Blakely Ordnance Company) speaking at the Royal United Service Institution in London on June 1, 1868, The Federal and Confederate reports agree in stating, that this gun was the most efficient of the armament of the fort brought into action. It was taken, marked by the enemys shot, and stained with the blood of its cannoniers. Its twin was located, in that year, at Battery Wagner defending the entrance to the harbour at Charleston. It is claimed that it was a Bessemer spherical steel shot of the 8 inch Blakely gun at Wagner that pierced and sank the ironclad USS Keokuk. __________________________ If my little Blakely were here, these people should not escape. Colonel Turner Ashby, Virginia Cavalry, as the enemy retreated at Front Royal, in the Valley of the Shenandoah, May 23, 1862 __________________________ The field guns of the Confederate States Army were organised in batteries of four or six guns, commanded by a captain of artillery, with detachments of two guns under a lieutenant. They were not numbered but were all named after their commanding officer. The title of the battery could alter as the commander changed or was killed. Batteries also were given names of honour by the states from which they were raised. The following are extracts from the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, which mention Captain Blakelys cannon. The size and other descriptions of the pieces are transcribed as is from the original: 7th [The reader is referred to the end of the Sources section for an attempt to explain the calibre issue] There were two 24 pounder or 4.5 inch Blakely guns at Fort Pulaski, off Savannah, Georgia, on April 14, 1861, before it fell into abolitionist hands. During the Seven Days Battle, it was reported on June 28, 1862 that Major Charles Richardsons Battery deployed two immense 4.62 inch Blakelys, each weighing 4,000 pounds, in an independent detachment under Captain Masters. At Manassas, as reported on August 25, 1862, the Washington (Louisiana) Artillery under Captain Victor Maurins possessed two 3.5 inch Blakely field guns. The Blakely detachment was led by Lieutenant R P Landry. On March 7, 1863, Lieutenant General Wade Hampton, a South Carolinian, commanding the cavalry brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia wrote to General Lee reminding him that he was responsible for the import of the Blakely field guns. He requested that they all be consolidated under one command, in his cavalry. General Lee in polite response explained that the batteries of artillery in the brigades were being consolidated into battalions under division and corps command, and that the Blakely guns were spread among several corps. He also addressed the immense problems of sourcing effective ammunition, as domestic manufacture could not match the quality of the original imports. However, Lee observed that Hampton deserved the thanks of the nation for importing the Blakelys. At Jacksonville, Florida, the army in March 1863 had assembled the dreaded locomotive battery to shell the occupying force. This consisted of a 4.5 inch Blakely gun mounted on a railroad truck, hauled by its own engine. Its lone effort threw 64 pound bolts and explosive shells into the defenders earthworks out of range of reprisal, counter-battery, fire. At Savannah, Georgia, on March 31, 1863, Fort Cheves on the Savannah river possessed two 24 pounder Blakely guns. At that time the Georgia Siege Artillery, of Major Buist, carried two 4 inch Blakelys in its train, along with four 8 inch howitzers, in that city. On April 23, 1863, three splendid 8 inch Blakely rifles, able to fire 130 pound bolts, arrived on the blockade runner Merrimac at the port of Wilmington, North Carolina. Two were to be retained to defend Wilmington, one at Fort Caswell and one at Fort Fisher. The other was shipped to the Mississippi. The Ordnance Department for South Carolina, Georgia and Florida listed on April 24, 1863, among its 113 pieces of artillery: three 24 pounder Blakelys, six 6 pounder Blakelys (3.5 inch bore, firing 12 pound shot), four 6 pounder Blakelys (3.5 inch bore), and four 4 pounder Blakelys (2.35 or 2.4 inch bore). This list, with its unusual calibration, was compiled by the Chief of Artillery of the Department in Charleston. On April 1, 1864 Captain Richard Henry Bellamys Alabama Battery was attached to the reserve of the Army of Tennessee, it comprised two 2.5 inch, 6 pounder ri-
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fles and two 3.5 inch, 12 pounder Blakelys. This is the only note of Blakely field guns in Confederate service in the West. It was reported, in the Military District of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida that, on May 3, 1864, the Waccamaw Light Artillery, Captain Joshua Wards Battery, possessed a single 3.5 inch Blakely field gun; the Inglis Light Artillery of Captain W E Charles had two 3.5 inch Blakely guns, the La Fayette Light Artillery of Captain J T Kanapaux, had two 3.5 inch Blakelys, and the German Light Artillery of Captain W K Bachman also had two 3.5 inch Blakely guns. At Georgetown, at Winyah Bay, there was a single 3.5 inch Blakely in the coastal defences. There were in service seven 3.5 inch Blakely field pieces, out of a total of about 120 guns, and five 4 or 4.5 inch Blakely siege guns, out of 16 available. All of these Blakelys were located around Charleston. Company C of the Georgia Siege Artillery, under Captain G W Johnson, was at the same moment manning a 4 inch Blakely gun at Battery Haskell at Legares Point on James Island, south of Charleston. The Georgia Siege Artillery also worked the same 4 inch Blakely gun at Battery Marshall, and other locations in Charleston, where it was hampered by the lack of adequately finished bolts and shells, which limited its range and hindered its accuracy. This 4 inch Blakely rifle was almost certainly a proprietary design of Fawcett, Preston & Company, and not a Blakely patent gun. On August 17, 1864 at Petersburg, Virginia, there were five 32 pounder Blakelys, in two batteries, pounding the enemy trenches. One was captured at Fort Clifton, near Petersburg, and recorded as a 3.67 inch Blakely piece. At the fall of Fort Morgan, protecting Mobile Bay, on August 24, 1864, there were within two 8 inch Blakely rifled guns, among the heavy batteries. At Savannah, Georgia, on December 24, 1864, one 32 pounder Blakely and two 12 pounder Blakelys were still in action. Captain Charless battery had lost one of its two Blakelys by December 25, 1864, but was still able to see off the abolitionist warship Marblehead, trying to move up the Stono River, at Legareville, South Carolina. Also in December 1864, there was one 8 inch Blakely gun remaining at Fort Fisher, at Wilmington, North Carolina. It had taken a severe beating in successive attacks on the fort, its muzzle was chipped and the rear of its carriage damaged by shell fragments, but it was still firing. It was commanded by Lieutenant W H Williford of Company F, 36 North Carolina Regiment, the 2nd North Carolina Artillery. Its sister had been sent to Charleston in the previous year. On January 4, 1865 Captain Zimmermans Battery had two 3.5 inch Blakelys at Pocotaligo, near Charleston, South Carolina. One had to be abandoned through the lack of effective ammunition. General Wade Hampton was clearly fond of his Blakely guns. On February 25, 1865 he appealed for the return of them to his command. General Lees staff could only apologise, they had the guns but no equipments for their working or ammunition. They sent him smoothbores. Other units with Blakelys ordnance included Captain Thomas R Thorntons Caroline (Virginia) Light Artillery Battery, which received a 3 inch Blakely gun, with forty shells and a hundred shot, at Hardeeville, South Carolina, on June 30, 1862. The Caroline Artillery fought in Northern Virginia around Richmond for most of the war, as a mixed battery of smooth-bores and rifles. The Kilcrease (Florida) Light Artillery was formed on May 25, 1863 under Captain F L Villepigue, who was replaced by Lieutenant Patrick Houstoun in November 1864. It possessed four 3 inch Blakely field guns. The battery fought to defend Charleston, and by 1865 was also active in its home state. In the final four months of the war several guns recorded in the Official Records as being Blakelys were captured by the enemy. In February 1865 at Greensboro, NC, two 4.62 inch Blakelys; on February 17, at Columbia, SC, four Blakelys, presumably 3.5 inch; and on March 3, at Cheraw, SC, two 20 pounders, measured at 3 9/16 inch bore and a 16 pounder with a bore of the novel 3.5 inch Blakely calibre, were seized. A lone 3.5 inch Blakely field gun was surrendered, along with the other ordnance, to the victors at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on May 31, 1865. It is likely that this piece was from Chews Virginia Battery, and which had served in the horse artillery from its establishment early in 1861, when it was Turner Ashbys Virginia Battery. That was not quite the end of Captain Blakelys contribution to the south: two 18 pounder and two 12 pounder guns of his design were still defending Galveston, Texas, on June 1, 1865. __________________________ Never did a sportsman bring down his bird with more unerring shot than did that Blakely... Each shot seemed drawn to the flying target with fatal accuracy... Major General J E B Stuart to General R E Lee, August 20, 1863, when a single gun of Chews Battery dispersed enemy cavalry at Beaver Creek Bridge __________________________ Brooke Guns 1862 John Mercer Brooke was a Commander in the Confederate States Navy and their Navy Departments Chief of Ordnance throughout the American War. It was made clear to the British Parliament in 1862 that Captain Blakely had communicated his principles of ordnance to Commander Brooke and that the banded and rifled guns used by the Confederate States Navy to Brookes designs were licensed Blakely guns. All of this is in keeping with Blakelys co-operation with his peers and his system of outsourcing production. Such was the similarity of their work, either by design or by accident that at least one observer in Britain confused the Blakely and Brooke guns. It is sufficient to say that Captain Blakely covered the principles used in Brooke guns in British patents well before their
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appearance in America and that Commander Brooke covered several of his own inventions and improvements in ordnance with Confederate States patents but made no claim to banding, composite construction or rifling. Captain Blakely was writing to The Times in London during April 1862 with accurate descriptions of the armament of the CSS Virginia after its epic battle with the Monitor in the previous month, information that he could only have been given by Commander Brooke. He also had in his possession in 1863 plans for ordnance signed by Brooke. In addition he claimed before a Committee of Parliament in 1863 that Commander Brookes guns were built to his models. It should also be noted that the copper cups or disks used as gas checks on the base of Confederate States Navy projectiles for rifled guns were to Blakelys 1863 patent and were impressed with his name during their manufacture in Selma, Alabama. There are no surviving records in Britain or America of the correspondence between Commander Brooke and Captain Blakely; nor any evidence that Blakely visited America. Ordnance provided by Captain Blakely for the Confederate States Navy is described later, piece by piece, in the chapter headed The Guns. John Browns Guns 1862 On June 7, 1862 John Brown & Company, steel-masters, of the Atlas Works, Sheffield, invoiced Z C Pearson & Company of London and Hull for two lots of ordnance on behalf of the Confederate States. Zachariah Pearson was an early and remarkably unsuccessful blockade-runner into the southern states. His principle success was bringing the three large 8 inch Blakely-Low Moor guns into Wilmington, North Carolina, on the speedy Merrimac for Caleb Huse. His company failed late in 1862 after losing most of its fleet to the enemy. John Brown made five 18 pounder, 3.67 inch bore patent rifled guns in steel, with naval carriages and slides, and 250 shells, together with six 12 pounder guns and 300 shells, for Pearson in mid-1862, who billed their cost on to Captain Huse in London. Huse, of course, purchased material for the Army and not the Navy. It is possible that these pieces, especially the relatively large 18 pounders, were made to Blakelys patent, as yet another of the Captains out-sources; in which case they may be identified with such sized guns used in Northern Virginia and in defending Charleston. The Greatest Guns 1863 Fragments of the largest Blakely guns built also still exist at West Point Museum. They were a pair of 13 inch calibre, 50,000 pounds (22 tons) weight rifled guns ordered by Captain Caleb Huse, CSA, late in 1862 for coastal defence. They were without question the largest pieces of ordnance in existence at the time of their installation. At a cost originally estimated at 10,000, George Forrester & Company of the Vauxhall Ironworks, Liverpool, provided the two 13 inch calibre 196 inch cast-iron barrels, rifled with four right-handed grooves; two wrought-iron gun carriages and two cranes to load the guns; with, for each gun, 150 solid bolts of 650 pounds weight and 50 shells of 450 pounds weight. The full charge of propellant was fifty pounds of powder. They were described as having a diameter at the muzzle of 25 inches, and at the largest breech ring of 49 inches. After previously receiving the estimated cost of 10,000 on account, the two great guns were eventually invoiced by the Blakely Ordnance Company to Major Huse in May 1863 as: Two 12 inch rifled cannon with cranes for lifting shot 5,600 0s 0d Two carriages on wrought-iron tubular girder traversing platforms complete, with all appurtenances and fittings complete 4,800 0s 0d 149 shot of 648 pounds at 2s 4d per pound 905 3s 6d 40 shells for same guns 80 Boxer time fuses at 7s 0d 241 10s 0d 28 0s 0d 11,574 13s 6d
Total:
In exchange the pair therefore cost around $58,000 in US gold or $140,000 in US greenbacks. However in cotton they would require the export to England of just two hundred and forty 400 pound bales of middling orleans staple valued in Liverpool at 30d a pound. As described by Captain Blakely writing to John Brooke in Richmond, the barrels were made of two concentric tubes of cast-iron, the inner one a plain tube, five inches thick, of Low Moor iron. The outer shorter tube was of stronger cast-iron carrying the trunnions. The two tubes were connected and sealed at the breech by a castbronze chamber-piece, containing a gas chamber that was intended to absorb some of the expansive shock. The size of the barrels was such that it was impossible to store them below decks on a ship of a size able to run the blockade into the south. The former Confederate cruiser Sumter renamed the Gibraltar was freighted with the cannon vertically so that it appeared as if she had two extra funnels and successfully ran into Wilmington, North Carolina, on August 18, 1863. Their transfer from Wilmington to Charleston, South Carolina, on the instructions of General P G T Beauregard, was a major operation. The components for each gun carriage alone required seven railroad cars; the first train with these arrived on August 25, 1863. The first gun barrel followed four days later, on August 29. Whilst the barrels weighed 50,000 lbs their wroughtiron carriages each weighed a further 58,000 lbs. The complete gun mounting comprised a top carriage and an undercarriage that rotated on a central pivot-circle, relying on friction and gravity to absorb the immense recoil forces. The top carriage, supporting the barrel, recoiled on iron sledges up an incline formed from two
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massive iron girders the undercarriage. The friction between the sledges and the undercarriage was adjustable by screws called compressors. At the extremity of recoil the sledges were raised and the carriage rested on braked wheels until the piece was loaded. Once loading was completed the wheel brakes were released and the carriage and its gun rolled forward to the firing position at which point the iron sledges were screwed down once more. Loading and firing was elaborate and slow, just once every fifteen minutes, requiring the man-handling of massive shot, difficult even with the novel muzzlemounted crane, as well as the elevating and the traversing of a 48 ton barrel and carriage. The 20 inch long cylindrical iron bolts were cast with four diagonal flanges to fit the rifling cut to Scotts pattern; the flanges had to be carefully eased spirally down the barrel to avoid jamming. The original 22 inch long roundnosed, hollow shells of 470 pounds weight had similar flanges. Despite these difficulties it was claimed that each piece could throw one of the 650 pound armourpiercing bolts up to seven miles. Locally-made 13 inch projectiles had the flanges made of brass and inset into the cast-iron bodies. According to Brigadier-General Josiah Gorgas, CSA, Chief of Ordnance* The guns were built up of a wrought-iron (sic) cylinder, closed at the breech with a brass screw-plug, some thirty inches long, and chambered to seven inches. This cylinder had three successive jackets, each shorter than its predecessor, so that from muzzle to breech the thickness of the gun increased by steps of about three-and-a-half inches. The object of the seven-inch chamber in the brass plug was to afford an air or gas space which would diminish the strain on the gun. General P G T Beauregard, CSA, Commanding the Military District of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida* described the guns in these words They were bored through from muzzle to breech; the breech was then plugged with a brass block extending into the bore at least two feet, and into which had been reamed a chamber about eighteen inches in length and six in diameter, while the vent entered the bore immediately in advance of this chamber. The projectiles provided were shells weighing, when loaded, about three hundred and fifty pounds, and solid cylindrical shot weighing seven hundred and thirty pounds; the charge for the latter was sixty pounds of powder. Unfortunately there was no manual of instruction with these great guns and the principal of an air space to allow gradual expansion of the propulsive gas was not then understood. In initial, experimental firing at Charleston the powder charge was forced into the air chamber of one gun with the consequence that the bronze breech-plug and the cast-iron inner tube were damaged when it was first fired on September 11, 1863. With 2 of elevation and 40 pounds of powder (rather than the intended 50 pounds) the test shell flew 800 yards and skipped the water for another 200 yards. But it was immediately found that the cast-iron breech tube of the gun had eleven small, but visible cracks in it. It took only a short time for a commission of ordnance officers under General G T Rains, in consultation with Blakelys associate Commander Brooke CSN in Richmond, to determine the cause of this damage; the report was published on September 24. Captain Blakelys explanation of the air chamber, which differed slightly from Brookes, only arrived in Richmond during February 1864. Observing these loading rules the other 13 inch gun was fired successfully on October 2 and was mounted at the White Point Battery by November 1863. The damaged gun was successfully repaired by local engineers, J M Eason & Brother, with works at Columbus and Nassau Streets, Charleston, and was set up early in 1864 at Frasers Battery, Charleston. The huge pivoting iron friction carriages were assembled and installed only later; a simpler wood and iron mount made at Charleston Arsenal being used initially. In a letter to Commander Bulloch in Liverpool by Secretary of the Navy S R Mallory enclosed two papers on the bursting of the 13 inch gun at Charleston for Captain Blakely; these arrived by January 20, 1864. On January 28, 1864, Captain Blakely wrote from his house at 34 Montpelier Square, London, to Commander Matthew Maury, CSN: I have received your note of yesterday containing Capt Brookes enquiry about my big cannon. These 13 inch guns were commenced early in 1862 when steel could not be had in masses as it can now. They were intended to defend a harbour against ironclad ships & I calculated & I think correctly that with a charge of about 50 or 60 pounds of powder even the cast-iron shells could be projected through 4 inch iron certainly this 650 pound shot could. Very great strength was not necessary for so small a comparative charge provided the full force of the powder were prevented from acting on the gun at the instant of ignition. This was one of the reasons for planning the air-chamber, although the same purpose might have been answered by not ramming the powder home, a method of relieving cast-iron guns and of securing great uniformity of range, which I venture to recommend. Of course great care must be taken always to ram down the cartridge to exactly the same point & more powder may be used than could be safely if rammed home. The effect on the gun between the cartridge & shot is less than if the cartridge is simply elongated. I did not think a simple cast-iron gun hooped would be strong enough, so I had these guns made on a plan which I cannot help thinking would be useful to your nation, namely two concentric tubes both of castiron the inner one of Low Moor iron and quite a plain tube without any moulding whatever and only 5 inches thick. Such a tube can be made of perfect soundness in every part. Over it I fitted another short tube with trunnions.
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The outer tube I made of stronger & less stretching cast-iron... The longitudinal strain I divided proportionely (sic) between the two tubes by making the surface of the inner tube acted on backwards by the powder present a surface of about 70 round inches to the front, while the bronze gas chamber only shows a frontage of 100 round inches all the pressure on which it communicates to the outer tube. I attribute the breaking of the breech in firing more to the absence of pressure on the surface of the inner tube than to the excess of pressure on the gas chamber, which by mistake they filled with powder. There is a vast difference between pressing with a couple of thousand tons on one of two objects lightly attached to another to which no pressure is applied & pressing both in the same direction exactly in proportion to their weight. In the one case they must be separated. In the other case there would be absolutely no tendency to separate. Of course I do not mean that in a gun of 20 tons weight & fixed by its trunnions such an absence of strain can ever be approached, but I do think nearly all tendency of the gas chamber to leave the inner iron tube would have been obviated by placing the charge where it could have acted during the first instance on the inner iron tube. Had the breech then blown out the inner tube should have broke also & part gone to the rear. I did not quite wish the cartridge placed as Capt Brooke imagines, namely quite in front of the chamber. My reason for this was that I feared the gas might penetrate between the bronze chamber and the iron & so act on a large surface. To prevent this I desired the powder to be placed in a long limp thin cartridge, part of which should enter the chamber; or else as a pear-shaped cartridge. Captain Brookes experiment with the second gun which has been fired with perfect success with 55 lbs of powder in front to the chamber proves that he was right & I was wrong. Pray thank him for the interest he takes in my weapon... T A Blakely A detachment of 65 men of the South Carolina Gist Guard under Captain Chichester was deployed to work the 13 inch gun on August 30, 1864. At Charleston, the White Point Battery (or Battery Ramsey) consisted of the second or as built 13 inch Blakely, two 11 inch smooth-bores and another 11 inch smooth-bore recovered from the wreck of the USS Keokuk, on White Point Gardens, Charleston, at the citys southernmost point overlooking the harbour. The original and repaired great gun was eventually set up on its own at a Battery on Frasers (called by the enemy Fraziers) Wharf, a little further north up the Cooper River, also pointing into the harbour. It ought to be noted that the Confederate States Powder Works at Augusta, Georgia, a remarkably successful enterprise, manufactured 34,213 pounds of Blakely Powder for the two Great Guns at Charleston, enough for 680 firings. This was around one per cent of its total production of cannon and small-arms propellant between 1863 and April 1865. In comparison it produced 1,205,025 pounds of Columbiad Powder for other great guns, 1,036,466 pounds of Cannon Powder for field pieces, and 129,473 pounds of Mortar Powder. A British military visitor to the Augusta works in 1864 was impressed by their Blakely propellant: A charge of this powder looks more like a bag of coals than anything else, each grain being as big as a hens egg. Both barrels were deliberately broken-up with overloaded charges by their gunners in February 1865 to prevent their further use by the Abolitionists when the city fell. A five hundred pound piece of the barrel was thrown several hundred feet into the roof space of a nearby mansion house at No 9 East Battery Street, on Battery Park in Charleston, in the course of the demolition, where it still remains as a souvenir in the rafters above the master bedroom. The network of 12 inch square wood beam foundations for the White Point Battery gun were discovered in 1976 still in position, buried under a road. The Confederate States Army was proud of its two 13 inch Blakely cannon, whose presence rendered the enemy fleet so fearful that, without even firing a shot in anger, they had kept Charleston harbour open to the sea. So much so that they were the only guns in the city destroyed when the invading army finally entered. The 13 inch guns were recorded for history at least twice in the sketches of the defences of Charleston by the artist, Conrad Wise Chapman. The remains of these guns have been measured by their captors at 12 inch calibre but are referred to in Blakelys contemporary writings as 13 inch pieces; the latter is used for convenience. Epilogue On June 23, 1868 the US Congress received a report on Ordnance and Ordnance Stores then in hand with its army. Included were ten 3.5 inch Blakely steel rifles held at its arsenals and armouries, with 1,285 rounds of 3.5 inch shell, 260 rounds of 3.5 inch case, 40 rounds of 3.5 inch canister and 22 rounds of 3.5 inch shot, the projectiles all to Hotchkisss patent. In addition there were three other 3.5 inch Blakely guns classified as trophies and two 12 pounder Blakely iron carriages. These were exclusive of any Blakely field guns in state or private hands, or missed or miss-titled in the stores. The report showed additionally that eight large 8 inch Blakely coastal defence guns were still in active service in the hands of US troops in that year! Other than the survivors from the eight field guns purchased by Frmont in June 1861, the twenty-one US Blakely guns of 1868 were either captured from southern forces in the field or detained as contraband off blockade runners before they reached the coast. The Washington authorities possessed sufficient 3.5 inch Blakely field guns from these sources to order the manufacture of shells to their unique calibre from Benjamin Hotchkiss, Bashley Brittens patent projectiles not being available.
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Regarding ammunition for the 3 inch Blakely steel rifles obtained by the Washington government; the foundry of Benjamin Berkeley Hotchkiss & Sons, 92 Beekman Street, New York, was commissioned to supply their patent projectiles, which comprised an iron body, a lead waist band and an iron base piece, for them. These were in wide use in other calibres. Percussion-fused shells, time-fused shells, case shot and canister in un-specified assortments were provided in the 3 inch Blakely calibre from the summer of 1863. The first order was issued by the US Chief of Ordnance on June 6, 1863 for 1,000 assorted 3.4 inch Hotchkiss projectiles to be delivered to the occupation force at New Bern, North Carolina. This was followed by 2,500 assorted 3.5 inch projectiles for St Louis arsenal, Missouri, intended for the English guns on July 31, 1863; 3,000 more were ordered for St Louis on September 2; and, finally, 4,000 three-fifties (3.5 inch) were ordered for New York arsenal on October 22, 1863. These piecemeal orders compare with the contract for 50,000 Hotchkiss projectiles ordered in August 1864, and that in September 1864 for 100,000 more, for the US 3 inch Ordnance rifle field gun. On August 5, 1863 the US Chief of Ordnance ordered 2,400 Hotchkiss projectiles in 2.9 inch calibre for the light English rifle steel guns at St Louis arsenal. These were most probably intended for a small number of other British-made steel guns were used in the Far West theatre, and not Blakely guns. Survivors There exist in the United States, according to Wayne Starks remarkable inventory of Civil War cannon: five 2.9 inch 9 pounders, seventeen 3.5 inch 12 pounders, one 3.75 inch 18 pounder, three 4.5 inch 65 pounders, one 7 inch 100 pounder, two 7.5 inch 120 pounders, one 8 inch 130 pounder, one 9 inch 240 pounder and parts of one 13 inch 650 pounder gun, in all thirty-two guns made to Captain Blakelys patent. _________________________________________________ Blakely Guns in Confederate Service 1861-65 Compiled from the official records and from battlefield evidence 6 pounder Blakely, 2.67 inch bore (Army) 9 pounder Blakely, 2.90 inch bore (Army) 12 pounder Blakely, 3.50 inch bore (Army) 16 pounder Blakely, 3.75 inch bore (Army) 18 pounder [Blakely], 4.00 inch bore (Army)* 32 pounder Blakely, 4.5 inch bore (Army) 70 pounder Blakely, 6 inch bore (Navy) 100 pounder Blakely, 7 inch bore (Navy) 120 pounder, Blakely, 7.50 inch bore conversion (Army) 130 pounder Blakely, 8.12 inch bore conversion (Army) 240 pounder Blakely, 9 inch bore (Navy) 650 pounder Blakely, 13 inch bore (Army) not evidence the use of Blakely patent guns, Britten shells were used in all rifled field ordnance. *The 4 inch calibre gun is NOT a Blakely piece but an English copy, enlarged, of the cast-steel 3 inch US Ordnance Rifle. _________________________________________________ *Quotations The observations of General Beauregard and of General Gorgas on these and other matters were recorded by the Southern Historical Society from the 1870s onwards. They were clearly made from memory rather than from records, official or otherwise, well after the events, which accounts for their variety in technical detail. Beauregard, an engineer officer by profession, retained a great enthusiasm for Blakelys ordnance; Gorgas did not - he was generally, and quite reasonably, negative on elaborate technical innovations that affected the overall ordnance supply situation of the Confederate field armies, an area in which he worked miracles. However Gorgas was appalled at the mishandling of the first 13 inch gun and made his feelings felt vociferously in official communications at the time. _________________________________________________
8. Cannon for Russia

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arly in the year of 1863 Alexander Blakely was in St Petersburg, the capital of Russia. By May of that year he had entered into an agreement with Francis Baird, one of leading industrialists in the Empire to contract for great guns for the Russian coastal defences in the Baltic. The Baird Works were located in the suburb of Kolomenskaia, on the mouth the Neva river, to the west of St Petersburg. It had been founded by Charles Baird (or Bard as he was known in Russia), a Scotsman, in 1792 and was the most important metal working and machine manufacturing enterprise in Russia. Baird made all manner of steam machinery for industry and shipbuilding; engines, saw mills, sugar mills, bridges, employing in the 1860s 900 workers in its foundries and machine shops. Francis Baird had taken over the works in 1843 on the death of Charles Baird, his father. It is not known how the introduction was made between Blakely and Baird but it proved fruitful. In October 1864 it was said that Russia had contracted with the partners for upwards of 160 great guns and carriages with a value of 960,000. The Imperial Artillery Committee reviewed the competing ordnance systems from around Europe, from Britain, France and Prussia. In November 1863 they decided upon Blakely and Baird. There were separate contracts with the Russian Army for 11 inch coastdefence pieces and with the Russian Fleet for 9 inch guns for sea-service. The first 11 inch guns were to be situated on the great fortress island of Kronstadt, defending St Petersburg, in the Baltic Sea. In March 1865 the Parliamentary committee in London reviewing ordnance spending heard that Russia had, in fact, contracted for 220 guns from Blakely; their natures
Records of importation, orders-of-battle and battlefield evidence do not correlate. For example; the presence of Bashley Britten skirted shells on a battlefield site does
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were 8 inch, 9 inch and 11 inch in cast-steel, primarily for the fortresses in the Baltic Sea. They cost on average 3,525 per piece. The first four pieces had already been commissioned of the Low Moor Company in Bradford. Their weight and size necessitated shipping the guns by rail the 68 miles to Hull for transport by sea to Woolwich for proving. The first gun passing through Hull on October 30, 1863 was noted in the local press as being a 68 pounder, weighing 20 tons and twenty-one feet in length. The first gun was ready for proof at Woolwich Butts on November 13, 1863. It was actually an 11 inch cast-steel rifle, weighing 20 tons, to be proved with a 50 pound charge for a 600 pound bolt. It required a team of twenty horses to haul the barrel from the East Wharf on the Thames river at Woolwich Arsenal to the Butts. It rained and the huge truck with the barrel sank into the mud and had to be left until conditions improved. The proof commenced on Monday, November 30, 1863; the first gun firing two 600 pound proof rounds as required without difficulty. The normal projectile was a 450 pound iron bolt. The three other guns followed on consecutive days. Unfortunately on the fourth day, according to the Engineer magazine, The [final] gun underwent the first round with apparent success, but on making the usual survey and examination it was discovered that the base section at the head of the breech, and into which the button appears to be screwed, had given way, and a large rent or split was clearly perceptible. The proof was, of course, at an end, and the gun was afterwards hoisted on one of the heavy trucks, to which some seventy or eighty men belonging to the storekeepers department were attached, and was conveyed to the wharf for transhipment. This failure did not affect the contract; one 11 inch gun a month was being produced for Russia during the next two years. By June 1865 Blakely had delivered forty 450 pounder, 11 inch, guns and was building a 900 pounder cast-steel rifle for St Petersburg, to be the first of many it was hoped. General of Engineers Eduard Ivanovich Todleben, Aide-de-camp to the Tsar, who had inspired the Russian defence of Sebastopol in the Crimean war, had a ceremonial visit to Woolwich Arsenal on October 24, 1864, where he was entertained by his British counterpart General Sir John Burgoyne, Inspector-General of Engineers. On learning that the 11 inch Blakely gun was undergoing proof near-by he insisted on breaking-off his luncheon to witness the firing. Much to the surprise of the Spanish military attach and the Peruvian Director of Artillery, as well as Captain Blakely and Daniel Campbell, his laboratory manager, who were attending the proof in the Woolwich Marshes, Todlebens entourage and General Burgoyne joined them as two 600 pound bolts were successfully fired at a distant target. Forty similar pieces were in process of being supplied to Russia by Blakely. General Todleben then returned to London to dine that evening with General Burgoyne, Members of Parliament, and several Russian and English engineer and artillery officers at the home of Captain and Mrs Blakely. Todleben had arrived in London from St Petersburg on October 22, 1864 to stay as the guest of the Blakelys at their house in Montpelier Square. On the night after his dinner with Burgoyne the Russian hero was set to dine with the Field Marshall, HRH the Duke of Cambridge, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army at Gloucester House, Park Lane, and in the following week he was to be given a banquet by the members of Blakelys club, the Army & Navy, in Piccadilly. It was all a splendid publicity coup by Blakely! On April 8, 1865 the Illustrated London News published a detailed description of one of the Blakely guns then being built for Russia: The Great Blakely Gun The new gun, manufactured by the Blakely Ordnance Company for one of the Russian fortresses in the Gulf of Finland, is remarkable both for the strength of its construction and for the completeness of mechanical appliances for use. A brief description is necessary to accompany the Illustration on this page. The gun itself, with a bore of eleven inches, designed to throw an elongated shot or bolt weighing 500 lb, is 14 ft 6 ins in length, and its greatest diameter is 3 ft 4 ins, the whole gun, detached from its carriage, weighing about fourteen tons, which is very much less, in proportion to the weight of its projectile, than any of the large guns made upon a different system. This gun, as our readers will have remarked, is a muzzle-loader. It is composed of several pieces, which are so built up together as to render each other the greatest possible support in those directions liable to the greatest strain. The innermost portion consists of a single tube of steel, fourteen feet in length and eighteen inches in external diameter, which is bored to within twelve inches of the end, leaving this twelve inches of solid steel at the breech, immediately behind the charge of powder; which, as the calibre or bore is eleven inches, the sides of this inner tube have a thickness of three inches and a half. The hind part, from the breech to the trunnions, a length of about six feet, is protected, in the first place, by a steel jacket four inches and a half thick forced on over the inner tube, and fitting at each end to certain projections in the central piece, at the breech and at the trunnions respectively, by which the jacket is locked up in its place; the end of it, moreover, being so formed as to give support to the rear of the gun, so that it serves at once to resist the longitudinal and the lateral pressure. Above this jacket are two layers which have a thickness of six inches in that part of the gun behind the trunnions, but are slighter in the front part, where the strain is inconsiderable, and are finally rounded off between the trunnions and the muzzle, as appears in our illustration. These pieces are so placed that the junction of those beneath is overlapped by the pieces of the outer layer. All the gun is of steel except the trunnions, which are of Low Moor iron. The terminal knob, or cascabel, fitted into the rear of the gun is independent of the
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twelve inches solid thickness provided for in the central tube. Such is the gun itself. We have now to describe how it is mounted and finished for working. It may be said to have a double carriage, or, rather, a carriage which travels upon a traversing platform or slide. The platform below turning on a central pivot, and on the semi-circular railway behind, enables the gun to be trained, so as to point its muzzle right or left. The carriage above runs down and up the inclined plane of the platform as the gun is loaded and discharged. With reference to the lower, or platform movement, we should observe that the whole weight of gun and carriage, amounting to thirty-four tons, can be moved upon the rail by a single man working the gear from behind; whereas, in the case of other great guns travelling upon a similar railway, it has been necessary, for want of such gearing, to train the gun either by means of handspikes or tackle requiring a number of men to work them. The contrivances of the upper, or carriage, movement are no less worth of remark. Instead of making the hind part of the carriage rest upon blocks of timber, to stop the recoil of the gun a method which necessitates the partial lifting of the gun, with levers or handspikes, whenever it has to be run out forward the whole carriage here rests upon four rollers of cast iron; and it runs freely, by gravitation, down the inclined plane of the platform, or runs back with the recoil when discharged. This movement, for a length of from 7 ft to 10 ft up and down the platform, is controlled with perfect ease and precision by the use of the compressor, a sort of brake, which is worked by a man at the capstan wheel attached to the side of the carriage. This compressor itself is formed by a series of longitudinal plates on iron, which are suspended under the bottom of the carriage and lie at intervals of a series of wooden bars which lie parallel to them, running the whole length of the platform, and, while in this position, they are grasped by a pair of very powerful levers, holding the entire series of wooden and iron bars together so that the motion of th carriage along the platform may either be retarded by producing a moderate degree of friction, or else it may be quickly checked. As soon as the compressor is loosened the carriage runs forward by its own weight; but after firing, it runs back with the recoil, and is then held by a compressor till reloaded. The apparatus for loading is conspicuous enough in our illustration, which shows a sort of crane overhanging the muzzle of the gun, with a pulley and chain or rope worked by a windlass; at the end of the rope are a pair of Lewis (double-hinged) tongs, in which an object, when once inclosed by the claws of the forceps, is held by its own weight. The shot is lifted by this means to the level of the muzzle, where it is met by the shotguide, a half-hoop or half-cylinder, which descends upon its hinges to catch the shot and hold it, as in the hollow of a spoon, while the men put it into the gun and ram it home in the ordinary manner. We are informed, however, that the Blakely company have devised a further improvement, which will supersede the overhanging crane; the shot being raised to the muzzle, and held there, by the iron arms of a machine with a similar action to that of a mans hand bringing his food to his mouth, and which (except when in use) will not project above the gun. Our illustration further shows a small truck, which is attached to the carriage for the accommodation of the men when sponging and loading. The whole series of operations essential to the complete working of this tremendous piece of artillery may be performed by six men - namely one ma at the gearing behind the platform to train the gun right or left; one man at the elevating screw; one man at the compressor, to control the running out or returning movement; one man at the crane, and two men for loading at the muzzle. The platform, which is 27 ft long and 9 ft or 10 ft wide, has room enough on each side for the men to pass to and fro. It may, perhaps, be objected to the crane and other loading apparatus that they are in a very exposed situation and would in a hostile action, very soon be knocked off by the enemys fire; but the gun might still be worked, like any other muzzle-loader, without the aid of those mechanical appliances. Altogether, its design reflects much credit upon Mr Vavasseur, the engineer to the Blakely Ordnance Company; and it is a fact which deserves the attentive consideration of those who have to provide for our own national defences that the Russian Government should have employed a London firm to construct these most formidable weapons. It is said that a steel gun of 15 inch bore, carrying a shot of 1,000 lb, has been ordered of the same manufacturers, and is actually in hand. ________________________________ The Russian Engineer Todleben The Illustrated London News, May 12, 1855 The name of the head engineer at Sebastopol is Todleben. He is thirty-two years of age. His parents are poor shopkeepers in Riga. When the siege commenced, Prince Menschikoff, it is said, asked the then head engineer how long it would take to put the place in a state of defence. He answered Two months. A young captain, named Todleben, stepped forward and said he would undertake to do it, if he had as many men as he required, in two weeks. He did it in twelve days; and was made a Colonel. Since that time he has had the direction of everything in the way of building batteries, defences, &c. The other day the Grand Dukes called upon his wife, who is residing in St Petersburg, to congratulate her upon her husbands promotion; for he is now General and Aide-de-Camp to the Emperor. ________________________________ Guns for the Russian Fleet During the 1860s Imperial Russia possessed two Fleets, that in the Baltic Sea and that in the Black Sea. By far the most important was that in the Baltic, defending St Petersburg and the Russia possessions in Finland, Estonia, Livonia and Courland. This was quartered on the fortress island of Kronstadt, seventeen miles east of the
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capital. Unlike most other naval forces the Russian Fleet at Kronstadt was summer-only, being locked-in by ice in winter, with its crews lodged in barracks. After the disaster of the Crimean War the Russian Fleet began a long investigation into new technology and commissioned, from 1863 onwards, a series of defensive ironclad warships, including broadside-armed frigates, turret ships and monitors based on foreign designs and experiments. The broadside-armed ironclad warships were outfitted with 8 inch cast-iron, smooth-bored shell firing guns, the barrels of which weighed 9 tons. The turret ships and monitors were all designed to be equipped with 9 inch Blakely steel rifles, of 180 inches bore length, firing 300 pound bolts, and weighing 14 tons. At least fifty-two of these 9 inch rifles were manufactured to Blakelys patents for the Russian Fleet in the Baltic. It is likely that many if not all of these 9 inch guns were completed at the Baird works in St Petersburg from components supplied from Britain. Twenty 9 inch Blakely rifles were supplied for the flotilla of ten Ericsson iron-hulled monitors, each of 1,555 tons displacement, constructed at Seraing, Belgium, and at St Petersburg in Russia, called the Bronenosets class (Armoured-one, this became the generic name for all armoured battleships in Russia; the word also came to mean armadillo). These were single-turret, coastal vessels modelled closely on those used by the U S Navy, the low-freeboard cheese on a shingle pattern. When originally completed in 1864 they were fitted with two 8 inch smooth-bores to each turret until the 9 inch Blakely pieces arrived. Later, in the 1870s, Krupp 9 inch breechloaders replaced the Blakelys in two of the Ericsson monitors in the Baltic. In addition, the Fleet acquired seven other iron-hulled, deep draught armoured turret ships of the much more sophisticated pattern developed in England by Captain Cower Coles RN. In these the cylindrical turrets were inset into the deck and rotated on steel rollers around the edge, rather than being balanced on a central vertical axle as in the Ericsson design. Built between 1863 and 1865, the much more seaworthy coastal ironclad Smerch (Tornado) of 1,460 tons possessed two large diameter Coles turrets, each carrying two 9 inch Blakely guns. The Tcharodeika (a folkloric Sorceress or Enchantress) and Russalka (a folkloric Water Nymph or Mermaid), both twin-turret ships each of 2,100 tons, constructed between 1866 and 1868, were identically armed. The much larger sea-going ironclads Admiral Lazarev and Admiral Greig of 3,700 tons had three Coles turrets each with a pair of 9 inch Blakely guns. The remaining two sea-going ironclads, Admiral Tchitchagov and Admiral Spiridov, of 3,700 tons, had two turrets, each with two 9 inch Blakely rifles. They were built between 1866 and 1870. All of the four Admirals had their 9 inch guns replaced in the 1870s by 11 inch Krupp breechloaders. _________________________________________________
9. The Blakely Ordnance Company, Limited

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t was not until the Companies Act 1862 that jointstock limited-liability companies were permitted in Britain free of government regulation. It is possible that Blakely planned to raise capital from the public for a new ordnance works from that year. He was certainly looking at sites during 1863 for the manufacture of great guns. But it was not for another three years that a joint-stock concern with his name was to be promoted. In a letter written by Captain Blakely in May 14, 1867 he stated that this limited company was only created to provide cash for John Dent, his financial partner, whose own firm was in considerable difficulties with its trading interests in India and China. On March 24, 1864 Alexander Blakely took a lease of 80 years on a piece of desolate land from an educational charity at Bugsbys Reach on the extremely isolated area known as Blackwall Point, near Greenwich, on the south side of the river Thames, with an 800 foot frontage on the river and 651 feet of depth. The construction of a new ordnance works commenced during 1864 on the river bank. In 1863 the site was entirely occupied by market gardens. The freeholders of the site had as one of their trustees and managers, Thomas Baring. He was managing partner of Baring Brothers, bankers to the government of the United States of America in London, and their chief conduit for finance and armaments in the 1860s. The Blakely Ordnance Company, Limited, was eventually formed in June 1865 with a joint-stock capital of 750,000. It was to acquire the assets of the partnership known as the Blakely Ordnance Company. The plant, premises and goodwill of the latter were valued at 375,000; this was to be paid to Alexander Blakely and John Dent as the price of their business in cash, shares and 150,000 in 6% debenture bonds. Captain Blakely was styled in the prospectus as the Manager, in fact the Managing Director. The balance of the new capital was intended to finance its expansion. The Greenwich site let to Captain Blakely by Morden College in March 1864 was assigned initially by him to the Blakely Ordnance Company and then, eventually, to the Agra Bank and Dent & Co. in security of its debts. The Company was formally launched to the public in the City of London on June 12, 1865 with temporary offices at 1 Royal Exchange Buildings, in the City. John Healy was nominated as secretary, responsible for its legal affairs. The Blakely Ordnance Company, Limited, was duly incorporated with joint-stock limited liability in law on June 18, 1865. The prospectus of the Company detailed a capital of 750,000 in 30,000 shares of 25. On these a deposit 1 was payable with a further 4 was required on allotment, on the 1st issue of 20,000 shares, raising, with subsequent calls, 500,000.
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The Directors of the Company were: John Dent, 35 Grosvenor Square Hon A Hobart, Captain RN, 5 Berkeley Square William Needham, late of Butterley Ironworks Frederick William Platt, Belswood, Hants Captain Blakely, late RA, managing director The Mechanics Magazine of March 10, 1865 had already given a long, detailed and, what proved to be, an accurate account of the Companys planned new works, for which the new capital was required: The Blakely Ordnance Company are erecting very extensive buildings for the manufacture of the now celebrated Blakely gun. The site of these premises is exactly opposite the river entrance to the Blackwall basin of the West India dock. In a very short time, therefore, the visitor may recline beneath the verandah of the old Artichoke, contemplate the noble ships on the stocks on the one hand, and the engines that are to propel them on the other, whilst in front will be the guns that may probably send them to the bottom, i.e., if the foreign patrons of the Blakely ordnance continue their present support. Here the company have purchased fourteen acres of land, and we are about to detail how they intend to arrange it. Mr Vavasseur, the engineer of the company, is the engineer for the new works, and everything has been, and will be, constructed from his designs, and under his personal superintendence. The main centre of the buildings is now ready for roofing, and will be very aptly suited for its purpose. It is 164 feet long by 100 feet wide in the clear. It stands on foundations that lie 26 feet below the surface. The strata passed through presented an odd mixture. There were 5 feet of made ground, a good deal of it having been carried there by the scavengers barges from the streets of London. Of clay there were 12 feet, and then some 5 feet of very inferior peat, and 3 feet of sand and gravel; below this the regular gravel bed was arrived at, and upon it the 6 feet layer of concrete was placed. Some of the peat clay was burnt and produced a hard red cinder that will answer very well as ballast for the new roads that will be required there. The main building will be divided into a great central avenue and two side aisles. Over these aisles will be machine galleries resting on two rows of twenty massive cast-iron columns 15 inches diameter, running the entire length of the building. These columns are hollow, the interiors being turned to account as gutters to carry off the rain-flow from the roof. They rest upon courses of stone and brickwork, lying on a bed of concrete that was carried down similar to the foundations of the principal walls. The main avenue will be traversed by steam travellers of 45 feet span running on rails that will pass over the top of the columns, so that, in addition to partially supporting the galleries and the roof, these columns will also sustain the steam-travelling cranes. This overhead crane will be continued right out over the wharf into the river, where iron cylinder piers have been sunk, from 35 feet to 40 feet below Trinity high-water mark, to support the terminus of the traveller railway. At this point a dock is being made 21 feet in the clear, into which lighters will be able to load or unload, as the case may be. The two great travelling cranes will carry a weight of 25 tons each, and, when working combined, 50 tons. Thus, their united action will lift the heaviest guns, run them along the main avenue, and deposit them either in the vessel alongside or the manufactory, as may be desired. There will also be other steam cranes
Augustus Charles Hobart had been, after long service in the Royal Navy, a prominent and successful blockade runner into the Confederate States during the American war. By 1868 he was an admiral in the Ottoman Turkish Navy. William Needham had been associated with Blakely since 1856. When Blakely moved to 1 Park Lane in 1866, Needham took his house at 34 Montpelier Square. The background of F W Platt is elusive; the son of Sir John Platt of the Court of Exchequer, formerly a lieutenant in the army and private secretary to Blakely, he does not seem to have been involved with any other enterprise in Britain. The bankers were Agra & Mastermans Bank Ltd., 35 Nicholas Lane, London, EC; the solicitors, Cunliffe & Beaumont, 43 Chancery Lane; the share-broker, James Shepherd, Throgmorton Street, EC. Captain Blakely wished to use well-known firm of Cazenove as the share-broker for the company projection but this was rejected by John Dent, for his own reasons. Agra & Mastermans Bank, a concern known for its support of speculative enterprises in Britain and the East Indies, was also a connection of the Dent family. The prospectus mentioned that the old company had had six years of orders from Russia, Portugal, Italy, Egypt, Sweden, China and Japan, Morocco, Turkey and states in North and South America, including the Confederate government. The profit in the last year was said to be 60,000. It had supplied 300 pounder and 600 pounder guns for both the Confederate States and the United States, 11 inch guns for coastal defence and 8 inch guns for the fleet in Russia, and guns for Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Italy. It had delivered by June 23, 1865, forty 600 pounder guns to Russia alone, at which time there was just one such piece in British service. Its officers and managers were: Captain Blakely RA, Managing Director Josiah Vavasseur, CE, Resident Engineer Daniel Campbell (late of the Royal Laboratory, Woolwich), Superintendent of the Laboratory and Shell Factory General Charles Herrick Burnaby, RA, Proof Master
The limited company acquired all of the existing leases, plant, premises and goodwill for 225,000 payable in instalments over 2 years, and issued 150,000 in 6% debentures. All of the assets were valued by a competent engineer, and the goodwill valued at 2 years purchase. The promoters of the Company guaranteed 15% dividend for 3 years from is creation. Captain Blakelys patents were bought for 20% of his net profits for 7 years.
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on the wharf for loading and unloading goods up to 10 or 12 tons, and the floor will also have lines of rails and railway trucks, so as to obviate as much as possible the use of manual labour in mere porters work. The great aisles on the ground floor will be occupied by selfacting lathes, now in process of manufacture, which, when finished, will be the largest in existence. They will each occupy a space of 70 feet in length, and will be capable of boring guns up to 50 tons weight and 20 feet long. The aisles in which they will work are 30 feet high. There will be no fewer than three steam engines, whose action will be transferable from one kind of work to another when necessary. They will, however, be each specially employed. One engine will drive the lathes, the great forge blasts, and the rifling machines. A second one will drive the lighter tools and other machinery, whilst a third will work the overhead travelling cranes by means of an endless strap running at the rate of thirty miles an hour. The engine-house and boilers, with the chimney, will be at the south-eastern end of the building. The river frontage of this property is considerable, and the Thames Conservancy Board have made it an imperative condition on all holders of property down there that a strong, permanent river wall shall be erected according to authorised plans. In return for this outlay several considerations are granted. As the line of wall proceeds on an undeviating course, it secures from fifteen to fifty feet of reclaimed land to the tenant. This will become more valuable every year; and will, further, have the effect of keeping the land dry from the chronic overflow of the river, its level being 5 feet above high water spring tides. The offices of the works will be to the east of the dock, and will be furnished with boats, landing stairs, &c., so that to cross the river to Blackwall stairs will only be the work of a few minutes. But, as East Greenwich is for the present in other respects somewhat removed from the haunts of men, it is intended to build cottages for sixty families with schools for children, which can also be rendered available for divine service when requisite. Each cottage will have garden grounds sufficient for its wants and pleasures. A new road will be constructed to the end of Millwall Lane, and thence is a clear road to Woolwich or Greenwich. It is intended, and indeed it is absolutely necessary, to construct gas-works for the use of the infant colony, and it will further rest entirely with the local water-works company whether an artesian well will not also form one of the works of the place. The engineer has but to go a little down through the gravel that he has for his foundations, and he can easily obtain water in plenty for all purposes. In addition to making cannon of the largest possible calibre and massive carriages to contain them, the new company was to manufacture and fill shot and shell for its guns in a separate laboratory. The East Greenwich works employed 300 men in the foundry and machine shop. According to John Bigelow, the abolitionist spy, writing in 1909, the machinery for the gun shops was made in Sheffield, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool for the Confederate States and was purchased by the ordnance company for much less than it cost to manufacture. The works was supplied with crucible steel by Naylor, Vickers & Company and John Kenyon & Company, both of Sheffield in the North of England, and later, as demand for its great guns grew, by Friedrich Krupp of Essen in Prussia. It was anticipated that a revolutionary new Bessemer plant making blasted steel rather than crucible steel would soon supply its needs. The Blakely Ordnance Companys factory was a lofty brick structure 168 feet by 104 feet wide, with an ironframed roof and galleries on either side. There was an engine house, a steam boiler house, a smiths shop, 41 feet by 38 feet, an octagon chimney shaft, about 70 feet high, a gas meter house, a brick building for the managers residence and office, detached stabling and double coach-house, a brick-built dock 21 feet wide, with a wharf and a wooden jetty protected by two dolphins. The works were served by iron tram rails with turntables at convenient distances. A lone 7 inch Blakely rifled gun on a wooden compressor mount was installed on the northern arm of the wharf, ensuring that passing vessels were aware of what was being manufactured at the new works. Within the works were three horizontal steam engines and boilers, two giant self-acting gun lathes, slotting, punching, drilling, shaping and rifling machines, an overhead travelling crane, warehouse and wharf cranes, smiths forges and water mains, all lit by gas. Adjacent were a range of seventeen brick-built workmens cottages each containing four rooms on two storeys and an attic, a block of model lodging-houses, unfinished in 1866, and a building intended for a coffee and reading room, baths and wash-houses, all constructed on three sides of an open square to the east of the road to the Ordnance works. These were later described as being five two-storey houses for managers, a terrace of twelve two-storey cottages for foremen, called Blakely Cottages, to the north side, and a fourstorey block of tenements with iron galleries fronting each floor for the workers, known as Blakely Buildings, on the south side. Regarding Blakely Buildings, The Builder magazine noted that a central clock tower intersects a long narrow row of flats [apartments], four storeys high, and each flat has a covered balcony the entire length... In the upper part of the tower over the principal staircase is a tank to contain water for the supply of each suite of rooms and WCs in the back gallery. The cost of the large block of workmans dwellings is 12,000. The baths and wash-houses on the east side later became a mission hall. A large extent of land with a frontage on the river Thames remained vacant. The Builder noted that the architect for the project was Augustus Manning, presumably the well-known Engineer to the East & West India Docks Company, just across the river from the new site. The entire works actually covered seventeen acres.
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As well as providing thoroughly moral coffee and reading rooms, a public house was built near-by on a corner site, called the Ordnance Arms. Unfinished in 1866 it was advertised for sale, completed and opened later. The immense suite of machinery and tools was made for the Company by some of the finest engineering firms in Britain: Smith, Beacock & Tannett, Buckton, Neilson, Robinson, Hulse, Scriven, Holdsworth, and Maclea & March. The outfit comprised: One self-acting boring and surfacing lathe, with 39 inch centres, to take in 9 feet diameter, with a 30 feet bed One self-acting boring and surfacing lath, with 36 inch centres, to take 8 feet diameter with a 29 feet 9 inch bed Four self-acting slide and screw cutting lathes, 10 and 13 inch centres, with beds from 12 to 18 feet long One self-acting gun rifling machine, with 6 inch bar 24 feet 4 inches long, 28 feet bed Two powerful boring mills One self-acting slotting machine, to take in 6 feet diameter, 30 inch stroke One self-acting radial drilling machine, with a 9 feet arm One self-acting, vertical drilling machine, to take in 5 feet diameter Three self-acting vertical drilling machines, to take in 3 feet and 3 feet 6 inches diameter One eccentric punching and shearing machine, by Collier, fitted with shears for cutting angle iron, to take in 2 feet One self-acting shaping machine, 13 inch stroke One screwing machine Three high-pressure horizontal steam engines, with 15 inch cylinders, 2 feet 6 inches stroke Two wrought-iron Cornish steam boilers One donkey pumping engine One 6 hp direct-acting steam engine and boiler 628 feet run of wrought-iron shafting One 15 cwt steam hammer by Tannett, Walker & Co. One 25 ton wrought-iron overhead traveller, 44 feet span, with wrought-iron gantry, 274 feet long Two 5 ton travelling cranes by Gadd One 10 ton wrought-iron steam wharf crane, with a 20 feet jib One 5 ton portable steam wharf crane, by Dunn, on a strong-framed trolley Two double purchase cranes Five strong timber-framed trolleys, on 24 inch castiron wheels 12 tons contractors rails Six smiths forges Two Lloyds fans Engineers and Smiths tools And gas-fittings throughout the premises no mill for rolling plate and only a single, relatively small, steam hammer, which severely limited its capacity for forging iron or steel. It was intended, for the moment, to be an assembly not a manufacturing plant. The new Ordnance Works was to be part of an interconnected, riverside industrial complex built on a green field site:At the same time a little further up the river the legendary steel-maker Henry Bessemer established the London Iron & Steel Works at East Greenwich during 1865 to blast iron into steel for the Thames shipbuilders - and for the new ordnance factory. It was by Bessemers standards a small steel operation with, according to his son, two 2 ton converters and all the plant necessary, including one 2-ton steam hammer and another, the size of which is not given. The buildings were carefully designed, with the intention that the establishment should be in all respects be a model one. The plan also included a jetty on the river. It was said in 1865 that the new works in London, the first Bessemer steel-blast plant, would have a 50 ton hammer and the capacity to pour 30 ton ingots. Neither of these promises was kept. Although the model works were completed and managed between 1865 and 1867 by Richard Price Williams, it, apparently, never commenced operation. Price Williams was a railway and bridge engineer, one of the first to introduce the use of Bessemer steel for railway purposes. He later became engineer to the Bessemer Steel Works at Stocksbridge, Sheffield; where he built a converter plant and a rail mill. Bessemer retained the riverside property and leased it in 1878 to Appleby Brothers, a firm of engineers, as their steam crane and engine works. East Greenwich in 1865 accommodated, from north to south along the Thames, the Blakely Ordnance works; Courtenay, Henwood & Company, shipbuilders; Henry Bessemers steel works; John Bethell & Company, tar distillers and creosoters of timber; the National Company for Boatbuilding by Machinery; Glass, Elliot & Company, manufacturers of telegraph cable; and Henry Reid, cement manufacturer. The Blakely Ordnance Company, Limited, established its offices in rooms at 11 Pall Mall East, London, WC, near Trafalgar Square, on August 28, 1865, with works at 28 Gravel Lane, Southwark, London SE; 1 Bear Lane, Southwark, London SE and at East Greenwich, London SE. The position of John Healy as secretary was made permanent during 1865. On September 9, 1865, the Comte de Paris, the Duc de Montpensier and the Duc de Chartres, the most senior members of the Orlanist party of the Royalist opposition to Napoleon III of France, visited the new works, being shown round by Captain Blakely himself. They viewed two 600 pounder guns then being finished for proof at Woolwich. By the beginning of 1866 the Secretary, the principal manager of the Company, was John Randolph Hamilton. He had a formidable personal history; the son of Governor James Hamilton of South Carolina, Jack
It is worth noting that the East Greenwich works were clearly established at this stage for finishing ordnance. There were no foundries on the site for casting metal,
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Hamilton had been a Captain in the Confederate States Navy, creating an ironclad battery at Charleston in 1861. By 1862 he was in England outfitting Confederate cruisers alongside Commander James Bulloch; he chose to remain in England with his wife Louisa and his son in 1865. The Company issued a price list for its great guns: 100 pounder, 6.4 inch bore, 96 inch barrel, 8,000 lbs - 1,000 120 pounder, 7 inch bore, 100 inch barrel, 9,600 lbs 1,200 200 pounder, 8 inch bore, 144 inch barrel, 17,000 lbs - 2,000 250 pounder, 9 inch bore, 144 inch barrel, 24,000 lbs - 2,250 350 pounder, 10 inch bore, 144 inch barrel, 30,000 lbs - 3,500 550 pounder, 11 inch bore, 144 inch barrel, 35,000 lbs - 5,500 700 pounder, 12 inch bore, 144 inch barrel, 40,000 lbs - 7,000 Blakely offered the following projectiles in 1865: Calibre 3.5 inches 3.4 inches 3 inches 2.9 inches 2.9 inches 2.5 inches 6.43 inches 5 inches 4.62 inches 4.2 inches 3 inches 3.4 inches 9 inches 9 inches 9 inches 7 inches 11 inches 11 inches 11 inches 9 inches 11 inches Shot 18 pounds 12 pounds 9 pounds 7 pounds 9 pounds 6 pounds 90 pounds 56 pounds 40 pounds 30 pounds 20 pounds 12 pounds Shell 15 pounds 10 pounds 7 pounds 6 pounds 7 pounds 5 pounds 66 pounds 45 pounds 30 pounds 22 pounds 16 pounds 11 pounds
370 pound proving cylinder 300 pounds 200 pounds 270 pounds steel 240 pounds steel 130 pounds 100 pounds 600 pound proving cylinder 400 pounds 360 pounds 500 pounds steel 400 pounds steel 104 pound spherical steel shot 194 pound spherical steel shot
The pieces above 8 inch in calibre were available with longer barrels, up to 152 inches in length, the limit of their massive rifling lathes. The main supplier of steel to the works, and a part-finisher of many substantial components such as reinforcing bands and breech sleeves was the firm of Naylor, Vickers & Company of the River Don Works, Sheffield. Another supplier, in fact the only large-scale competitor to Naylor Vickers in the steel industry in the 1860s, until Henry Bessemer became established with his blasting process, was Friedrich Krupp of Essen in the Prussian Rhineland. The subsequent history of Vickers and Krupp in ordnance is well-known. It was later estimated that the new models of great guns had a mean cost of 2,400 and took three months to build. Each wrought-iron compressor carriage to absorb the recoil cost 250, taking eight weeks to make, and the undercarriage or slider cost 300, involving eight to ten weeks work. As an economic reference point it can be stated that in 1850 no gun in British service cost more than 100! The firms of John Kenyon & Company, manufacturers of steel tools and rollers, forgers, and tilters of steel, of Middlewood Works, Sheffield, and Thomas Firth & Sons, of Norfolk Works, Savile Street Sheffield, also provided Blakely with forgings of crucible steel in the mid-1860s. Firth installed two massive Nasmyth steam hammers in 1863 specifically to forge gun barrels. These cannon were all to Blakelys latest design, with steel tubes and multiple steel hoops and steel bands, so much different from his simple cast-iron, wrought-iron banded cannon of the early 1860s. The advance of metallurgy and the working of particularly hard metals had now permitted great guns to be made entirely of steel. Apart from small presentation pieces the new works concentrated on making great guns for battering, for fortresses and for warships; abandoning the provision of field artillery to sub-contractors.
The list is based on a photograph showing the products of the Blakely Ordnance Company. There were several different patterns of shot and shell, possibly intended for land and sea service, which accounts for the apparent duplication in the smaller sizes. They all had the cupped copper disc sealer, patented by Captain Blakely in 1863, at the base. Although Blakely had given up on trying to sell his guns to the War Office in London by 1865, all of his ordnance was proved by test-firing on the butts at Woolwich Marshes, next to the governments arsenal. This explains the location of his new works, a few miles away from Woolwich along the river. The arsenal charged him 100 for each gun that used their proving grounds. A set of photographs were taken to show the progress of the construction and operation of the East Greenwich works in the years 1865 and 1866. Prints of these still exist. It is clear that the manufacture of guns commenced before the factory was completed; only the largest patterns of ordnance appear to have been made at these short-lived works, but in some considerable numbers. The first of two massive jetties on to the Thames is seen with 11 inch cannon and recoil carriages being loaded by overhead travelling crane and swing derrick into a lighter for transfer to a seagoing ship. Piles of bricks and builders debris cover the foreground. Even more impressive is another, later, photograph that shows the gun yard to the south of the works with the barrels of forty or so great guns, sealed for shipment, laid out on rails. But within a year it all went wrong. Blakely placed the blame for the subsequent collapse with John Dent. The old partnership had made guns worth 250,000 in both of the years 1864 and 1865, of
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which 20% was profit. Dent had taken 67,000 out of that business as his share. But in the middle of 1864 Dent & Company in China had massive reversals in trade and urgently needed capital from its partners. John Dent proposed to Blakely in June 1865 that they sell the ordnance business and its plant, which until then they had financed from profits, to a public jointstock company. He further proposed that this company promotion be handled by Benjamin Hardwick, a lawyer, writer on financial matters and money-lender, of Clench, Smith & Company, financial agents, of 1 Royal Exchange Buildings, London, deeply involved in speculative finance and stock-jobbing. In the spirit of the age Hardwick had also been clerk to the Weavers Company and involved with other charitable concerns. Of the 375,000 due to them for the business under the June 9 agreement with Hardwick the former partners, Blakely and Dent, were to receive 225,000 in cash instalments over two years. In July 1865 they were paid 70,000; nothing more was to be forthcoming. As part of the payment they were also allocated 25 shares as if fully paid-up. Blakely in June had 1,800 of the initial 20,000 shares, with a face value of 45,000. He was to buy more at the market price. Dent was allotted a further tranche. The peculiar nature of the Hardwicks stock promotion may be judged by the manner in which the balance of the money due to the two original partners was to be paid. They were to receive 150,000 in 6% debentures, redeemable by the limited company after three years, on June 30, 1868. The debenture was in the form of 1,000 negotiable bearer bonds with coupons. In effect Blakely and Dent were to lend this large sum of money to Company for the three years, foregoing any profits and rights of proprietorship that stock would involve. Of the 500,000 sought at the initial offering less than 200,000 was to be raised by Hardwick and his friends in the City of London from real investors. As Blakely was to mourn, We had handed over our valuable business to a bubble company, receiving in exchange a mass of bills, bonds and shares. According to Blakely the whole promotion was heavily stagged by speculators looking to make money on an upward movement in the share price on its launch. Indeed the 5 shares traded at a premium of 2.625 and 2.875 during their first couple of months on the Stock Market. It attracted former-officers in the army, and others even less financially aware. Inevitably, after a few months more trading and profit-taking by Hardwick and other speculators this left three-quarters of the shares in the hands of dummies... unable to meet further calls. And Dent still needed his money to bail out the China business. He took his shares and debenture bonds to banks and other lenders, pledging and discounting them at a loss to raise cash. Six weeks after the launch of the Blakely Ordnance Company, Limited, in August 1865, he left London for China. Over the following months the loans for which the bonds were used as security needed to be redeemed. Dent had gone, the limited company had little or no cash, so it was left to Blakely to pay off what he could. He, too, resorted to using his bonds as collateral. He borrowed 4,000 from the Metropolitan & Provincial Bank against 8,000 worth of the bonds. In February 1866 he deposited 17,000 in debentures with the New Zealand Banking Corporation in London, one of whose directors was Benjamin Hardwick, who gave value for them. Blakely had also given ten of the 6% debenture bonds, worth 10,000, to his sister, Isabella, in August 1865. In April 1866 the London money market collapsed. The money dealing firm of Overend, Gurney & Company crashed in April 1866, bringing down with it banks and investment companies throughout Britain. The trade of John Dent with China was already in trouble; Dent had fled the country and his debts in the previous summer. On May 14, 1866 the Ordnance company was compelled to assign the lease of the East Greenwich works to Agra & Mastermans Bank and to Dents London agency to secure his loans. Then in June, Agra & Mastermans Bank failed, followed quickly by the New Zealand Bank. On June 28, 1866 Blakely, Platt and Needham, the remaining directors, were compelled to petition the Court of Chancery for the winding-up of the Blakely Ordnance Company, Limited. Exactly a month later, on July 28, 1866 the order for its winding-up was granted. Thomas Patrick, whose firm, Mark Patrick & Son, of 26 Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth, had built the East Greenwich works was co-petitioner for the winding-up. When the works closed there were over 100 complete pieces of ordnance on hand at East Greenwich, including a 15 inch gun, a 13 inch gun, two 11 inch guns, with components for at least five more, ten 9 inch guns and parts for a further ten, plus thirty-eight field, mountain and boat guns of various sorts. On hand were 116 tons of tubes, jackets and trunnion rings, 110 tons of steel hoops and 510 tons of projectiles, including spherical steel shot, iron bolts and iron shells. The Blakely Ordnance Company, Limited, manufacturers of and dealing in ordnance and other materials of war, of Pall Mall East, London; Bear Lane, Southwark; and East Greenwich, had a paid-up capital of 180,512 10s on July 28, 1866. It then had liabilities of 297,564 14s. Its sixty-nine surviving shareholders each had to pay a further call of 15 per share to cover the firms debts to the builders of the East Greenwich factory and to its suppliers of steel, Naylor, Vickers & Company, Thomas Firth, John Brown, Low Moor, Friedrich Krupp, and to many others, as well as 4,170 12s 9d to cover the expenses of the liquidation. In 1866 Captain Blakely held 3,568 shares in the Ordnance Company, and on its collapse was obliged to contribute 53,520 to its liquidation as the balance due on his stock-holding. From July 1866 all of his ordnance patents gradually became void as the money needed for the three-yearly renewal fees could not be found. To recover whatever assets remained Blakelys first
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venture into joint-stock promotion, the Tavistock Ironworks & Steel Ordnance Company, Limited, followed the ordnance company with its own petition for winding-up on August 14, 1866. Blakely at first vigorously argued in the courts for the continuation of the Blakely Ordnance Company, Limited. He claimed that, as the Company had never paid him the purchase price for the property, he had a lien or right to retain it until the debt was satisfied. He also challenged the sale of its works, its machinery and its stock of guns by the liquidator as unnecessary and destructive of a valuable business in 1866 and in 1867, to no avail. Its shares were held by speculators and the estates of bankrupts, just like John Dent, unable to contribute to its continuance. Its creditors, unable to source funds elsewhere in the crash, needed their money. But Blakely was right, there was no market! It took until 1872 to dispose of all the industrial assets. When the United States government sued Alexander Blakely, John Dent and the Blakely Ordnance Company in the Court of Chancery on March 19, 1868 in regard to materials produced for the Confederate States, to which by conquest they had become successors in law, Blakely and Dent were both beyond the jurisdiction of the Court, overseas. On February 6, 1869 the principal of the firm of Clench, Smith, Hardwick & Dimsdale, financial agents, now of 157 Fenchurch Street, London, summonsed the editor of The Reporter magazine for libel in the Guildhall Court when the paper accused him of starting many companies for his own personal benefit,... for which he received large sums of money, both openly and under the rose [i.e. secretly], and also with wrecking others when it suited his purpose to do so and he could pocket large sums of money by it. Hardwick and his partners had been involved in over twelve stock promotions between 1864 and 1866, nearly all of which ended in litigation. The summons was dismissed by the court. John Randolph Hamilton, the Company Secretary and former Confederate Navy officer, survived to become a successful City Merchant. Clearly unreconstructed after the Civil War, he stated in the British Census of 1871 that his place of birth was South Carolina, North America. With the failure of the Blakely Ordnance Company in 1866 Josiah Vavasseur had to abandon the great works in East Greenwich to its creditors. Stripped of their machinery the buildings lay derelict for several years. Many great guns were left on the riverside site; some indeed survived as gatekeepers until the 1970s. Reestablishing the business as Josiah Vavasseur & Company, he created the London Ordnance Works by acquiring his former offices at Gravel Lane, and the factory in Bear Lane, Southwark Street, Southwark, and was open for business by November 27, 1867. Tho without the forges and lathes Blakely had had built Vavasseur continued the manufacture of cannon, assembling, rifling and finishing steel components roughly prepared by Firths Steel Works in Sheffield. Vavasseur also developed carriages to manage even larger cannon, in which he became something of a specialist. The small works at Bear Lane also manufactured Harveys torpedo for several countries from 1870 under contract of Captain John Harvey RN and Commander Frederick Harvey RN. The London Ordnance Works continued under Josiah Vavasseurs management until he merged it with Sir W G Armstrongs Elswick company in February 1883. He was appointed one of the directors of Armstrongs gun works in Newcastle. The Bear Lane factory then fell into the hands of Captain Blakelys bitter competitor, who, however, maintained it in the manufacture of guns and carriages until May 28, 1904, when the lease was surrendered. _________________________________________________
10. Scandal
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n 1865 Blakely bought the 300 ton iron-hulled, schooner-rigged steam yacht Ceres of Charles Kuhn Prioleau. This was one of the largest steam yachts built, it was a two-masted, single-funnel steamer from Tod & McGregors yard on the Clyde in 1859. Prioleau had acquired it in 1864 for 5,500. Its elegant lines were suspiciously like those of a blockade runner. It replaced Blakelys previous, more modest, 50 ton cutter Phosphorus at Ryde off the Isle of Wight that he had acquired in 1864. It was an unlucky purchase... On June 24, 1867 The Times newspaper reported the following suit in the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, in London, that had happened three days prior: This was a petition by Edward Cholmeley Dering for the dissolution of his marriage with Harriet Mary Dering, by reason of her adultery with Theophilus Alexander Blakely. The respondent and co-respondent denied the charge, and the co-respondent further pleaded connivance. The petitioner in this case is a son of Sir Edward Dering, and the respondent is a daughter of the Hon Mrs Capel, and was formerly the wife of the late Viscount Forth, and a party to matrimonial suit which was brought before the Court a few years ago. The corespondent, Captain Blakely, is well-known in connexion with an Ordnance Company. The marriage took place in October 1862, and Mr and Mrs Dering lived together on very affectionate terms at his seat in Herefordshire, called Cliffords Place, and at other places. Captain Blakely, who is a married man, was on intimate terms with them, and in the early part of 1866 he accompanied them on a tour of the Continent and on a yachting expedition. In May 1866 they were at Cliffords Place, when Mrs Clifford unexpectedly left her home and came to the hotel at the Great Western [Railway] terminus at Paddington and sent for Captain Blakely. Mr Dering, who was much distressed and afflicted at her going away, communicated with her, and expressed his willingness to take her back, but she positively refused to return. I was proved that shortly afterwards Captain Blakely and Mrs Dering passed ten
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days or a fortnight together at a private hotel in Charles Street, Berkeley Square, living as man and wife. There was no defence. The Judge Ordinary said that he regretted that the corespondent had thought proper to put on the record a plea of connivance, for a more insulting insinuation could hardly be made against a husband, without having any evidence to support it. Decree nisi, with costs against the co-respondent. The suit was not quite as black and white as the Judge Ordinary presumed. The Queens Proctor, the law officer responsible for matrimonial business, took Blakelys counter plea against Edward Dering seriously, particularly after receiving supporting affidavits from Mrs Derings parents in November 1867. On June 5, 1868 the Proctor accused Dering before the Judge Ordinary and a jury of conniving and colluding with his wife and Blakely to secure the divorce, and that the decree nisi was therefore void. Mrs Dering had form. Her first husband, Lord Forth, a dipsomaniac, had committed suicide in October 1861 after the death of his mistress. Lady Forth, as she then was, promptly married her own paramour, Edward Cholmeley Dering. She had just been involved in a bitter but unsuccessful divorce suit against Forth, in which both parties were deemed equally culpable. The intervention of the Queens Proctor was reported in the public press and the hearing threw even more light on Blakelys relationship with Mrs Dering. The original adultery was said to have taken place in the months of November and December 1865, and in the months of January, February, March, April and May 1866 at No 10 Bolton Street, London, and on board a certain yacht in divers places in parts beyond the seas in May, actually on a cruise from Marseilles to Tangiers, Gibraltar, Lisbon and London. There were serious questions as to how much the husband knew of the matter. The Judge Ordinary observed in his summary; If an intimacy springs up between a married woman and a man of such a character as to be dangerous to her honour, and the husband knows so much of it as to perceive the danger, and yet purposely or recklessly disregards it, he is guilty of wilful misconduct which may conduce to adultery. On June 6, 1868 the jury found for Edward Dering again, but added that he had shewn a great want of caution. It mattered nothing to Blakely or to Mrs Dering; they had died together in Peru in May. _________________________________________________ tional, wheeled or truck carriages or simple friction carriages they were difficult to manage. In fact these new exceptionally large guns were never mounted on wheeled trucks other than for tests. Blakely had included a revolutionary hydraulic gun carriage in his first patent of 1855 to control the immense recoil of great guns. He withdrew his patent claim for this in 1859 as part of his fight with W G Armstrong, a hydraulic engineer. In comparison, the small rifled field and mountain pieces that Blakely had produced early in the 1860s were shorter and lighter than their smooth-bored predecessors. But, even though using less propellant, they too presented problems to their gunners in their violent recoil which could be unmanageable and could damage the wooden carriages on which they were mounted, built to suit the old models. Blakely was primarily concerned with the construction of ordnance. The detail of rifling and projectiles for such ordnance he was initially ready to leave to others. As regards rifling he originally utilised the system of Commander Robert Scott, RN, the so-called centrical or ratchet rifling, as well as, in larger pieces, the square rifling of his other close associate, Bashley Britten. By 1863 Blakely adopted and subsequently patented his own standard of ratchet rifling. This rifling is identical to that adopted by Commander John Brooke, CSN, for his naval and coastal cannon. Most surviving ordnance made in Britain for Blakely has the provenance Blakelys Patent cast or struck into the breech; the trunnions of such pieces also have a serial number cast into their ends (as do virtually all British cannon). Similarly, on most of Blakelys guns the year of manufacture features on the right trunnion, the serial on the left. The serials are consecutive to Blakely rather than to the manufacturer; i.e. from 1 to c. 480. On January 24, 1859 Captain Blakely observed that to that date he had made six or seven guns to his 1855 patent, all of them experimental. Blakelys 9 pounder Gun 1854 In 1854 the Butterley Company constructed for Captain Blakely his first 9 pounder iron smooth-bored cannon featuring tension bands. It had a 4 inch calibre cast-iron tube turned down from the breech to the trunnions to 10 inches diameter and then hooped at the breech with three tapering wrought-iron rings. Blakelys 9 pounder was sent to the Governments firing range at Shoeburyness in the Thames estuary for comparison with the British Armys standard 9 pounder cast-iron field gun and another iron gun designed by a Mr Duncan. The tests were the severest imaginable: each piece initially fired 120 rounds with the Armys common charge. This was followed by overloading each with six pounds of powder and double-shot. With this load Duncans gun burst after three rounds and the standard gun burst after 110 rounds. The Army gunners had to abandon this test with Blakelys new gun after it had fired 318 overloaded rounds. They then filled the Blakely barrel to the muzzle with powder and shot and fired it repeatedly with
11. The Guns

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he principal problem with the new large calibre cannon, and for most of the new rifled pieces, was the carriage on which they were served. Although the barrels of his great guns were heavy for their time their recoil was ferocious and when mounted on conven-
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this absurd charge; Blakelys gun lasted for 158 of these rounds before it finally burst. Blakely Gun No 1, 1860 The first gun that Captain Blakely demonstrated publically was a large 6.4 inch calibre piece made by Fawcett, Preston & Company in Liverpool. It had a long castiron tube, 160 inches long overall, 140 inches in the bore, which was rifled with twenty of Scotts ratchets. The breech was turned to a 19 inch cylinder and a 30 inch long, 26 inch overall diameter, steel sleeve sweated on for strengthening. It weighed 6,800 pounds and cost, it was said, 250 to manufacture. The design was settled with the makers on November 10, 1859. This 6.4 inch (i.e. bored as a 32 pounder, or 16 centimetres, aimed at the European market!) gun was rigorously tested in public, and in the presence of ordnance officers from France, Spain, Russia, Austria and Italy, between May and August 1860 at Hightown Sands, north of Liverpool. It fired Bashley Brittens leadskirted explosive shells of up to 68 pounds weight. This 6.4 inch banded, rifled gun and the widely reported trials at Hightown launched Captain Blakely on to the world stage. Guns for Spain 1860 On January 2, 1860 the Spanish Artillery Committee in Madrid published a long report of its test with iron and brass rifled ordnance during the previous year. Cast iron by itself, as is clearly proved to us by the bursting of the guns we have tried, is not strong enough to resolve the question of rifled cannon of large calibre, unless the charge of gunpowder be much reduced, and even then the gunners would not feel confidence in their guns. In addition it condemned wrought-iron as a material for ordnance as it was without the hardness and other qualities necessary to the bore of a gun. The Spanish committee tried a 32 pounder Blakely steel-hooped gun at Gijon on March 9, 1859: The results of the proof are the following:No. of rounds with Powder 3 kgs Hooped gun 600 Gun without hoops 3 kgs 4 kgs 200 400 153 Total 1,200 153 grams (about 57 cwt), is reported as bearing no less than 1,366 rounds, with 28 2/10 ths kilogram (about 60 pound) shells, and charges of 3 and 3 kilograms of powder. During the first days of proof 100 rounds were fired, with intervals of only from 1 to l minutes. On the following days 50 rounds were fired with the same rapidity every morning, and 50 more every evening. The gun could not be touched with the hand, on account of the heat. No wonder the committee thinks that this proof renders apparent the excellence of the gun, and consequently that of the hooping system. The magazine continued, The final decision of the committee, which has been acted on by the Government to the extent of ordering 600 sixty-pounder cannon, we cannot give better than in its own words:- The path we must follow is clearly indicated: cast-iron cylinders hooped, a most simple manufacture, which, once established, only requires great care in securing the proper diameter to the bore of the hoops. The difference between the diameters of the hoops and of the cast-iron part must be determined by experiment, aided by calculation. The Spanish commission also recommended the adoption of a 4.8 inch 24 pounder iron siege gun, a 3.4 inch 9 pounder brass field gun and a 3.4 inch 9 pounder brass mountain gun, all with French pattern three-groove rifling for studded projectiles, being new pieces and conversions from old. These were not made to Blakelys patent principles. On September 13, 1861 Captain Blakely wrote, the Spanish Government last year adopted the plan of building guns which I have advocated for some years without any communication with me. This, in my opinion, proves the correctness of my views more than if the plan had been recommended by me and merely found to answer. The Spanish officers discovered the proper tension for the outer layers of a gun by observation first and calculation afterwards. This was the reverse of Blakelys approach. It is not clear whether or not production of the 16 centimetre Blakely hooped gun was implemented. Guns for Garibaldi 1860 The London newspapers and Mechanics Magazine all reported that Blakely and Fawcett, Preston & Company had provided 70 pounder rifled cannon for Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian revolutionary in August 1860. It is known that a very small number of 6 or 6.4 inch Blakely guns were shipped in that month from Liverpool to Genoa, paid for by Garibaldis English supporters. Bolognesi Guns for Peru 1861 Colonel Francisco Bolognesi Cervantes, director of artillery of the Peruvian Army in 1860, visited England to procure modern ordnance for his command and for the Peruvian Navy. He reviewed existing manufacturers including Armstrong, Whitworth and Blakely; attending the High Town gun trials at Liverpool. He settled on Blakely for the bulk of his purchase: fourteen 12 pounders for sea service, twelve 12 pounder field guns, fourteen 9 pounder mountain guns and fourteen 4 pounder mountain guns, fifty-four guns in all. They
The hooped gun is not at all injured. The firing was in the same place, and equal in all circumstances. Seeing this, and taking into consideration the premature bursting of the un-hooped guns at Gijon, the committee cannot do less than acknowledge the great increase of strength which the hoops supply, and declare themselves convinced that from guns cast of iron, in a single piece, the advantages of the system of rifling cannot be obtained. Mechanics Magazine reporting the Spanish trials, said that On the 13th of November, 1859, a Blakely gun, of 16 centimetres bore (6 inches), is reported to have been fired 900 rounds without suffering even the slightest alteration. On the 4th of September, 1860, another of the same bore, and weighing only 2,835 kilo-
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were constructed with cast-iron tubes, cast-iron trunnion rings and steel breech jackets during 1861. The sea service pieces were mounted on trucks, the field guns on the usual wooden block trails, but the mountain guns were on advanced iron carriages, which could also be carried on three mules. The four-pounders did not have cascabel knobs. Ammunition for these pieces was all to Bashley Brittens patent: 2,800 rounds of shot and shell for the sea service guns and 4,800 rounds of shot, shrapnel and common shell for the military pieces. A longer description may be found here in First Manufacture and in Cannon for Peru. Colonel Bolognesi also acquired 25,000 Mini-pattern rifle muskets in Prussia, 4,000 Sharps breech-loading carbines and 1,000 Jacobs double-barrelled carbines in Europe for the Peruvian infantry and cavalry. Frmonts Liverpool Guns 1861 Whilst in London on his own business during the Sumter Spring of 1861 John Charles Frmont, the legendary pathfinder of the American west and soonto-be Major-General in the US Army, engaged in a private purchasing mission in support of the Union. Among his acquisitions of rifle-muskets and ordnance were a number of 12 pounder rifles of Fawcett, Preston & Company, which he called his Liverpool guns. Frmont formally agreed to Fawcetts terms on June 4, 1861. Eight 12 pounder rifled cannon, of 3 inch Blakelycalibre, with carriages complete, were ordered for a total of 1,700; to accompany them shells were bought from another source (Bashley Britten) for 1,403. Payment was to be made on Frmonts behalf through the American house of George Peabody & Company, 22 Old Broad Street, City, merchants and money-brokers. Fawcetts price of 212 per gun and carriage contrasts with their price of 109 for the same outfit to Peru and 110 for a somewhat different Confederate model of 3.5 inch gun, without carriage. Frmonts guns were delivered at New York off the Inman liner City of Baltimore early in August 1861 and by railroad to the US Arsenal at St Louis, Missouri, late in the same month. All eight were provided to the 1st Missouri Light Artillery, though not issued until early 1862. The rifles were used piecemeal among Batteries E, F and M. It was declared in August 1863 that they were the only eight 3.5 inch guns in the United States. The 1st Missouri Light Artillery had the largest concentration of 3.5 inch Blakely-calibre guns in one unit in North America; they fought from New Madrid through Vicksburg to Mobile in April 1865. This purchase on behalf of the United States, so very early in the American war, goes a long way to account for the number of Bashley Britten 3 inch patent shells found in battle sites in the West and down the Mississippi. It also led to the manufacture of Hotchkiss shot and shell in 3.5 inch calibre for the Union once the initial English shell purchase ran low in 1863. The 3 inch rifled cannon provided to Frmont were to Blakelys standard model with the slender cast iron barrel, discrete breech sleeve and prominent trunnion ring similar to those provided in the same year to Peru. The barrel length was 68 inches, with seven-groove square rifling to Bashley Brittens design. Although carrying Fawcetts details, neither Blakelys name nor his patent gun number appears on these tubes, no doubt, one can surmise, for good business reasons! The 12-pounder Confederate Field Guns 1861 For the Confederate States Army Captain Blakely and Fawcett, Preston & Company together developed a unique design of field gun that was not offered to any other purchaser. They are the commonest of all Blakely guns. It was to have an unusual bore of 3 inches and a short barrel, having a cast-iron tube over which was shrunk a substantial steel cup or sleeve with a cascabel knob at the breech end and an elevating screw, the sleeve reaching to a flush-fitting trunnion ring. The rifling was of seven grooves to Bashley Brittens square pattern, the piece intended to fire his patent leadskirted cast-iron shells of 12 pounds weight. In theory this short gun could fire a solid bolt of much greater weight. The novel visible feature of this piece was the flushfitting trunnion ring, which merges almost seamlessly into the reinforcing breech sleeve. The Confederate 12 pounder had a barrel 58 inches in overall length, with a maximum diameter on the steel sleeve of 9 inches. It weighed 600 pounds. The barrel was not entirely satisfactory and several were later fitted with an iron band in front of the trunnions to counter act a perceived flaw in its preponderance, in that it was found breech-heavy in working. The Blakely serial numbers of these guns range from 24 to 36, and almost certainly to other ranges. They cost 110 each in England in August 1861, about $550 in gold, with brass sights and iron elevating screws but without carriages. In America this is the Blakely gun. There were several other 3 inch Blakely guns, in a confusing variety of models: In addition to the Confederate model, Fawcett Preston also provided the south in 1861 with a long 3.5 inch field gun to another Blakely design; this is almost identical, except in size, to the one provided in 1860 and used against Sumter. It had 66 inch barrel and was rifled with six Scott centrical or triangular grooves. The steel breech-sleeve was long and was oval-curved at the end, lacking a cascabel knob, with a maximum diameter of 12 inches. There was a small, flat-section, castiron trunnion ring. They are in the Blakely Serial range 46 to 52. For reasons which are not now clear Blakely contracted with Fawcett Prestons neighbours in Liverpool, the founders George Forrester & Company, in 1862 to make a cheaper version of the 12 pounder, 3 inch bore short gun, 60 inches in length, but with a simple cylindrical steel ring, 6 inches long and 3 inches thick, to the breech of the cast-iron tube, rather than the cup-sleeve used by
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Fawcetts. This, too, had no cascabel knob. It looked like a miniature version of the large naval guns, and was rifled with six Scott centrical grooves. Some further confusion is added by Fawcetts producing a 12 pounder, 3 inch bore gun similar to those sold to the Peruvians in the same year, 1861, but supplied to J C Frmont in St Louis for United States service. This is of Blakelys standard design for field and mountain guns, with the slim barrel and large trunnion ring which was continued in manufacture from 1861 until 1866. This Blakely standard pattern was used for 12 pounders, 9 pounders, 6 pounders and 4 pounders made by Fawcetts in Liverpool, at Blakelys works at Bear Lane, and probably by other foundries commissioned by Blakely. Fawcett, Preston & Company, who made the largest number of Blakely field guns, also made a simpler, heavier un-banded wrought-iron rifled field gun barrel for the Confederate States, similar to the Washington governments Ordnance Rifle, but to 4 inch rather than 3 inch bore. This was not a Blakely piece. The 6 pounder Navy Guns 1861 The steam packet Nashville was converted to a warship in the summer of 1861 at Charleston, South Carolina, for the Confederate States Navy. Due to the light nature of her mercantile construction only two guns were provided: small Blakely steel rifles of just 2 inches bore, firing 6 pound bolts. These were mounted on deck pivots fore and aft of the engine-house and paddle-wheels to work both beams of the ship. No details of their construction survive. The guns were provided by the State of South Carolina and were presumably similar to the field or cavalry guns made for the State by Fawcett, Preston & Company, adapted to sea service. They were not ordered by the Confederate States Navy. Captain Blakely noted his two small guns equipping the Nashville in a letter to The Times newspaper on April 7, 1862, regretting that an offer of larger pieces could not be taken up in a neutral port. CSS Nashville left Charleston on October 21, 1861 and arrived at Southampton, England, on November 21, seizing on her voyage, despite her feeble armament, two enemy prizes. She was the first Confederate vessel to enter European waters. Leaving England on February 3, 1862 she returned through the enemy blockade to Beaufort, North Carolina, on February 28. The 7 inch Low Moor Guns 1861 It was a basic premise of Blakelys initial patent that old guns could be re-worked and strengthened to be used as rifles. The so-called Low Moor guns are the only examples of this principle. In July 1860 Blakely had offered to rifle and band any 32 pounder cast-iron naval gun in good condition for just 50 a piece. The cannon were remanufactured Royal Navy 48 pounder cast-iron smooth-bore pieces. It is not clear whether the Low Moor Iron Company of Bradford, Yorkshire, a long-time British government ordnance contractor also known in official records by the names of the proprietors Thomas and Charles Hood, merely provided the cast tubes for Fawcett, Preston & Company to re-work or actually performed the whole remanufacturing process. The cast tubes were not British government stock, but were manufactured new or taken from Low Moors inventory in 1861. As converted the old 124 inch long tube was turned down (machined to a cylinder) at the breech and a short steel or wrought-iron hoop or band sweated on. The original 100 inch long bore was turned out to 7 inches and rifled with twelve square grooves of right hand twist. The new barrel then weighed 6,400 lbs (2.8 tons). The breech band was made from three rings of so-called steel, in all 17.5 inches long and 1.75 inches thick. The conversions are almost unique in the list of Blakely cannon by having the traditional bell-mouth muzzle casting. Several of these pieces were brought into Savannah, Georgia, in September 1861 on the brigsteamer Bermuda. Three more were lost in the following February when that blockade runner was captured. One of the first of these 7 inch calibre conversions was supplied to the Commonwealth of Virginia and set up at Shipping Point, near Quantico, on the Potomac river. Early in 1862 the Tredegar Foundry in Richmond supplied 900 additional shells for this piece. This, the sole Virginian Blakely gun, was spiked and abandoned to the enemy when Shipping Point was lost in March 1862. The barrel was recorded by her captors as being 10,759 pounds in weight, marked Low Moor 1861. The Widow Blakely remains as a relic of the Low Moor 7 inch conversions; this piece was used to defend Vicksburg on the Mississippi - where she stands today. The muzzle of the Widow was damaged on July 22, 1863 and twenty-four inches had to be sawnoff the barrel, removing the distinctive moulding. Exhibition Pieces 1862 The Great Exhibition of 1862 in Kensington, West London gave Blakely his first chance to publicise his ordnance to the rest of the world. In this he was in competition with W G Armstrong (or rather Her Majestys Government who sponsored his display), Joseph Whitworth, Charles Lancaster, William Clay, Henry Bessemer and Friedrich Krupp, who each brought forth cannon large and small for show. Blakely exhibited three pieces: There was an 8 inch calibre great gun weighing 16,000 pounds, rifled on Commander Scotts centrical principle, of cast-iron banded at the breech, firing a 200 pound bolt, converted in Liverpool by Fawcett, Preston & Company from a 68 pounder tube cast by the Low Moor Iron Company. It was 12 feet in length with three layers of long wrought-iron rings or hoops, the outer one carrying the trunnions. The overall metal thickness was 5 to 6 inches at the muzzle and 12 inches at the breech. The bore was rifled with three Scott ratchets; the elongated shot being 16 inches long and spherical at both ends, with three rails or longitudinal flanges. The second gun was a light cast-steel 9 pounder field gun, also made by Fawcetts, of 2 inch bore, 66 inches
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long, with a trunnion ring, rifled with eight Scott ratchet grooves. The metal was inches thick at the muzzle and 2 inches at the breech. It fired 7 pound shells or 9 pound bolts up to 1,800 yards, on a wroughtiron mount that could serve for either boat or field use. The land carriage was 8 feet long, with iron cheek pieces, iron split trail, iron axle and iron wheels with double spokes. The other piece was described as a naval gun, 3 inches bore, 72 inches long, the tube of cast-steel with a trunnion ring. Its metal was 1 inch thick at the muzzle and 3 inches at the breech. It had eight Scott ratchet grooves and was mounted on a wooden truck carriage. The Government 20 pounders 1862 The earliest of the few Blakely guns acquired by the War Office in London were, apparently, a pair of 4 inch bore cast-iron pieces with steel or wrought-iron breech bands, to Blakelys common pattern of the early 1860s. They have been measured as weighing 2 tons, being 78 inches overall, rifled with eight Scott-pattern ratchet grooves, and were made by Fawcett, Preston & Co., in Liverpool. In appearance they are similar to the 7 inch guns for sea-service made in the same year, 1862, with a cast-iron barrel and a single hoop about the breech. They also carry all the elaborate makers marks and patent serials of Fawcetts early sea-service and field pieces. Both of these Blakely 20 pounders still exist, one with the Royal Armouries at Fort Nelson, Portsmouth, Hampshire, described as being recovered from Tilbury Fort, near the Shoeburyness ordnance proving grounds in Essex. It is marked as Blakely patent gun number 69. The sister piece is now at Chatham Historic Dockyard, Kent, across the Thames estuary from Shoeburyness, variously measured as 4 or 4 inch calibre, and marked as patent gun number 67. Details of the history of No 67 are elusive, but it was probably saved from scrap by a private individual. It is reasonable to assume that the intervening patent gun number 68 was to a similar pattern. There are no records as to how these early Blakely pieces came into British government hands. It is possible that, rather than being a military purchase, these two guns were rescued from the site of the Blakely Ordnance Companys plant at East Greenwich in the 1970s, where they served, after its closure in 1866, as gatekeepers to a gasworks. Guns for the Emperor of Morocco 1862 Subsequent to the Spanish Moroccan war of 1859, the Emperor of Morocco obtained a 500,000 loan in the city of London early in 1862 with which to pay reparations to Madrid. A proportion of the loan was also set aside to reequip the Moorish army. In October 1862 the Blakely Cannon Company, as part of these reforms, provided the Emperor with a mounted artillery train. The composition of the train is not recorded, but it may have been the six 3 inch rifled guns, six 4 inch rifled guns and four 12 pounder smooth-bore howitzer-guns ordered of Fawcett, Preston & Company by Captain Blakely in March 1862. It was in any event very complete, including a 42 foot long pontoon bridge to Captain Francis Fowkes design of 1858. Each of the four canvas and wood pontoons was collapsible like an accordion, being 24 feet by 5 feet when extended. The 4 inch Navy Guns 1862 In a letter of August 13, 1861, Commander Bulloch CSN reported that in addition to heavy 7 inch guns he had bought four 4.5 inch Blakely rifles of 4,700 pounds weight, firing a 65 pound bolt, for use on one of the two cruisers he was commissioning in Liverpool. However they were never used afloat and all four were shipped from Liverpool into the Confederate States at Savannah, Georgia, on the screw steamer Fingal in November 1861. They were then put to army account and two of them were used in the defence of Fort Pulaski, off Savannah, until April 11, 1862. The Fingal also was put to good use, her hull was cut down and heavily armoured in Savannah, to become the Confederate States Navys ironclad warship CSS Atlanta, steaming out to challenge the blockade on July 31, 1862. The 4.5 inch guns were novel in appearance, being much enlarged versions of the Confederate 3 inch field guns manufactured by Fawcett, Preston & Company, with a long steel breech sleeve but having a breech ring for sea-service rather than a cascabel knob. They had seven groove square rifling with right-hand twist, to Bashley Brittens patent. Two still survive, they are numbered 41 and 42 in the Blakely series, and carry Commander Bullochs inspection mark JDB on the trunnion, as do their larger 7 inch sisters. They each measure 96 inches overall in length. Another, quite different, 4.5 inch Blakely gun still exists, at New Canaan in Connecticut. Its history is wholly unknown at the moment. This piece, recorded as Patent Gun Number 162, is of Blakelys standard design for larger ordnance with a cast-iron tube and a short steel breech band or hoop. The breech end, unlike its earlier sisters, has jaws for a breeching-rope, as in a naval gun. The tube has been measured recently as being 84 inches long overall, with a breech band 21 inches long by 15 inches in outside diameter. It is simply marked on the hoop Blakelys Patent. In appearance it is a slightly larger version of the two British government 20 pounders. Several 4 inch calibre projectiles with Scott flanges have been found near Fort Fisher, Wilmington, possibly indicating that Blakely patent gun No 162, with threegroove centrical rifling, was part of the defence of the vital North Carolina port. The 6 inch Navy Guns 1862 Very little is known about these pieces. Two 6 inch Blakely rifled guns were supplied to Garibaldis revolutionary Red Shirts in Piedmont during August 1860 at a cost of 540. Six were provided for the broadside armament of the CSS Florida when she left Liverpool in March 1862. No other 6 inch Blakely rifles are known. It must be assumed that they were smaller versions of the 7 inch Navy steel-banded, cast-iron rifles provided as pivot guns for the Alabama and the Florida, firing 70 pound bolts and 52 pound shells.
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The six 6 inch Blakely guns on the Florida were said to be cast-iron, steel-banded rifles mounted on trucks on the broadsides, firing, according to US Navy inspectors, 53 pound hollow shot containing sand or 52 pound percussion shell. The sand-filled hollow shot (dumb shells) presumably indicating that Florida had run out of 6 inch solid bolts by the time of her seizure in Brazil. However there exists at Washington Navy Yard a single 6 inch cast-iron rifle, described as taken off the CSS Florida. This is not a Blakely patent gun, as it has a conventional ribbed and ornamented tube without any evidence of being banded at the breech. It is marked as a Low Moor piece, number 10666, claimed to be a converted 32 pounder smooth-bore. With its novel 6 inch bore and eight-groove rifling, it cannot be a conversion from the 6.4 inch calibre of the 32 pounder. It may be a unique example not of a Blakely but of a Bashley Britten pattern gun. Britten had been negotiating with J D Bulloch of the Confederate States Navy for use of his patent shells and could have offered his own simple un-banded rifled guns. The Florida may therefore have been outfitted with two 7 inch Blakely rifles and six 6 or 6 inch Bashley Britten guns. The 7 inch Navy Guns 1862 The most well-known Blakely cannon are those carried by the cruisers Alabama and Florida. In both vessels the most significant pieces were of 7 inch calibre; a size similar to those recently acquired by the Royal Navy. Compared with later guns they were of relatively simple construction; a rifled cast-iron tube and a steel or, more accurately, wrought-iron breech-band to absorb the initial stresses. Writing on August 13, 1861, Commander J D Bulloch CSN in England reported to Secretary of the Navy S R Mallory in Richmond, that he had purchased four 7 inch Blakely rifles, each weighing 9,185 pounds for the Alabama and the Florida, along with 1,200 Bashley Britten patent shells. He later added to the order a number of 42-pound Bessemer spherical steel shot for these four rifled guns, especially for piercing armour. Commander Bulloch subsequently reported to Secretary Mallory on March 21, 1862 that he intended to outfit the two cruisers with one 7 inch Blakely pivot gun each. He had then shipped to Nassau, New Providence, in the Bahamas, four 7 inch guns, traversing carriages, and slides with pivot bolts and brass sweeps for the decks, along with 400 solid shot and 600 shell, all loaded and fused, to await the Florida. Each 7 inch calibre gun was 120 inches long from muzzle to cascabel and weighed 7,800 pounds (3.5 tons), being bored to seven inches, and rifled with nine square grooves of a right-hand twist to Bashley Brittens patent. The breech-band was created from a spiral bar forged into a single short cylinder. They were commonly referred to at the time as 100 pounders; in fact they took solid iron bolts of up to 120 pounds weight. Sailors of the period were unused to handling large ordnance and were critical of the recoil, saying the barrel was light. There were also criticisms of the breechbanding of these early pieces, the forged spiral coils of which had a propensity to open when heated by continuous firing. A 7 inch Blakely naval gun from the Florida is preserved at West Point, it is marked No 37. A companion 7 inch Blakely has been recovered from the Alabama off Cherbourg. Both were made by Fawcett, Preston & Company in Liverpool with the acceptance mark JDB for James Dunwoody Bulloch, agent of the Confederate States Navy in Liverpool. It seems that Fossets made twelve of these 7 inch calibre great guns for the Confederate States Navy in 1862 and 1863; costing about 500 each. The guns and ammunition of the Florida were catalogued by the US Navy in 1864. There were then two 7 inch cast-iron, steel banded rifles mounted on pivots on the centre-line on board, these firing 100 pound solid bolts or 84 pound percussion shells, and six 6 inch Blakely broadside pieces, rather than the planned four 4 inch Blakely guns. The Alabama was outfitted as planned with the single 7 inch Blakely on a centre-line pivot forward, an 8 inch calibre 68 pounder smooth-bore on a pivot aft, and six truck-mounted 32 pounder smooth-bores on the broadsides. The 8 inch and four of the 32 pounders were also cast in iron by Fawcett, Preston & Company in Liverpool to an advanced pressure curved design, remarkably similar to that devised by Captain John Dahlgren in America. All of these guns were purchased from the makers in the name of Captain Blakely. The remaining two 32 pounder cast-iron smooth-bores were of conventional make, with ornamental bands, ribs and cascabel rings, probably, since Fawcetts never made such guns for the Royal Navy, bought from the stock of the Low Moor Iron Company. Interestingly, Blakely wrote to Captain John Dahlgren USN on March 19, 1858 describing his mode of strengthening ordnance and of his gun trials. Captain Dahlgren replied in a letter dated April 1, 1858. Perhaps Dahlgren provided Blakely with manufacturing specifications for the pressure curved principle then or in subsequent correspondence. The 8 inch Low Moor Guns 1862 In addition to the relatively well-known 7 inch conversions the Low Moor Company also adapted the castiron tubes of the Royal Navy 68 pounder gun into a much more effective 8 inch calibre rifled piece. This was originally a smooth-bore shell-firing gun, the Navys largest piece before rifling was introduced, and weighed 10,500 pounds. As with the 7 inch conversions the 8 inch barrels were either made new or from commercial stock; the work done either by Low Moor or by Low Moor and Fawcett Preston. Blakely had first demonstrated this inexpensive adaptation in 1857. The conversion process was different from the 7 inch guns. The cast-iron tubes, with all their traditional ornamental rings and modelling, had the breech end turned into a cylinder, and, instead of the breech band, a long, well-rounded steel jacket was forced on to just before the trunnions; the muzzles keeping their traditional moulding. The rifling was also different from the
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7 inch guns; just three centrical right-hand twist grooves were cut. This all allowed an increase in the maximum projectile weight from a 68 pound roundshot to a 130 pound Scott-pattern flanged bolt. There were, it seems, just six of these large 8 inch rifled guns, imported into the Confederate States. Three were brought in through Wilmington by the blockade runner Merrimac on April 21, 1863, to supplement three already present. One of these was retained at Fort Fisher, Wilmington, one was installed at Battery Wagner near Charleston and one at Fort Morgan, near Mobile. Spies employed by the abolitionist navy reported that a 8 inch Blakely rifle at Fort Morgan weighed between 11,000 and 12,000 pounds, firing a 196 pound flanged bolt or a 160 pound flanged shell, with 14 pounds of propellant powder. The first three 8 inch guns were invoiced to Caleb Huse at 1,700 or 566 each. The shipment was accompanied by 680 shells, costing 1,180 in all. Before the arrival of the two 13 inch guns these were the largest Blakely guns in the south. Although simple and cheap conversions they proved most effective in their three stations. An example still exists. During December 1863 the Low Moor Company was making new guns of large calibre to the Blakely patents, with cast iron tubes and multiple steel or wrought iron bands, for the Russian navy. This was part of a large contract that Blakely had obtained in that year. The 4 inch Blakely or rather Fawcett Preston guns 1862 From his personal papers we know that on June 9, 1863 Colonel William N Pendleton, chief of artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia, offered the artillery battalion commanders of the Second Corps, a battery of 4 inch, 18 pounder Blakely guns, fresh from England with 200 rounds of ammunition each, iron carriages & everything complete. As he wanted to swap the 4 inch Blakelys for 3 inch rifles his offer was declined; Pendleton then offered them to the First Corps, apparently better equipped with heavy pieces. Again the new guns were refused. There are several references to a lone 4 inch Blakely gun working at Battery Haskell on Legares Point on James Island, south of Charleston, South Carolina, between July and December 1863. Although repeatedly called a Blakely in official reports of the time it was almost certainly made to a proprietary design by Fawcett, Preston & Company, who produced many Blakely guns, cast in iron without breech bands or hoops. In appearance the 4 inch gun was similar to the US ordnance rifle, but much larger, with an 83 inch barrel rifled with 6 grooves, and was mounted on a wrought-iron carriage identical in design to that provided by Fawcetts to Peru in 1861. The 4 inch Fawcett Preston gun fired Bashley Brittens patent shells; when supplies of these dried up the locally-made substitute projectiles were found inadequate, leading to many complaints by the gunners over accuracy and range. A 4 inch Fawcett Preston gun, number 136 of 1862, also marked 921 on the muzzle, was displayed at Washington Navy Yard. It used to be mounted on a Fawcett Preston wrought-iron carriage, but they are now separated. It has recently been restored and will be exhibited at Raleigh, North Carolina. Another 4 inch Fawcett Preston gun on a wrought-iron carriage, number 138, recovered from the Roanoke river, is at Fort Branch, Hamilton, North Carolina. The numbers carried are not from the Blakely Patent series, in fact they are duplicated there, they are from Fawcett Prestons general work list. The Battery of the Alexandra 1863 In March 1863 the shipyard of William C Miller & Company in Liverpool launched a 300 ton wooden gunboat provisionally called the Alexandra. She was ordered by Fawcett, Preston & Company, the engineers of the same city, who also provided her 60 horsepower engine. Separately in October 1862, to equip the gunboat, Captain Blakely had instructed Fawcetts to provide one 6.4 inch rifled gun and two 4.6 inch rifles. These were unique guns requiring the design of new mounts and tools. Fawcetts provided one 9 foot long 6.4 inch gun, with a pivot carriage and slide, deck sweeps, sight, shells, shell lighter, grapeshot, powder scoop, deck chucks and extra ordnance, as Blakely Patent Gun number 187, and two 4.6 inch guns, plus deck sweeps, sights, shells, shell extractors, shell lighters, sponges and rammers, shears for firing with friction tubes and deck chucks, which were Blakely guns number 193 and 194. An existing design of carriage was apparently used for the 4.6 inch guns. The specification of these three pieces is not known, but evidence given in court during June 1863 by Fawcetts workmen mentions that the large gun was 48 inches in overall length and the two smaller guns were 36 inches; all three, as the order book notes, on compressor carriages, the side pieces in elm, the slides in teak, with races for pivot mounting. It became apparent that the Alexandra was to be sold to the Confederate States on completion and the abolitionist government began a long law suit to prevent her leaving Liverpool. In anticipation of this, it was reported that in May, 1863, Blakely had the three guns, along with their carriages, accoutrement and 18 tons of shells, shipped in seventeen packages from Liverpool by rail to the Camden Town goods depot in London. They then apparently vanish from history, or do they...? The Battery of the CSS Georgia 1863 According to a letter published in 1909 by James Morris Morgan, who had served as a midshipman on the CSS Georgia, the 600 ton iron-hulled cruiser commissioned by Matthew Maury, her battery comprised a 32 pounder Blakely rifled gun on a forward pivot and two 24 pounder Blakelys on the broadsides with two small 10 pounder breech-loading Whitworth guns as sternchasers on the ships poop deck. In his letter he denied the claim that her outfit consisted only of Whitworth guns, saying that he had had command of the only two Whitworths onboard the CSS Georgia.
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The Georgias three Blakely guns must have been the 6.4 inch rifle and the two 4.6 inch rifles ordered for the gunboat Alexandra from Fawcett, Preston & Co in 1862. They were rushed by railway to London and there loaded on to the 85 ton steam tug Alar. The tug rendezvoused with and transferred her cargo of ordnance to the Georgia off Ushant in France on April 6, 1863 after picking up Midshipman Morgan and crew for the cruiser at the port of Newhaven in the English Channel. Morgan had been previously allotted a berth on the Confederate gunboat called Alexandra. CSS Georgia returned to Liverpool on May 1, 1864 after her war cruise and was sold out of service. Her guns and their deck fitments were reported by enemy agents as having been removed and placed in store in Birkenhead, opposite Liverpool, on June 6, 1864 during a refit. The 9 inch Navy Guns 1864 Just four of these were manufactured of the eight commissioned of Fawcett, Preston & Company in 1862 by Commander J D Bulloch, CSN, for delivery in the following year. They were intended for the two armoured turret ships, the CSS North Carolina and CSS Mississippi, building in Laird Brothers yard in Birkenhead, across the river Mersey from Liverpool, as Ship Orders 294 and 295, the famous Laird Rams. Built to Blakelys latest pattern, they had two steel inner tubes with a cast-iron sleeve for tensional strength. In addition a 70 pounder Whitworth gun was to be provided as a chaser on the bow and on the stern of each vessel. The 9 inch gun was 12 feet in length, the bore was 131 inches long and it weighed 11.75 tons. Their solid bolts weighed 240 pounds. The inner steel tube was 15 inches in diameter, the outer steel tube, 22.75 inches diameter, with a 38 inch diameter cast-iron jacket that also had the trunnions cast in. The four pieces cost, according to a letter from Commander Bulloch dated December 28, 1862, 8,000. Their manufacture was delayed when the British government seized the Laird Rams in 1863. Although desperately needed for coastal defence the 9 inch guns were never sent to the Confederate States but kept on an open wharf at Liverpool, England, in Blakelys name. All four were later claimed on May 8, 1867 in the Courts by the United States government. They were eventually delivered to Charlestown, Boston, in August 1871, along with a large quantity of iron bolts and shells, and the four Whitworth bow and stern chasers, when valued at 25,000. Substantial parts of one of the 9 inch navy guns still exist; it is marked No 221. The Canon ray de 30 par Voruz 1864 The last major contract fulfilled by Captain Blakely for the Confederate States was that for the armament of four corvettes, CSS Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, ordered by Commander J D Bulloch, CSN, in France. Forty-eight 16 cm cannon were ordered with 200 rounds of shot and shell per piece of J Voruz, Nantes, France; founders and engine makers. Unlike all of his other dealings with the south the details of the financial arrangements for this contract exist. The correspondence quoted below is from Washingtons Official Records; the translation from the French is theirs. The repeated reference to 30 pounders in these records is a mistranslation of canon de 30, actually a piece firing a 30 kilogram (68 pound) cylindrical shot. The forty-eight Voruz guns were of 6 inches calibre and each weighed 6,400 pounds. Jean Voruz, senior, to Anthony Voruz (son) July 14, 1863 The affair with Blakely is consummated and very good, above all furnishing two hundred shot per gun. The bargain is closed for forty-eight pieces. The fortyeight 30-pounder pieces have been sold to Bulloch for 7,000 francs per gun. At this price we will give to Blakely ten per-cent on this figure, which will be 700 francs. The remainder, that is to say, the difference between our price for the work and the 6,300 francs, will be divided one-half to Blakely and the other half of the profits between Arnous and ourselves. The shot have always paid us 40 francs the kilo, and we owe nothing to Blakely (on these). I have the plan of the machine for grooving cannon. A T Blakely to J Voruz, senior July 14, 1863 I beg you to make at once forty-eight 30 pounders and 9,000 shot according to the drawings I gave you. J Voruz, senior, to the Minster of Marine July 15, 1863 The cannon I am constructing will be made to the pattern of Mr Blakely of London. J Voruz, senior, to the Minister of Marine July 29, 1863 I ask the authority to make in my gun factories at Nantes the forty-eight 30 pounders. Each cannon will be provided with two-hundred cylindro-conical shot, and with all the necessary accessories of armament. The cannon will be of cast-iron banded with steel. Minister of Marine, P de Chasseloup-Laubat to J Voruz, senior August 1, 1863 Authorisation to make the guns is granted. J Voruz, senior, to the Minister of Agriculture & Commerce June 8, 1863 5,000 cylindro-conical shot will use 150,000kg of metal. A drawback on the custom duties is requested. (Demonstrating that each shot weighed 30 kilograms; they were not Blakely patent projectiles but French-pattern with three rows of two studs on the body) Two of the new corvettes, intended to be the Texas and the Georgia, built at Nantes in France, eventually, after passing through several hands as San Francisco and Shanghai, were sold to Peru in December 1865, along with their armament of Blakely Voruz guns. They became the Peruvian warships Amrica and Unin. Between 1866 and 1867 four of the Caones de 30 on the corvettes burst at the muzzle. Colonel Francisco Bolognesi of the Peruvian Army, one of Blakelys original customers, investigated the failures and discovered that the shell fuses provided by Voruz were faulty. The remaining Blakely guns continued in Peruvian naval service into the 1880s.
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Two of these 68 pounder banded guns recovered from the wreck of one of the corvettes subsequently sold to Peru, clearly marked J Voruz, Nantes 1864, exist as well-restored relics in that country. They are similar in external appearance to the early 7 inch navy guns supplied to the CSS Florida and CSS Alabama. As measured, the barrels were 6.375 inches in calibre, rifled with three deep elliptical grooves to the French model, and weighed 8,000 pounds. They were capable of firing studded bolts up to 100 pounds. The Compound Guns 1863 Before Blakely perfected the all-steel 9 and 11 inch guns in 1864 he produced a number of great guns, mainly it seems in 9 inch calibre, with a forged-steel barrel and two thick cast-steel hoops or bands. In the Compound model the truly massive trunnion ring was made of cast-iron, but in later common models this was substituted by wrought-iron and then by steel. The design is an intermediate, and somewhat clumsy, device using a mass of metal rather than any innate strength to counter initial tension. The Compound Guns were made as follows: The inner tube or barrel is formed of low steel; the next tube consists of high steel, and is shrunk on the barrel with just sufficient tension to compensate for the difference of elasticity between the two. The outer jacket to which the trunnions are attached is of cast iron, and is put on with only the shrinkage attained by warming it over the fire. The steel tubes are cast hollow and hammered over steel mandrels by steam hammers, by which process they are elongated about 130 per cent., and the tenacity of the metal at the same time increased. When the production and forging of steel became more advanced in the following months Blakelys great guns, with steel tubes, longer steel hoops and, most obviously, flush-fitted steel trunnion rings, became far less bulky. It is not currently known for whom the Compound guns were made. In any event the principle seems to have been quickly discarded, leaving several such pieces in Blakelys hands. The guns made by Putnam for Massachusetts in 1864 and 1865, and later sold to Chili, were to this model. China 1863 During 1863 Henry Leighton & Company, merchants, of 19 Mark Lane, London, and Shanghai, China, commissioned Captain Blakely to make several batteries of field artillery for the Pekin government. Twelve pieces of muzzle-loading rifled ordnance, with steel barrels and iron outer sleeves added by hydraulic pressure, were ordered for delivery in January 1864: Two 20 pounders at 150 Four 12 pounders at 95 Four 9 pounders at 75 Two 6 pounders at 50 which no commission was paid. The 12 pounder shot was costed at 3s each, the rest in proportion. The China contract was to total 3,158; however the price of iron and steel soared during the year 1863 and it was eventually settled at 4,112. Phillip Henry Benett of Henry Leighton & Company assisted in the creation of the Tavistock Ironworks & Steel Ordnance Company, Limited, Blakelys first attempt at direct manufacture in 1864. Guns for Russia 1863 The largest of all orders received by Captain Blakely was that from the Imperial government in St Petersburg, Russia. Initiated in 1863, it was believed to total 140 great guns for fortresses and for the fleet. During the next two years the Blakely works were finishing two pieces a month for Russia, varying in bore from 9 inches, for the Russian fleet, to 11 inches, for the forts. In 1865 St Petersburg commissioned a massive 15 inch steel rifle of the Blakely Ordnance Company, the largest piece of ordnance in the world at that moment. The details, in so far as they are known, of this contract are contained in the chapter Cannon for Russia. It is hoped to discover more on Captain Blakelys relationship with the Imperial government in St Petersburg. Peruvian Guns 1864 During the American War the Blakely concern was also involved in supplying great guns to the beleaguered state of Peru in Latin America, defending itself against a resurgent Spain and latterly against its immediate neighbour, Chili. Although Colonel Francisco Bolognesi had, in 1861, previously purchased 54 field, boat and mountain guns to Blakelys patents, more artillery was soon needed. In April 1864 the Peruvian Consul in London was instructed to order twelve 11 inch calibre Blakely guns in two contracts each of six pieces. These were the first pieces finished at the new Blakely Ordnance Company works at Blackwall Point, made from cast-steel elements provided by Naylor Vickers in Sheffield. The order was completed in January 1865. The original contract between Don Enrique Kendall, for the government of Peru and Don Tefilo A Blakely for the Blakely Ordnance Company, signed on July 21, 1864, specified that the 11 inch guns be made to Blakelys patent, that they were to be entirely of steel, except for the trunnions which were of cast-iron, and that each was to be provided with 300 bolts and 300 shells. The contract cost was 5,500 per gun. Additionally, in 1864 Colonel Bolognesi ordered 600 shells for the 9 pounder Blakely mountain guns bought in 1861, and shot and shell for his governments Blakely 12 pounder field and 4 pounder mountain guns. The Peruvian military historian Juan del Campo writes: In 1864, the Peruvian Government instructed its Consul in London, Mr Enrique Kendall, to buy, among other weapons and ammunition, twelve pieces of artillery, all 11-inch Blakelys. The guns were sold through two contracts that provided six pieces each. In April of
This totalled 1,080 on which a commission of 15% was allowed. In addition Blakely contracted to provide the carriages for another 1,080, on which 8% commission was included; shell for 848; and solid shot for 150 on
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that year a Peruvian military mission lead by artillery Colonel Francisco Bolognesi was sent to England to supervise the transaction and the quality of the armament. The guns arrived in Peru in early 1865. At [the battle of] Dos de Mayo eight heavy Blakelys were used. For example, at the northern defences, Fort Ayacucho had two 450-pound Blakelys while the Railroad Battery had a 450- pound Blakely gun. Two more 450pound Blakelys were placed at the southern defences (Fort Santa Rosa). During the war with Chile, some changes were made. The Santa Rosa fort kept her two 11-inch Blakelys. The Manco Capac and Independencia turrets [or batteries] had two 11-inch Blakelys each, while Fort Ayacucho kept one 11-inch Blakely. Bolognesis Blakely guns for Callao harbour were installed just in time to famously confront and drive away the Spanish fleet intending to re-establish their Latin American empire on May 2, 1866, Dos de Mayo. The date became a Peruvian national holiday. For this reason Blakely is far better known in Peru than in any other country. One of these 11 inch calibre, 14 ton cannon has been restored to working order in Peru, and is on display at Callao on a wrought-iron Blakely-Vavasseur compressor carriage. With a 144 inch long barrel, weighing 28,000 pounds, it fired a 450 pound shot and was rifled with 24 ratchet grooves. Pieces for Russia and other countries were also made to this advanced model in 1865 and 1866. The barrels were made up to a calibre of 12 inches, to throw 700 pound projectiles, and weighing as much as 40,000 lbs. Blakelys professional colleague and friend, Colonel Francisco Bolognesi returned to Peru at the end of May 1866. On March 8, 1868 he was appointed to command the artillery regiment in Callao. In and out of active service due to disagreements with the countrys President, Bolognesi was to die a heros death at Arica at the head of the besieged Peruvian garrison on June 7, 1880, age 63. His last words to his troops, which entered the popular Spanish vocabulary, were that he would fulfil his duty until the last round is fired. Guns for Denmark 1864 In February 1864 it was reported that the Blakely company was producing a large number of guns for Demark, then involved with a war with Prussia and Austria. The shortness of the conflict may have terminated any contract made. War Office Guns 1864 At last, on February 3, 1864, it was announced in the newspapers that the War Office would commission Blakely to provide an 11 inch steel gun for test and comparison with its own and with William Armstrongs latest pieces. On September 24, 1864 at Woolwich butts a Blakely 11 inch hammered-steel fortress gun, with a barrel weighing 14 tons, was proof fired on behalf of the War Office! On the first day it was successfully tried with 45 pounds of powder and a 240 pound steel bolt. Four days later it was fired without any untoward affect using 60 pounds of powder and a 600 pound bolt. On September 28, 1864 a Blakely 7 inch steel naval gun was put to test at the butts for the War Office. Its barrel weighed 6 tons 2 cwt, and was rifled with eighteen ratchet grooves. It was proved with 31.25 pounds of powder and a 110 pound steel bolt. The same gun was tried again at the Armys long shooting range at Shoeburyness on the Thames estuary early in February 1865. Following this the War Office made the embarrassing admission in the autumn of 1864 that Armstrongs gun carriages were not capable of handling Big Wills newest barrels; their friction plates seized on firing and the iron cross-pieces fractured. They were compelled to acquire gun carriages from Blakely to Josiah Vavasseurs ingenious design; only they could cope with the recoil of the most powerful great guns. Yankee Blakelys - Guns for Massachusetts 1865 It was the thoroughly abolitionist Commonwealth of Massachusetts that acquired the only Blakely guns to serve the Union. On June 2, 1863 the state ordered its agent in England to purchase ten 11 inch cast-iron, steel-banded rifles and twelve 9 inch cast-iron, steelbanded rifles for the defence of its coastline. They were to be delivered at Boston on or before September 15, 1863 at a cost of 6,500. This was an impossible deadline and the Massachusetts authorities knew it; on October 1 only four of the twenty-two pieces were completed. They then altered the terms to substitute twelve all-steel guns of Blakelys most advanced design for the outstanding eighteen cast-iron ones. To cover their immediate coastal defence needs Massachusetts ordered fifty simple 68 pounder smooth-bore cast-iron cannon from the Low Moor ironworks in Bradford, England, to be delivered in four months. These smoothbores were shipped from Portsmouth by the North German Lloyd steamers to New York. As it became clear during 1863 that Blakelys sources of crucible steel for ordnance, Naylor Vickers in Sheffield and Friedrich Krupp in Essen, Prussia, could not cope with demand, the contract with Massachusetts was terminated with just three 11 inch and four 9 inch guns delivered. In compensation a new agreement was made by which the Commonwealth might make its own Blakely cannon from unfinished parts made in Sheffield. The original price of the Massachusetts guns did not, by 1864, cover manufacturing costs and so Blakely was pleased to sell balance of the unfinished contract for the 11 and 9 inch pieces to Russia with a substantial margin for his profit! The Putnam Machine Company of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, was commissioned to manufacture two 11 inch calibre, 43,000 pounds weight, jacketed and banded Blakely guns for the defence of Boston Harbour in October 1863. These were completed in an extensive new gun works during the spring of 1865, seemingly with plans for other pieces. Each 11 inch cannon cost Massachusetts, apparently, $25,000, equal to 6,000.
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Could this purchase be the influence of Daniel Treadwell of Harvard, his friend and mentor? Each 11 inch piece had a solid forged steel barrel of 22 inch diameter, reinforced by a single steel jacket of 33 inches diameter and an exceptionally massive cast trunnion ring. The pattern was that which Blakely had devised in 1863, usually called the Compound gun, using, originally, three metals. The 11 inch spherical shot weighed 375 pounds; but it was capable of firing a 525 pound solid bolt. The Commonwealth also ordered eight 9 inch calibre Blakely cannon of Putnam. These were not completed by the wars end. They were constructed with a steel core, a breech jacket, breech hoops and a large, cast trunnion ring, intended to weigh 22,450 pounds, firing a 248 pound shot. The steel for all of these guns was imported from Naylor, Vickers & Company of Sheffield, England. On December 18, 1865 the military authorities in Massachusetts reported that they had at their disposal for coastal defence ten Blakely guns, five 11 inch, four 9 inch and one 8 inch, along with the fifty Low Moor 68 pounders. Regarding ammunition, for the 11 inch guns they had to hand 38 steel spherical shot, 50 iron bolts, 35 iron shells and 11 steel shells. For the 9 inch cannon, 70 steel spherical shot, 44 steel bolts, 23 iron bolts, 27 iron shells and 50 steel shells. They also had 310 steel shot for the 8 inch Blakely and for the Low Moor 68 pounders. The odd 8 inch Blakely gun would appear to be one of six Blakely and Whitworth pieces captured by the US Navy in 1861 and 1862 on the blockade running steamers Bermuda and Princess Royal. They were offered to the Commonwealth on July 20, 1863 by Captain H A Wise USN, Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, as being as good as the latest Blakelys but very much cheaper. Massachusetts apparently bought one of the three contraband Blakelys for trials. As an epitaph to this the Governor and Council of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts sold by public auction four years later, during February 8, 1868, on the new site formerly occupied by the Putnam Machine Company, Water Street, Fitchburg the great gun lathe and other machinery used in the making of this heavy ordnance. It should be added that the old-established Putnam Machine Company long survived their venture into ordnance. The suite of ordnance equipment created by Putnam comprised the 40 foot long Gun Lathe and its auxiliary tooling, weighing 58,000 pounds, and a Rifling Machine with cutters for 11 inch and 9 inch cannon. Also for sale were parts, some finished, but mostly in the rough, for what appears to be a pair of 9 inch Blakely cannon, including two 11 foot long steel barrel cores, two steel jackets, two steel trunnions and thirteen steel rings, together weighing 28,000 pounds. Chilean Guns 1866 The Chileans were inspired by the import of 11 inch Blakely guns by Peru in defending their country against the Spanish fleet during 1865. In 1866 the Santiago government bought ten Blakely pieces; four 450 pounders and six 300 pounders. These were acquired secondhand from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at a cost, it was said, of $600,000 (equal to 120,000 if in gold dollars or 50,000 in greenbacks). They were supplied from Boston without carriages, which had to be manufactured in England. They were all to Blakelys intermediate Compound design dating from 1863. One of the Massachusetts-made Chilean 450 pounders still exists at Valparaiso. It is marked on the right trunnion, in capitals, Blakeley XI inch, N92, 43 300 lbs, 1864, PM Co Fitchburg. The spelling of Blakelys name adopted by the New Englanders may be noted. In addition a mix of new pattern Blakely 300, 200, 100, 60 and 30 pounders were acquired and had been delivered to Valparaiso by July 1867. Chili lent Ecuador three 100 pounders and two 30 pounders to defend against Spain in 1866, delivered new from England by way of Panama. One of the last orders received by the Blakely Ordnance Company in 1866 was for Chili, for the latest pattern of 11 inch steel guns. The order was fulfilled in 1867 by J Vavasseur & Company. Un-Wise Blakely Gun No 386 On March 2, 1864 the United States Department of the Navy took delivery at Baltimore docks of a new 7 inch cast steel, banded cannon from Naylor, Vickers & Company, steel-masters of Sheffield, Yorkshire, England. It had been ordered personally by Assistant Secretary of the Navy and Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance and Hydrography, Captain Henry Augustus Wise USN, almost exactly a year earlier, to the most modern specification, the cost of the piece was to be 750 delivered at Liverpool. On opening the box the naval ordnance officers were struck in a heap. The piece was huge, far larger than anticipated, so large in fact that, although only 7 inches in calibre, it could not be accommodated on any of their warships. It was massively over-engineered, able to withstand any charge of powder that could be burst in its bore, so wide that it was thought impossible to aim properly. It is entirely useless for any purpose for which it was intended to be put. And it was smoothbored, not even rifled. It got worse, as Wise lamented: it appears from the marks of the gun that it was made by the Blakely Ordnance Company, parties who are well-known to the Confederate Agents, and it was never the intention of the Bureau that any work for this government should be given to them. Was that the laughter of the Confederate Agents echoing across the Atlantic? Guns for Portugal 1865 The Portuguese government acquired four 5 inch Blakely rifled guns in 1865 for its Royal Navy. Their wooden screw-corvette, Duque de Palmela, 850 tons, built in Lisbon, was engined and outfitted in London during 1865 and armed with thirteen guns, twelve 32
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pounder smooth-bores and a 56 pounder, 5 inch Blakely gun on an amidships pivot. The corvette was also provided with a 9 pounder Blakely field piece and a limber for land use by its Marines. The Portuguese steam gunboat Guadiana, 270 tons, was despatched to suppress the slave trade off Angola in September 1868, armed with a 40 pounder Blakely gun and two smaller pieces. Guns for Paraguay 1865 It was reported that the Blakely Ordnance Company had received orders for field guns from the beleaguered state of Paraguay, then commencing a long and terrible war with its neighbours Brazil and Argentina. Examples of spherical steel shot made by Blakelys works and Britten patent shells were noted by war reporters. Miscellaneous and Mysterious Guns On October 14, 1863, the Glasgow Herald, and other newspapers, reported that the steamer Chesapeake out from the Tyne, in the north of England, had landed arms for Circassia and Daghestan at Vardane in the Black Sea. In the cargo were, it was said, large Blakely guns to defend the port of Gelendzhik and several rifled mountain guns. The Chesapeake delivered nine rifled cannon, 30,000 charges, 150 revolvers and 3,400 Mini rifles to Circassian sandals, coastal work boats, to be landed ashore. These statelets in the Southern Caucasus were then in rebellion against the Imperial Russian government who acquired them by treaty from the Ottoman Turks. A Circassian delegation had visited Britain in 1862 and gained popular support in the north-east of the country. It is unlikely that Captain Blakely would wilfully undermine the ambitions of his largest customer for ordnance, although others may have bought and re-sold his guns. The rebellious Circassian territories were finally suppressed in May 1864. On December 13, 1866 the Royal Navy, supported by the Metropolitan Police, seized a new 1,000 ton threemasted iron screw steamer in the Thames under the suspicion that it was a Fenian privateer, commissioned by the Irish terrorist group then annoying John Bulls other island. On board were discovered several Blakely guns, thirty-two barrels of gunpowder, revolvers, rifles and bayonets. After several days it was admitted that the vessel was acquired and outfitted for the United States of Colombia, as one of three guard ships to protect their coast against smugglers and pirates, with the full authority of the British Foreign Office. The steamer, which had just been completed by Palmer & Companys yard in Jarrow, was armed with two 40 pounder and two 20 pounder Blakely steel rifles. A clue that the vessel may not have been Fenian but Colombian lay in her name, Bolivar. Guns for the Emperor During December 1871, as the war between France and Prussia was commencing, the Minister of War in Paris despatched agents to England to purchase arms and munitions for the Army. Although Napoleon III was of a scientific bent, and had advocated many improvements in military and naval technology, his Army still relied on muzzle-loading bronze field ordnance, albeit rifled. The Prussians were equipped with stronger, longer-ranged cast-steel breech-loading rifled guns. To compensate for this weakness the Imperial Army hurriedly ordered new wrought-iron and steel guns from commercial suppliers in England, and secondhand wrought-iron guns used in Americas Civil War. In Liverpool, the Emperors agents discovered a battery of Blakely field guns remaining from the mid1860s. It can be surmised that these had been left in the hands of Fawcett, Preston & Company, makers of the largest number of Blakely field pieces. Recently a 3 inch calibre Scott-pattern, six-flanged shell fitted with a French fuse has been discovered in France, indicating that the acquired Blakely battery was made up of his unique 3 inch light field guns, as made for Peru and America between 1860 and 1865, the tube rifled with six of Scotts centrical or triangular grooves. The use of Scott flanged shells would be necessitated as Bashley Britten, Blakelys usual supplier, had left the projectile business by 1870, and that the Captains own works were then extinct. In April 1873, after the end of the war with Prussia, just five Blakely guns remained in France, indicating that their Army probably bought a single battery of six pieces from Fawcett Preston, who also supplied the new cast-iron flanged shells to go with them. This lone battery compares with the nine Armstrong 12 pounders, fifteen Armstrong 9 pounders, twenty-seven Vavasseur 12 pounders, seventy-seven Whitworth 12 pounders, ninety-eight Whitworth 3 pounders, seventeen short Whitworth 3 pounders, 117 Parrott 20 pounders and 341 Parrott 10 pounders, which also survived in French service in 1873, all imported from England and America during 1870 and 1871. The Last Cannon 1865 In the last days of October 1865 the Blakely Ordnance Company delivered two 8 inch calibre hammered cast-steel pieces, the barrel weighing 7 tons, firing 200 pound bolts, to the Royal Swedish Navy for use on a corvette. Spain, Portugal and Japan had ordered similar pieces in that year. The Company said that it had two years of orders to hand. Other late Blakely guns, for which details survive, include a 5.8 inch forged cast-steel muzzle-loading rifle, with a 97 inch long barrel, 82.5 inch length of bore, with a 10.875 inch diameter inner tube and an 18 inch maximum sleeve diameter. There was a common 8 inch caststeel rifle, firing a 200 pound bolt. The barrel was 144 inches in overall length, weighing 17,000 pounds, with Blakelys 12 groove ratchet rifling. Blakely was then constructing at East Greenwich a new 13 inch cast-steel cannon to fire a 900 pound bolt, and a revolutionary 15 inch gun capable of projecting a bolt weighing 1,300 pounds... The stock of guns, shot and shell, and ordnance stores, that remained after the works closed in 1866 comprised:
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One 15 inch gun, weighing 17 tons 8 cwt, with Firths steel tube and jacket and cascabel, and wrought-iron trunnion, by the Lancefield Forge Company One 13 inch gun, weighing 12 tons 1 cwt, by the same makers One 11 inch gun, proved at Woolwich, Krupps steel tube and wrought-iron carriage, made by Rennie, total weight 33 tons One 11 inch Krupps steel gun, 14 tons, unfinished One 11 inch Low Moor iron gun, with steel jacket and hoops, proved at Woolwich, weighing 22 tons Four 11 inch Low Moor iron tubes, 23 tons, 14 cwt Three cast-iron jackets for same, 26 tons Two 11 inch steel jackets by Naylor, Vickers & Co., each 5 tons 16 cwt Six cast-iron trunnions for 11 inch guns, 32 tons 8 cwt 751 spherical steel shot by John Brown & Co., for 11 inch guns, 64 tons 10 cwt 82 turned cast-iron shot for 11 inch guns, 14 tons 11 cwt One 9 inch steel gun, proved at Woolwich, John Brown & Co., steel tube, weight 10 tons 6 cwt 31 steel and 49 cast-iron turned shot for same, 10 tons 6 cwt One 9 inch Krupps steel gun with iron jacket, built up by Fawcett, Preston & Co., 9 tons 5 cwt One 9 inch breech-loading gun, made by Krupp, exhibited in 1862 Exhibition, weight 8 tons 5 cwt One 10 inch wrought-iron [smooth-bored] gun, Prince Alfred, made by the Mersey Steel & Iron Company, Liverpool, weight 10 tons Three 9 inch rifled Low Moor guns, with steel rings, each weighing 12 tons 15 cwt Three rifled 9 inch Low Moor guns, with iron trunnions and cast-iron jackets, each weighing 14 tons 6 cwt One 9 inch Firths steel gun, 5 tons 3 cwt Ten 9 inch Firths steel jackets for 9 inch guns, weighing 30 tons Eight Firths steel jackets for 9 inch guns, weighing 14 tons 447 spherical steel shot for 9 inch guns, made by John Brown & Co., 20 tons 16 cwt 199 rough steel shot, 12 tons, 13 cwt Two 8.6 inch steel guns, proved at Woolwich, John Brown & Co.s steel tubes, steel jackets, and wrought-iron trunnions, one with carriage and pivot slide, made by Ferguson & Co. 41 cast-steel shot and shell for 8.6 inch guns One 8 inch Krupps steel gun, with wrought-iron trunnion and steel rings One 8 inch cast-iron gun with steel hoops, by Fawcett, Preston & Co., 5 tons 5 cwt Two Firths steel jackets, for 8 inch guns, 5 tons 18 cwt 22 pieces of steel for 8 inch shot, 2 tons 8 cwt One 7 inch Krupps steel breech-loading gun, exhibited at the Exhibition, 1862 One 7 inch cast-iron gun with steel hoops, 6 tons, made by Fawcett, Preston & Co. One 7 inch wrought-iron gun, 4 tons 13 cwt, made by Fawcett, Preston & Co. 240 cast-iron shot and shell for same, about 12 tons Four 6.4 inch cast-iron rifled guns, [with steel hoops] by Fawcett, Preston & Co., 4 tons each One cast-iron rifled gun with steel jacket Eight French cast-iron smooth-bored guns, 32 pounders, 3 tons each 16 cast-iron Congreve guns 8,611 cast-iron shells, French pattern, 246 tons, for 6.4 inch guns 334 6 inch cast-iron shells, 7 tons 13 cwt 90 cast-iron shot and shell Five [4.2 inch] 30, 36 and 40 pounder [cast-iron] guns, with steel hoops Six steel 18 pounder guns 2,043 shells for same Quantity of shot and shell for 18 and 20 pounder guns One 12 pounder steel gun, Mont Storms patent [breech-loader] One 12 pounder smooth-bore Whitworth gun One brass gun with yacht carriage One 9 pounder steel gun, finished for the 1862 Exhibition One 9 pounder cast-iron gun with steel jacket One steel breech loader One rifled steel gun Four 3 inch cast-iron guns, with steel rings 1,600 shot and shell for 9 pounders Two finished steel 6 pounder guns Two 2 inch steel guns Three 2 inch iron guns Four steel mountain guns 1,200 shot and shell for 6 pounder guns 12 rifled boat guns, with ammunition Four 6 pounder iron guns, on mule carriages One 1 pounder rifled gun, with Whitworths field carriage and limber 30 field gun carriages and limbers, broadside and mountain carriages 100 tons steel hoops, used in the construction of Blakely cannon 50,000 percussion fuses and a highly-finished model of an 11 inch steel gun in a glass case
Proof Trials The following are summaries extracted from the Naval & Military Intelligence column in The Times newspaper of the proof firing (meant to be a test for safety) of Blakely guns. One has to compare the weight of the normal shot and that of the proof cylinder fired to see the extreme stress that the barrels were put under in proof. In addition, the normal maximum powder charge was doubled. Two rounds had to be fired for proof. All of the large guns of Blakelys manufacture were proof-fired to this regime.
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The impartial reporting of flaws indicates that these were not publicity pieces by Blakely. 1863 November 10: The first 11 inch, 400 pounder Blakely guns made by the Low Moor Ironworks for Russia were being sent to Woolwich for proof. They were to be tried with two rounds of 20 pound charges and 600 pound cylinders. November 12: The four 11 inch Blakely guns for Russia had arrived by water on a barge at the ordnance wharf in Woolwich Arsenal. Each piece weighed 20 tons but the wharf crane, meant to cope with 24 tons, failed. December 12: Four 11 inch, 400 pounder Blakely hammered cast-steel guns made at the Low Moor works for Russia were proved at Woolwich butts on consecutive days, with two rounds having 50 pound charges, wads and 600 pound iron cylinders. The fourth gun split a hoop at the breech. 1864 January 12: Three of the four 11 inch, 20 ton Blakely guns made at Low Moor and recently proved at Woolwich were shipped from the Victoria Docks on the Thames to St Petersburg. The fourth gun, with a rent in its breech jacket, was being repaired. January 27: Two 9 inch, 300 pounder Blakely hammered cast-steel rifles were brought up to Woolwich proofing butts from Southwark by a team of eighteen horses attached to one of Pickfords heavy trucks. One piece was proof-fired with 40 pounds of powder and a 340 pound cylinder, a small split occurred in the breechhoop near the trunnions. The other gun was stuck in the mud of the road leading to the butts. February 2: A 9 inch, 300 pounder Blakely hammered cast-steel gun was proof-fired but again split a hoop. Captain Blakely then insisted that the proof be repeated with an increased charge; this was done using 50 pounds of powder rather than 45, and the 450 pound iron cylinder. After the second proof no change was found in the state of the tube. The barrel was formed of four hoops of cast-steel each nearly four inches thick, the outer hoop was then regarded as superfluous. February 4: A 9 inch, 300 pounder Blakely hammered cast-steel gun for Russia was proved at Woolwich under the supervision of Major P Bedingfield, the Armys Assistant Inspector of Artillery, with Daniel Campbell for the Blakely Ordnance Company. The proof was 45 pounds of powder and a 340 pound iron cylinder. The gun weighed 12 tons, The breech-piece absorbing nearly the whole of this huge mass of metal, is surrounded behind the trunnions by a ring of the same metal, three inches broad by three inches thick, and which from its position is destined to resist the whole force of this concussion. This breech ring split, as did that of the gun in the previous week. Similar, smaller guns were being made for Denmark. August 14: An 11 inch, 400 pounder Blakely hammered cast-steel rifle was proved at Woolwich butts; its dimensions, 15 feet length, 43 inches diameter at breech, 20 inch diameter at muzzle. The proof was two rounds with a 52 pound charge and a 540 pound iron proofing cylinder. The firing was supervised by Major Freeth, the Armys Inspector of Ordnance, and Captain Gordon CB, Superintendent of Military Stores at Woolwich. Daniel Campbell for the Blakely Ordnance Company was also present. The steel hoop that had split at a previous proof had been repaired and gun achieved its proof. August 19: An 11 inch cast-iron Blakely gun was tried at Woolwich butts. This had been commissioned by the War Office as an economy version of the expensive cast-steel models, and would be accepted (and paid for) contingent on a proof firing with 70 pound charges and a 400 pound cylinder. Josiah Vavasseur and Daniel Campbell of the Blakely company were present, and both said publically that the exercise was worthless and a cast-iron gun with such a proof would certainly burst. It did, into fifty fragments on the initial firing. September 30: An 11 inch, 400 pounder Blakely steel gun for Peru was proved at Woolwich with a 45 pound charge and a 600 pound cylinder. The first cylinder fired damaged the earthworks of the butts when it struck an old shot, necessitating a delay whilst the butt was reconstructed. In the following day the proof was increased to 60 pounds of powder with the 600 pound cylinder without injury. Mr Kendall, the Peruvian consul, Colonel Bolognesi, the Peruvian Director of Artillery, and Captain Palliser, a British Army officer with an interest in artillery were present, along with Captain Blakely, Josiah Vavasseur, Daniel Campbell and a Mr Wood from the Blakely Ordnance Company. The report also mentioned the proof of a 7 inch, 100 pounder steel gun for the British Admiralty. This was tried with 31 pounds of powder and a 110 pound cylinder. The piece had 18 groove rifling and weighed 13,664 pounds. The 110 pound proof cylinder seems a poor test and may be a misprint. October 15: Four 5 inch, 56 pounder Blakely rifled guns for Portugal were proved at Woolwich with 12 pound charges and 56 pound shot. November 19: Once again the War Office tried cheap cast-iron for large ordnance, this time with a 6 inch gun made by Blakely with French rifling of three deep elliptical grooves. It was intended from the outset to be tested to destruction, to demonstrate for once and for all time the fallibility of cast-iron when compared with Blakelys expensive hammered cast-steel pieces. Supervised by Major Freeth for the War Office and Daniel Campbell for the Blakely company the gun failed at the sixth round. It fired two rounds with 6 pounds of powder, two with 10 pounds and two with 13 pounds, all with a 65 pound iron cylinder having zinc studs to fill the rifling grooves. 1865 January 18: An 11 inch, 400 pounder, 16 ton Blakely guns for Russia was transported from the Bear Lane factory in Southwark to Woolwich for proof, again conveyed by one of Pickfords trucks by a double team of sixteen horses. The gun was of hammered cast-steel,
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with a steel tube, steel jacket and cast-iron trunnions. After its successful proof it was inspected by the Duke of Cambridge, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, who just happened to be visiting the Arsenal. A 9 inch Blakely gun destined for Sweden was also proved with 45 pounds of powder and a 400 pound cylinder. The continuous presence of British Army officers, over and above those one would expect at Woolwich Arsenal, at these trials, whether officially or unofficially, indicates that there was a constant interest in the ordnance being provided to countries abroad by Captain Blakely. Blakely and Krupp One of the most intriguing relationships is that between the Blakely Ordnance Company and the Gustahlfabrik Friedrich Krupp of Essen in Prussia. From being a small-scale maker of cutlery rollers and tools of fine cast-steel in the 1820s Krupp, under the management of the anglophile Alfred Krupp, had, by 1860, become a successful manufacturer of cast-steel railway axles and weldless steel tyres. But by then the Gustahlfabrik Friedrich Krupp had other interests. From experimenting with cast-steel musket barrels in 1844, the firm had made a 3 pounder cast-steel gun in 1847 and showed a 6 pounder cast-steel gun at the Great Exhibition in 1851. As with Blakely the efforts of Krupp were entirely ignored. A 12 pounder cast-steel field gun was made in 1855. Krupp was determined and patented his cast-steel guns, sending samples to Austria, Belgium, France, the small German states and Russia. No one was able to burst his cast-steel cannon. Then, in May 1860, Prussia ordered 100 cast-steel 6 pounder smooth-bore field guns. Krupp was about to become the King of Cannon. In the same year the firm introduced, against all Prussian military opinion, rifling and breech-loading. The strength of the cast-steel rifles gave them twice the range of the bronze and iron competition. In 1866 Prussia ordered 500 Krupp breechloading field guns, Russia followed suit. Even the War Office in London was impressed and found the barrels of Krupp cast-steel field guns indestructible in October 1862. Blakely bought the Krupp guns that had been exhibited at the International Exhibition of 1862. He began to buy cast-steel components for his great guns from Krupp in 1863. He shared a common client in Russia. His patents for gun carriages featured Krupp pieces. A number of Krupp cast-steel breech-loading field guns were left at East Greenwich in 1866. Krupps own great guns were remarkably similar to Blakelys. Was Blakely making 11 inch and 9 inch steel muzzleloading guns for Krupp, whose Essen works were working night and day producing field guns? Was Blakely angling to make Krupp breech-loaders for the War Office and his own Latin American clients? In any event the Gustahlfabrik Friedrich Krupp had its own problems in 1866. Although the cast-steel barrels were undoubtedly strong, its breech-loading mechanism proved faulty in the war between Austria and Prussia. Krupp replaced every field gun with a new model without charge; the firm were in no position to assist Blakely in his financial difficulties. The Blakely patent would expire in 1869. An alliance with Alfred Krupp might have secured the future. _________________________________________________
12. Parrott, Brooke & Blakely Guns

_________________________________________________ A Letter from Captain Blakely The Engineer, December 11, 1863 I yesterday saw, for the first time, a pamphlet published in New York last year by Mr Parrott, in which my system of building cannon is vigorously attacked by the author, who however, navely acknowledges that he knows nothing about my guns, except by hearsay. He ends by claiming great originality for his own particular form of gun, which he thus describes: It is a hooped gun of the simplest kind, composed of one piece of cast and one piece of wrought iron. It has no taper, no screw, no successive layers of hoops. The latter sentence is, doubtless, meant to point out the distinction between the good and simple Parrott and the bad and complicated Blakely guns. The Times correspondent from Richmond [Virginia] is also rather hard upon my system of guns, greatly preferring the Brooke gun. I confess I have been a good deal astonished by these claims to superiority, and you will share my surprise on comparing the accompanying drawings where you will see that the vaunted Parrott and Brooke guns are simple reproductions, in 1861 and 1862, of the guns I had made in Liverpool in 1859, and which were publically fired several days, and were afterwards exhibited to the British Association at Oxford, and described in all the English papers. I had, indeed, made similar guns is 1855 and 1857, but not so publically. To prevent any possibility of cavil, I send you the original working drawings of my cannon (which please return). No 1 is a section of my 6.4 inch gun of 1859. You will perceive it is dated 10th November, 1859, and signed by Messrs Fawcett, Preston & Co. No 2 is a section of the Parrott gun of the same calibre first made in 1862. This is drawn from official descriptions, which I enclose. The wrought iron jacket of mine was like Mr Parrotts, in one single piece. The only difference that I can discover, is that Mr Parrott cooled the casing from within by water, and I did not. No 3 is a section of the Blakely 3.5 inch gun, which was used at the first siege of Fort Sumter, and which was afterwards adopted as the model for the Confederate guns, in consequence of its being serviceable after firing upwards of two thousand rounds. This is also an original drawing, and you will perceive Messrs Fawcett, Preston & Cos signature and the date 15th May, 1860.
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No 4 is a section of the 3.67 inch Parrott gun of 1861, the nearest in size to the above. The proportions you see are precisely the same. No 5 is the Brooke gun, also 1861. This drawing is an original, and signed by Captain Brooke himself, as you see. It is a simple copy of the Sumter gun with all its faults, sharp angled rifling, &c. Mr Parrott, in his pamphlet, says Successive layers of hoops are deemed, both by Captain Blakely and Professor Treadwell, essential in obtaining the full advantage of this plan. I do think several layers are necessary for large guns, and Mr Parrott will think so, too; and he will wonder himself how he could, after the published experience of Sir William Armstrong and Mr Whitworth, have fallen into the same error they did, namely, making his large guns on the same model as the small ones, instead of greatly increasing the proportionate strength. When, therefore, Mr Parrott makes a 10 inch cannon which bears long-continued firing, I anticipate that it will resemble my 10 inch gun nearly as much as his 6.4 inch gun resembles my 6.4 inch guns. At all events the principle of construction will be the same, and the successful 10 inch guns will not be a simple cast-iron tube cased in one tube of wrought-iron, like Mr Parrotts Mr Brookes, and my 6 inch guns. I have myself quite given up that construction, and would rather make the outer casing of cast-iron than of wrought-iron, which stretches too much. In England cast-steel is the most suitable material. For America, I think I should prefer cast-iron. I am really sorry Mr Parrott should have been so ill-informed of my proceedings as to write his pamphlet. We should be allies, not rivals, having independently hit on identically the same method of constructing cannon. As for Captain Brooke, I cannot believe he in any way approves of the claim made on his behalf by the Times correspondent, for, in the Confederate States, he was not even the first to make these guns. Captain Fairfax, of the Navy, made several 6.5 inch guns, at Norfolk Navy Yard, a year before he made any, and Mr Cameron, of Charleston, made some field guns. Neither of these gentlemen can object to acknowledge that they exactly copied my model. Indeed, in all the Confederate agents official letters, the Brooke guns are called the guns on the Blakely pattern made in the Confederacy. T A Blakely December 4th, 1863 _______________________________ Correspondence The Times Sir Observing on one of Dr Russells letters from Washington to the Times a lucid description of the Parrott rifled cannon, the new service arm of the United States of America, I at once perceived that this gun was identical with that invented by me seven years ago, and of which I have been making many ever since. Desiring to know January 18, 1862 which of us had first made the discovery, I wrote to a friend in America to ask Mr Parrott the question, showing him what I had published on the subject in 1855. I have just received a reply to the effect that Mr Parrott frankly acknowledges that his gun is, to all intents, the same as mine, and that he invented it later than I did. Any one who knows the jealousy of inventors will appreciate the great generosity Mr Parrott has shown by this avowal, and I trust you will spare a corner of your paper to the recital of what does this American gentleman so much honour. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, T A Blakely Army & Navy Club January 14th, 1862 _______________________________ Aftermath The treacherous Parrott ignored Blakelys advice and manufactured ever larger versions of the single-banded cannon. As Blakely predicted they regularly burst. From the Federal armys 9 inch Parrott rifle, called Swamp Angel, shelling the women and children of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1863 to every single large-bore Parrott rifle in the abolitionist fleet bombarding Fort Fisher, Wilmington, North Carolina late in 1864, their inherently flawed design caused catastrophic failure. Six burst in 1863, and thirty-three in 1864. Commander Brooke, of the Bureau of Ordnance of the Confederate States Navy, did listen and added two and three breech bands to his great guns to spread the tension of the initial propulsive explosion. His guns did not burst. _________________________________________________
13. Blakely & Dahlgren

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aptain Blakely wrote to his counterpart Captain John Dahlgren of the United States Navy during March 1858, outlining his progress in ordnance to that date. He gives his calculations and reasoning for his principles in considerable detail. Captain Dahlgrens response to this letter though sent has been lost. Page 1 (TAB Monogram) Army & Navy Club, St Jamess Sqr London March 19, 1858 Sir I trust you will pardon the liberty I take in addressing you on a subject with which you are probably more familiar than myself. Still, the results of experiments I have been making may be interesting to you, and should they convince you of the truth of the new theory I advocate, as they have even the officials here, I foresee that you will be able to inaugurate a new era in naval warfare by using shell guns of much larger than are now made.
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You are aware that in a large gun the pressure of the gas of the powder is greater than in a small gun, because the powder, burning in a proportional time; the shot does not move so as to leave a similarly proportional space for it to expand in. From some experiments I have discovered the law that the pressure in an old musket never exceeds 300 atmospheres, which in an 18 gun it must for an instant reach 3000. In a 32 pounder when 2 solid shot are fired, it probably reaches 1500 atmospheres, the maximum cast iron can bear even for an instant so that 6 inches is the largest size projectile for a cast iron gun to fire 2 solid shot with safety. Eleven inches will I think be found the maximum for shell guns of great calibre with a moderate charge of powder. There I understand guns you make about 12 inches thick at the breach [sic]. Page 2 I think that by casting the iron with a maximum external diameter of 27 inches when turned and cylindrical to the trunnions that a very much greater strength would be obtained by casting the part outside of this as a separate piece and boring it out to a cylindrical inner surface of 26 40/50 inches diameter. This to be heated and then allowed to shrink on to the inner mass, would thus be able to exert much more of its force than if merely added in casting. My reasons for thinking so are as follows. When the gun is fired the pressure of the powder causes the metal to extend the inner diameter, probably becoming 11 + 1/100 having originally been exactly 11. The metal 8 inches from the bore (or where the diameter of the imaginary layer is 27 inches) cannot extend as such as it would become 27 + 27/1100, the cross section, or difference between the squares of these measurements in round inches would be much more than the cross section originally or 272 112 = 808 round inches. The cross section remaining the same we find that the metal at 8 inches from the bore can only do one-sixth as much work as the inner layer, because it can only extend 1/6 as much, or to 27 + 27/6000, in which case the cross-section remains (27 + 9/2200) 2 (11 + 1/100) 2 = 808 round inches the same as before. But as the metal, to exert its full strength must stretch 27/1100 the only way to make it do so is to have it originally 27/1100 27/6600 or about 1/50 inch less in Page 3 diameter, so that when the strain comes it is stretching 1/50 + the push from inside, which we have seen to be only 27 / 6600, the #### being that desired of course wrought iron will be preferable for the outer part and the thinner & smaller the plies [i.e. layers] the better. All this you will find discussed by Professor Treadwell in a paper read to the American Academy around 1856 and published by Messrs Marshall & Co., Cambridge, U.S. Should you think well of the plan it is to him that the United States Government & people owe gratitude, as having first published the idea there after I patented it here on Feby 27 1855. In June of that year Mr Mallet read a paper to the Royal Irish Academy recommending the same views, but he has unfortunately tried to prove too much with his 36 inch mortars. These, though ten times as strong as if of cast iron, are yet not strong enough. I have been more successful, and have succeeded in convincing the Woolwich Committee that for all sizes over 8 superimposed plies must be used. I got a 9 pounder gun and turned it down cylindrical from the trunnion, the outer diameter being then 10 inches. On this I shrunk wrought-iron rings exactly replacing the weight removed but with metal capable of exerting nearly its whole force instead of only one-sixth of it. The inner diameter of the rings was 9.99 inches. This gun was tried against a cast iron gun the same size and weight & manufactured of the same iron by Page 4 the same government contractor, at the same time and against brass service guns of the same calibre and against one made by Mr Dundas of Dundee of staves of wrought iron hooped together. The comparative trial was conducted by the Government people at Shoeburyness. The guns were fired as follows 2 rounds with 8 lbs of powder 2 shot 1 wad 86 rounds with 3 lbs of powder 1 shot 1 wad 26 rounds with 4 lbs of powder 1 shot 1 wad 5 rounds with 3 lbs of powder 1 shot 1 wad 5 rounds with 6 lbs of powder 1 shot 1 wad 3 rounds with 6 lbs of powder 2 shot 1 wad Here Mr Dundas gun burst. The remainder were fired 107 rounds with the last named charge when the cast iron gun burst. The brass gun and mine were fire 64 additional rounds with the same charge, when the brass gun became unserviceable. Mine was then fired 134 rounds more with the same charge (6 pounds of powder & 2 shot) but showed no signs of wear, except having required a new copper vent. The charge was increased by one shot at a time till the gun was loaded to the muzzle, in which state it was fired 158 times, when it burst. Such a triumphant result has produced conviction here, I take the liberty of communicating it to you for the sake of the advancement of science, hoping that it will enable you to use 20 inch guns at least. Should these calculations be of any service to you, your gratitude is due as I said before to Professor Treadwell of Cambridge, U.S., who first published in America, as I believe, I did first in Europe. I remain Sir, Yours faithfully A T Blakeley [sic], Captn, R.A. To Captn Dahlgren U.S. Navy Note: The signature on the original is NOT Blakelys. Apart from the clearly inaccurate spelling the writing style is different
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from his known signatures. It may have been drafted or dictated by him and written out formally by a clerk, as was common at the time, as part of his publicity campaign. The original document was discovered and scanned by John Morris of the Company of Military Historians, to which all who are interested in American military history are recommended. _________________________________________________ greatest amount of strength, and best enables it to resist strain. Claim Two: Fitting into the enlarged part of the bore a tube of iron, brass, copper or other suitable metal, or a tube covered with coils of iron, steel or other wire. Comment Only Provisional Protection was granted, the patent application was not completed. C] Patent 3,404 / 1862 Improvements in Breech-loading Ordnance 20 December 1862 Claim One: Opening of the breech or separation of the breech-piece from the barrel may be effected by the act of firing, so that the firing of one charge will, in addition to throwing the projectile, open the parts and leave them in the position to receive a fresh charge. Claim Two: Mounting ordnance to be fired through port-holes or embrasures so that the axis of vertical motion is at or near the muzzle thereof, and at the portholes or embrasures, applying the power necessary to move the gun by means of hydrostatic or hydraulic apparatus. Comment Claim One is for a self-acting breech mechanism where the weight alone of the breech block absorbs the force of the propellant. Claim Two was modified in Blakelys later Patent 2882 / 1864 substituting a counterpoise weight for hydraulic power in working the elevation. The self-acting breech is, of course, a dangerous concept. D] Patent 305 / 1863 Improvements in Projectiles for Ordnance 3 February 1863 Claim: Constructing projectiles for ordnance with grooves in the body and at the rear end thereof for receiving lead or other soft metal. Comment - This patent was filed jointly with Josiah Vavasseur of Southwark. Only Vavasseur signed the specification. Blakely was presumably on his travels. E] Patent 1,284 / 1863 Improvements in Ordnance 22 May 1863 Claim: Constructing ordnance of two or more tubes having successively decreasing degrees or amounts of extensibility within extensible limits (the inner tube possessing the least amount) where the tubes are put together with initial tension. Comment - No drawings. This is the explanation of initial tension in artillery. F] Patent 1,286 / 1863 Rifling Guns and Forming Projectiles 22 May 1863 Claim One: Forming the rifling of such a shape that a line perpendicular to any point of its surface shall also be a tangent to this circle. Claim Two: Forming the projectiles to correspond with Claim One. Comment The patent covers Blakelys version of the so-called ratchet rifling, that is compared with con-
14. Blakelys Patents

_________________________________________________ The following is a list of Captain Alexander Blakelys British Patents with their claims; the language is that (by and large) of the patents themselves. A further explanation of the claim is made where the language may not be clear or where context is needed. A] Patent 431 / 1855 Improvements in Ordnance 27 February 1855 Claim One: Forming guns with an internal tube or cylinder of cast-iron or steel, enclosed in a casing of wrought-iron or steel. Claim Two: Forming heavy ordnance with an internal tube or cylinder (formed by casting and boring in the usual manner), upon which are cast rings of cast-iron in one or more layers. Claim Three: Strengthening of old guns, or guns made according to other arrangements, by application of external metal rings or coils of iron. Claim Four: Employing the friction produced by the passage of oil or other fluids through a small passage in combination with the use of compressed air as applied to gun carriages, for the purpose of moderating the recoil of the gun carried. Claim Five: Employing Claim Four in moderating the recoil of mortars. Claim Six: Forming guns of separate layers or thicknesses of metal, of sheets or layers of lead or other soft metal between such separate layers or thicknesses, for the purpose of ensuring close contact. Comment This is the master patent for banded ordnance in Britain, valid until 1869. Disclaimer and Alteration to Patent 431 / 1855 31 March 1859 Alterations: Claim One was amended to include an explanation of internal tension in ordnance and to abandon any general claim to the application of collars or rings. The Claims Four, Five and Six, relating to the hydraulic gun carriage, were withdrawn. Comment These belated changes were made in response to Blakelys dispute with W G Armstrong. B] Patent 505 / 1857 Improvements in Ordnance 21 February 1857 Claim One: Forming the bore of a gun, or that part thereof which principally bears the force of the explosion, that the diameter of the bore may bear to the thickness of the metal that proportion which gives the
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ventional square rifling. This rifling was commonly used in Blakelys later guns; no ratchet projectiles were made. G] Patent 3,087 / 1863 Projectiles for Ordnance and Loading and Firing Ordnance 8 December 1863 Claim One: Fitting a cupped ring of copper or other similar metal round the base of projectiles for ordnance. Claim Two: Fitting a concave disc of copper or other similar metal to the rear end of projectiles for ordnance. Claim Three: Loading and firing muzzle-loading ordnance by employing a piston carried at the end of a rod, which passes through an aperture through the end of the piece; the firing vent being made through the travelling piston. Comment - This covered Blakelys own design for shot and shell that replaced Brittens and Scotts in his guns. The third claim is for a composite breech-loading muzzle-loading piece in which a moveable breechpiece or piston travelled the length of the bore on a rod to carry the charge and projectile from muzzle to chamber; a dubious concept. The copper cup or ring in Claim One was licensed to the Confederate States Navy and applied to large projectiles made at Selma, Alabama. H] Patent 3,088 / 1863 Improvements in Metallic Packings 8 December 1863 Claim: Forming metallic packings of a hollow metallic ring, kept in position by a collar or support, to close the joint to which they are applied by their own elasticity Comment: As well as for packing steam cylinders, the packing is demonstrated as being used to seal the moveable breech-piece in breech-loading ordnance. I] Patent 3,179 / 1863 - Ordnance 16 December 1863 Claim One: Constructing cannon and other ordnance of two or more tubes of cast-iron, each of which tubes compresses that or those within it, and that whether the cast-iron of which such tubes are composed be of equal hardness or not. Claim Two: The combined employment in the construction of cannon and other ordnance of two or more castiron tubes as aforesaid, and of strengthening hoops of steel. Claim Three: The combined employment in the construction of cannon and other ordnance of two or more cast-iron tubes as aforesaid, and of a lining at the breech of metal softer than the innermost cast-iron tube. Comment - A reiteration of Blakelys basic concept of managing initial tension through calculated sequential changes in metals. J] Patent 1,372 / 1864 Improvements in Ordnance and in Gun Carriages 2 June 1864 Claim One: Fitting rings of iron, frames and armour plates to ordnance Claim Two: Fitting rings, frames, bars and armour plates to gun carriages Claim Three: Shrinking in or securing to the muzzle of ordnance an annular shield Claim Four: Applying armour plates to the fronts of gun carriages Comment - This patent was filed by Blakely from St Petersburg, Russia. The claims may be summarised as applying armoured shields to the muzzles or carriages of naval and field guns. All of the pieces illustrated in the drawings appear to be Krupp breech-loaders. K] Patent 2,882 / 1864 Improvement in Working Guns 18 November 1864 Claim: Adding a counterpoise weight to the muzzletrunnion gun claimed in Patent 3404 / 1862. Comment L] United States Patent 41,662 Improvement in Ordnance February 16, 1864 Claim: The manufacture of cannon composed of two or more tubes having successively decreasing amounts of extensibility within the extensible limit (the inner tube having the greater amount) when these tubes are put together with initial tension. Comment A reiteration of the claim in British Patent 1,284 of 22 May 1863. Despite his services to the south Blakely obtained a Washington patent during 1864; this contained a sour reference to the design pirate Robert Parrott. It is likely that Captain Blakelys close association with the Confederate States and with Commander Brooke in particular was brought on by Parrotts stealing of the widely advertised Blakely principles in his Washington patent of 1861. M] Patent 92 / 1866 Improvements in Projectiles for Breechloading Rifled Ordnance January 11, 1866 Claim: Wire made of copper, brass, or other suitable metal or alloy is inserted in grooves formed concentrically or spirally on the periphery of the projectiles. One wire or thickness of wire, composed of one or more strands, is inserted in each groove, so that when the projectile is fired the wire is forced into the grooves or rifling of the gun, and the projectile is thereby caused to rotate. Comment Blakely and Vavasseur N] French Brevet sgdg [Patent] Blakely a Breech-loading mechanism June 28, 1855, amended April 4, 1860 Claim A reiteration of Blakelys first English patent. Plus in 1860 - To realise the advantages of a plug parallel with the bore, and yet to withdraw the plug without unscrewing its whole length, a taper screw breech loading mechanism (Holley 1866) Comment The plug is unscrewed two or three turns and may be withdrawn along a slide. There was also a non-ordnance patent:
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O] Patent 2,702 / 1857 Improvements in laying submarine telegraphic cables (Provisional Protection only) October 23, 1857 Claim This invention consists in attaching to submarine telegraphic cables boards or other suitable resisting surfaces, in such manner that they shall be perpendicular or nearly so to the cable as the latter sinks. The boards attached to the cable by means of pairs of jointed rods, one extremity of each of which nips the cable between suitable curved plates or otherwise, while the other extremity carries the boards. Comment In August 1857 at a meeting of the British Association in Dublin Blakely applied scientific formula to the laying of the Atlantic telegraph cable; factoring in the depth of water, the rapidity of paying out and the specific gravity of the cable, to avoid waste in paying out slack. This provisional patent was intended to take this approach one step further. It was not worked. _________________________________________________ grooves, and with any twist. Some guns of Captain Blakelys, exceeding by half an inch the bore of the largest Armstrong, and weighing nearly four tons, were rifled by one of these machines in about seven hours, including the time taken to adjust the gun. As well as at Vavasseurs new works they were already in service with the Russian ordnance and one was on order for the Turkish government in August 1861. J Vavasseur & Company of 28 Gravel Lane, Southwark, manufactured small cannon for Captain Blakely in 1862 and were making spherical steel shot for great guns in 1863. During 1863 the works were acquired and extended by Captain Blakely and his partner, John Dent, Vavasseur becoming manager and engineer to the Blakely Ordnance Company, as an employee. James Vavasseur, a silk merchant of stature in London, and Josiahs elder brother, may have made the fatal introduction between Alexander Blakely and John Dent, the China merchant, who financed Blakelys operations from 1863. It should be said that Vavasseurs Gravel Lane works and Blakelys Bear Lane works occupy the same site. Gravel Lane is a long road, with at least two Number 28s, re-numbering and the effect of immense railway and road building in the area have confused the location. No 28 had been a timber yard from 1820 until the mid-1850s, when it first became an iron works. Before Vavasseur took it over, in 1858 the site was temporarily occupied by the well-known hydraulic engineering firm of Easton & Amos of The Grove, Southwark, to make and test the paying-out gear for the Atlantic telegraph cable. It was only after the ordnance factory was extended south in 1863 to obtain better access did it become No 1 Bear Lane, Southwark. Gravel Lane now has the somewhat more dignified title of Great Suffolk Street, of which it occupies the upper or northern extremity. In 1860 Josiah Vavasseur became, or rather was elected, a member of the Honourable Artillery Company in the City of London, the oldest establishment of military volunteers in the country. He was a member of the Artillery Detachment, which actually worked its battery of field guns. The bulk of its several hundred members, city merchants and civil servants, served in its Foot or Light Infantry Companies. It was not an honour that Captain Blakely achieved. In July 1866, just as the collapse of the Blakely concern was occurring he patented Improvements in compressors or apparatus for receiving and absorbing the recoil of guns and other ordnance. This set of innovations in gun carriages for large-scale ordnance was to prove almost as valuable as any improvement in artillery. Vavasseur succeeded to and continued the ordnance works in Southwark in 1867. He continued the manufacture of large cannon for export, but on a much smaller scale than Blakely, merely finishing the forgings made by Thomas Firth & Son in Sheffield. His major work was in improving and making gun carriages.
15. Associates
_________________________________________________ Josiah Vavasseur (1834 - 1908) Vavasseur was born at Braintree, Essex, in 1844, and died at Thetford, Norfolk, on the November 13, 1908, aged 74. At the time of his death he was a director of Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth and Company, and had been responsible for many important improvements in various branches of ordnance. He served an engineering apprenticeship to James Horn, of 14 High Street, Whitechapel, London, a maker of steam engines and machinery, and subsequently started to work on his own account in Southwark. Vavasseur first comes to notice in 1857 when he set up in business at 17 New Park Street, Southwark, with David Guthrie as the Patent Dyewood & Drug Mills. He had secured the patent for a machine for cutting, chipping or rasping dyewoods... for the purpose of obtaining extracts, in that year. He continued in that line until 1860 when he was in business as Josiah Vavasseur & Company, engineers, 8 Sumner Street, Southwark. Next door was Henry Vavasseur & Company, galvanized iron and zinc works, 9 Sumner Street, Southwark, clearly a relative. In that year he took over a small iron works at 28 Gravel Lane, Southwark between Gravel Lane and Bear Lane, and secured a patent, numbered 1,933, dated August 3, 1861 for a new or improved transportable machine or apparatus for rifling cannon. This is how he and Blakely became connected. The machine was described in August 1861 as being capable of rifling cannon, howitzers and mortars. It was in two parts, the rifling machine, a three girder iron bed with a muzzle chuck at one end and the drive for the rifling tap at the other, fitted with wheels, powered manually or by steam; and a separate iron carriage to hold the gun barrel. The machine is capable of rifling all guns from 2.5 inches to 11 inches bore, with any number or shape of
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However Vavasseur also produced several varieties of torpedoes or submarine mines in the 1870s. One of his principal collaborators was Captain Charles Ambrose McEvoy, formerly of the Confederate States Navy, who from 1866 devised and patented electric fuses and developed spar and drift torpedoes from models used in the late war. On February 22, 1883 Josiah Vavasseur joined Sir W G Armstrong & Company in Newcastle-upon-Tyne as one of their managing directors. _______________________________ Robert Scott (1817 - 1903) Commander Robert Anthony Edwards Scott RN, based on researches started early in 1859, published his own system of ordnance in 1861. One of his principles was the so-called centrical or ratchet rifling, in which three or more single-sided grooves were cut in the bore. It was his plan to economically make available, as rifled guns, the large quantity of cast-iron ordnance in store with the Royal Navy. In his own words, it was a method of rifling iron and brass muzzle and breech loading guns so as to fire common round shot without impairing their accuracy or injuring the gun, which may be sponged and loaded with as much facility as smooth-bore guns. Experiments with his system began early in 1860, and he exhibited a sea-service 32 pounder gun, the commonest piece in the navy, rifled on his centrical principle, along with an entirely new castiron elongated shot and shell, at the South Kensington Exhibition of 1862. In the summer of 1861 at Shoeburyness one of his converted 32 pounders had been fired over 300 times without injury, the most that a cast-iron gun had done with elongated shot, before bursting after three increased charges. Scott decided that such castiron guns required breech-reinforcement. Scotts centrical principle was then adopted, with the endorsement of the inventor, by Alexander Blakely in rifling his early great guns. Blakely later developed this into his own ratchet or saw-tooth rifling which was patented in 1863. Scotts rifling was intended to use his unusual railed or flanged projectiles, which were double-ended, with rounded noses and bases, requiring substantial wadding at the breech end. The flanged projectiles were only used with the early versions of centrical rifling, with three or four triangular grooves, such as the 8 inch Blakely Low Moor converted guns provided in 1862 for the Confederate States. The later multiple triangular grooved rifling required a bolt or shell with an expanding base, such as Bashley Brittens or Blakelys own projectile of 1863. Scott projectiles, with their unique side ribs, have been recovered in the United States in three sizes: for 4.5 inch rifles with three flanges, 4.36 inches diameter by 10 inches length, weighing 21 pounds at Fort Fisher, Wilmington; for 8 inch rifles with three flanges, 7.90 inches diameter by 14.12 inches length, 168 pounds weight, at Fort Fisher and at Fort Morgan, Mobile; and for the 13 inch rifles with four flanges, 12.75 inches diameter by 20.25 inches length for 650 pound flat-ended bolts and 23 inches length, 475 pounds weight, for round-nosed shells. The 13 inch shell was also made in Charleston with four inset copper flanges rather than cast-in ribs as imported from England. Commander R A E Scott RN was born in Egg Buckland, near the seaport of Plymouth, Devon, in 1819, and married Fanny Mary Julian at Plymouth in 1864, they had several sons together. He entered the Royal Navy on May 1, 1830 and was commissioned Lieutenant RN on May 17, 1842, receiving the rank of Commander on July 28, 1848 and Captain on November 22, 1866. Scott becoming a widower, married Madeline Bowes, and later emigrated to New Zealand. He was a direct relation of Robert Falcon Scott, the explorer of the Antarctic. After sterling service in the Pacific Ocean and in the Caribbean for which he was promoted twice Scott became Inspecting Commander of Coast Guard at home. On June 14, 1860 he was attached to HMS Fisgard, the depot- or flag-ship at Woolwich, for Special Service, where he remained until April 8, 1867. For a period after that Scott was employed under the Director General Naval Ordnance as Superintendent of Gun Carriages. He retired from the Royal Navy on October 20, 1870. His Admiralty file states that he was Employed by the Admiralty in superintending the manufacture of carriages for heavy guns in Hercules, Monarch & other ships, and assisting the Constructor in gunnery matters. Inventor of the Scott Training Gear and the Scott Carriage, used in the Service. Scott had, during 1866, obtained several patents for projectiles, manoeuvring guns and for gun carriages. At the hearings of the Ordnance Committee of Parliament in 1863 he proved a vociferous, even belligerent, witness against the existing system of gun procurement, which had blocked development of his own, Bashley Brittens and Alexander Blakelys improvements, on both of which he spoke positively. It is not immediately clear whether Commander Scott, is the same as, or is related to, Robert Scott of 53 Great Portland Street, St Marylebone, termed gunmaker in the 1861 census, and who obtained Patent 3,166, dated December 18, 1861, for rifling and grooving the barrels of firearms and ordnance. There is no evidence that R A E Scott personally patented either the centrical rifling system or his flanged projectiles. The elongated flanged projectile for rifled ordnance had been previously described by the then Lieutenant David Davidson of the Bombay Army in the Honourable East India Companys Service in a paper entitled Rifled Cannon presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh by Professor Charles Piazzi Smyth as early as 1839. Davidson is better known for his military telescopic sight for rifles, used by the Confederate States, which he had first experimented with in India in 1832, exhibited in London in 1851 and finally patented in 1862. Commander Scott did however patent several improvements in ordnance and gun mountings in 1866 on leaving the Royal Navy. _______________________________
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Bashley Britten (1825 - 1882) The most common projectiles used in Blakely guns were manufactured to Bashley Brittens patent of 1855: these had lead skirts, termed an envelope of lead, sweated on to the base of oval-nosed, elongated cylindrical iron bolts. Brittens later fragmentation shell of 1861 was an ingenious device moulded from the inside outward; the companion percussion fuse was less successful. Bashley Brittens original projectile patent from which he developed his range of fragmentation shells dated from 1855, the same year as Alexander Blakelys initial patent. After obtaining provisional protection for the design as patent 604/1855, it was finally numbered 1740/1855, signed on August 8, 1855. Six years later he improved the elongated shell with internal segmentation and added a fuse design, protecting these changes in patent number 585/1861, of March 8, 1861. Bashley Brittens association with ordnance seems to have commenced in 1854 when he was employed by the large engineering concern of Maudslay, Sons & Field of Lambeth in London. This was a substantial firm, one of the few engaged in making steam engines for the Royal Navy, as well as providing mill machinery, pumps and an immense variety of high quality engineering materials. It was at Maudslays that many great mechanical engineers were initially apprenticed, including Joseph Whitworth. During 1854, as the Crimean War with Russia started, Joseph Maudslay, the managing partner, designed and patented his own breech-loading gun, as well as making rifling machines and ordnance stores for the government. Britten may have assisted in this work. In November 1854 Bashley Britten approached the War Office with his concept of a new shell-firing gun, using rifled cast-iron ordnance. This he stated would improve performance immeasurably longer range, greater payload and great economy; the latter through the simple conversion of existing cast-iron pieces by rifling. Brittens underlying principle was that muzzle-loading cast-iron guns need only be rifled with very shallow grooves, thought safer than deep rifling, if a shell or shot could be designed that would grip such grooves. As it turned out his ingenious shell design was the invention that made his name, being suitable for all manner of muzzle-loading rifled ordnance. The shells were tried three times by the War Office on the Shoeburyness artillery range in 1855, in March, on July 26 and again on October 24 and 25. The gun was an ordinary 9-pounder iron field piece of 17 cwt with four grooves cut down the bore, that is, for clarification, a 4.2 inch gun weighing 1,904 pounds. The usual charge for a 9 pounder ball was 3 pounds of powder, giving a maximum range of 2,400 yards. In all of the tests the Britten shell and the 9 pounder rifled gun exceeded the range of the existing gun by 1,000 yards, the shell it fired weighed 14 pounds and required just 1 pounds of propellant. In the later trials the shell weight was increased to 16 pounds and still retained the same increased performance and economy. The first Britten shells carried a bursting charge twice as much as the common shell but cost, he said, only 15% per ton more to make. In balance there was a saving of 50% in propellant. This information comes from Bashley Brittens letters that appeared in The Times newspaper in August and October 1855, dated from the offices of Maudslay, Sons & Field. The official report was not published. Brittens patent process for securing lead to iron using an intermediate coat of zinc during the manufacture of bolts for rifled guns was licensed to the War Office in 1860 for 500. It was used in all of the governmentmade projectiles for breech-loaders, as well as those in Prussia and Russia. He accompanied this with a design for improved rifling of cannon, also used by Blakely. Brittens rifling was usually termed at the time square, being also shallow and sharp-edged, with several grooves. He did not patent, or attempt to patent, his shallow rifling. It was used interchangeably with Scotts pattern in Blakelys earliest guns. In the early 1860s Britten proposed and vigorously tested his own system of ordnance; taking the existing cast-iron tubes of the 32 pounder and 68 pounder smooth bore pieces and having them rifled to his specification. The regular 32 pounder cost 58 to cast and 1 to rifle, as compared to the cost of 360 for the governments latest 40 pounder wrought-iron breech-loader. The powder charge was reduced from 10 pounds to five pounds, but the shot weight was now 50 pounds and the range increased from 1,882 yards to 2,100 yards. There were similar improvements in the 68 pounder. As noted above, Britten also had rifled 9 pounder cast-iron field guns, which were then capable of throwing a 15 pound bolt. All three types proved safe and durable, but were ignored by the War Office. None of Bashley Brittens guns were strengthened, as in Blakelys system, but were simply rifled, cast-iron service pieces. In all, two Britten simple cast-iron 9 pounders were rifled and tested in 1855 by the War Office; and four 32 pounders and three 68 pounders were rifled and tried between 1856 and 1861, primarily during 1860. Early in 1859 Britten wrote to Captain Blakely proposing that they co-operate in making strengthened castiron guns rifled on his model to more effectively compete with William Armstrongs monopoly. Blakely welcomed this approach and was to adopt Brittens rifling. The Confederate States purchasing agent, Caleb Huse, then in London described Bashley Brittens patent shell to General Gorgas in Richmond in a letter written on May 21, 1861: I was shown this morning a new segment shell, invented by Mr Breton [Britten]. It appears to be possessed of all the advantages of the Armstrong against troops, and is much more simple and less expensive. The exterior is of cast-iron, of the shape of the projectiles used in the [Blakely] gun sent by Mr Prioleau to Charleston, and which was used in the bombardment. It is made as thin as possible not to be broken in the
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gun. Inside the shell is a second shell, made in segments, also of cast-iron. There are nine of these segments, each of which consists of six parts, or rather each of which will easily break into six parts. Thus A is one of the segments, made of brittle cast-iron; c, c, and c, are disks of sheet-iron, around which the cast-iron is poured. The cast-iron does not adhere to the cold wrought-iron, and the segment when taken from the mould is an arch, the voussoirs of which are of cast-iron. These voussoirs are connected at the back, the wroughtiron partitions not coming quite through to the back of the arch. Nine of these segments are placed together, forming a body, the exterior orifice of which is to fit the interior of the outer shell. The interior space is filled with sand. This mass of segments and sand forms the core of the shell. A mould is now made, and the shell completed as if an ordinary sand-core had been used. It is evident that the shell is very strong to resist pressure from the exterior, but very weak in the opposite direction. The principle may be applied to projectiles for either muzzle-loading or breech-loading guns. When used for muzzle-loaders, the same arrangement is adopted by Mr Breton [Britten] as in the case of the projectiles for the Blakely gun [i.e. lead skirts]. Britten was no partisan. In June and July 1861 he was treating with General J C Frmonts agent in London to provide shot and shell for the Union armies in the MidWest. A production license, along with patterns and moulds, for his projectiles was also sought for use in the United States. Several thousand Britten patent shells were sent from England to Frmont in St Louis during the summer of that year. Large numbers of Bashley Brittens lead-skirted iron shells were manufactured in a great many calibres. He went to some pains to keep the source of supply of his shell bodies and fuses secret from his customers. However there is no reason to believe otherwise than that all of his patent shells were manufactured between 1855 and 1864 at the famous engineering works of his employers, Maudslay, Sons & Field, of 108-110 Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth, London, under license. It should be said that Britten patent shells could be and were used in rifled cannon other than Alexander Blakelys. There is no correlation of use one to the other. Relics found in the United States have been measured at 2.5 inches, 2.9 (or 3) inches, 3.5 inches, 6.4 inches and 7 inches, as well as 32 pounds (6.4 inch?), 24 pounds (4 inch?) and 12 pounds (4.62 inch?). Apart from the 3.5 inch and 7 inch calibres none can, with certainty, be said to be from Blakely guns. Dimensions for measured Britten projectiles recovered in the United States are for the 7 inch rifle; 6.9 inches diameter by 11.75 inches length, 88 pounds bolt weight, 64 pounds shell weight: for the 6.4 inch rifle (or 32 pounder rifle), 6.35 inches diameter by 11 inches length, 56 pound bolt weight, 46 pound shell weight: for the 4.62 inch rifle (or 12 pounder rifle), 4.56 inches diameter by 7.33 inches length, 26 pound bolt weight, 21 pound shell weight. The 6.4 inch projectiles have been found at Wilmington, Charleston and Mobile. Eason Brothers of Charleston, who also repaired the 13 inch Blakely gun in 1863, attempted to manufacture Britten shells for the Confederate States but were unable to get the lead skirts to adhere to the iron bodies possibly not being aware of the need to use a zinc intermediary, the basis of his patent. Alexander Dyer also failed in his imitation or piracy of Brittens patent shells despite gaining large contracts from the Washington government during 1862, for the same reason. Belatedly, given their wide use by both sides in the recent war, in June 1871, Britten secured a patent in the United States, number 116,408, for his lead-skirted projectiles. Most curiously the specification was based on the shell in his British patent of 1855 rather than the segmented version of 1861. Bashley Britten was a civil engineer by profession, though styling himself in the Census and in his patent documents as a gentleman. He was the son of Daniel Britten, a clothworker, of Walthamstow in Middlesex and of the City of London. The father and mother, Jane Britten, and their estates subsequently, were involved in a long and discreditable bankruptcy suit that lasted from 1824 until 1861, which probably accounts for Brittens secrecy as regards his background. It is known that he had four elder brothers, Daniel Mallet, Charles Francis, William Goodwyn Price and James Edward, as well as three sisters, Jane, Acacia and Alicia Georgiana. Bashley Britten was born in Christchurch, Hampshire in 1825, and died at Ullapool on Loch Broom in the Highlands of Scotland in 1882. He was involved in diverse and original engineering work, particularly in relation to the working of metals, from around 1854. His later inventions included the manufacture of glass from foundry slag. For much of his life Britten lived in the county of Surrey, south of London, initially, in 1854, at Anerley, near Sydenham, then from 1864 at Redhill and Reigate. He married Susannah Wilks in April 1853 and they had one daughter, Ada Elizabeth. Blakely employed William Goodwyn Price Britten on May 14, 1861 to work for the Blakely Cannon Company in Liverpool to develop improvements in shells for his pieces, with Fawcett, Preston & Company. WGP Britten was elder brother to Bashley Britten, and had been imprisoned for debt several times. The appointment was not a success, ending in a law suit. WGP Britten was to receive a salary of 200 a year and a commission of 12s 0d on every ton of shells, but succeeded only in spending large sums on iron, lead and other materials in experiments. It is likely that this led to an estrangement between Bashley Britten and Blakely in 1862. Bashley Brittens short book of 1871, comparing his system with others, Heavy Rifled Ordnance, makes no reference at all to Blakely. Bashley Brittens Patents: 394 February 18, 1854 6 January 2, 1855 604 March, 17, 1855 Crushing Ore Copying apparatus Projectiles*
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1740 567 585 1856 855 3528 731 715 3750 4017 2105 August 1, 1855 March 1, 1860 March 8, 1861 July 26, 1864 March 12, 1868 November 20, 1868 March 10, 1869 March 17, 1871 November 19, 1873 November 19, 1875 May 18, 1876 Projectiles Projectiles* Projectiles Projectiles Manure Fishing Rods Whips Artillery Glass Glass Glass pating in the creation of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation. Both Dent and Blakely had taken debentures in the new limited company rather than being paid cash as the price of the good will, the contracts and the works of the old partnership. Between June and August 1865 Dent sold, discounted and mortgaged as many of his debenture bonds as possible. Blakely, too, had used his share as security for bank loans, always, it was acknowledged in the Courts, leaving a substantial margin between what he borrowed and the market value of the shares. Dents needs were more pressing, his running costs were enormous, he had speculated in the booming stock market of the post 1862 period, and the trading business in China on which he based his life-style was perilous, if not insolvent. Mysteriously, in August 1865 John Dent returned to Hong Kong, abandoning his house, his clubs and his social whirl. There were it was said huge losses in Dent & Companys China trade; a shortfall of 200,000 in Shanghai was conveniently blamed on the criminal acts of a Portuguese employee. The collapse of the London financial market in April 1866 reverberated around the globe, bringing down banks in India and China, and, eventually, the house of Dent. Even so John Dent managed to use his family influence to be appointed a member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong on August 15, 1866. On November 8, 1866 Dent & Companys agents in London refused to accept its bills. The personal loans that Dent had negotiated in London on the security of the Blakely bonds fell due, then overdue, and the Blakely Ordnance Company, by then in the hands of hollow men and speculators, was unable to honour them. Neither was Blakely whose name also appeared on their face. Nothing came from China. Dent & Company, merchants, of London, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Foo Chow were bankrupt. Despite their much vaunted wealth, the partners proposed on May 8, 1867 to satisfy their creditors with a composition payment of just 2s 6d in the pound (12%) payable over two-and-half years from June 30, 1867. The offer was accepted. On June 4, 1869, John Dent crept back into London, to a modest hotel, where he acknowledged his massive debts in writing to the Court of Bankruptcy. He chose not to appear before the Court in person. As a bankrupt and levanter he survived on the good-will of his wealthy family, living at his uncles modest house at No 8 Fitzroy Square, St Pancras, in London until his death in 1892. _________________________________________________
* Only provisional patents, not completed _______________________________ John Dent (1822 - 1892) The failure of the Blakely Ordnance Company must be laid at the door, the impressive mansion port cochre in fact, of John Dent, merchant, of 35 Grosvenor Square, London, England; and of Pedder Street, Hong Kong, the Bund, Shanghai and Foo Chow Foo, in the Empire of China. Born in 1822 in the East Indies, probably in Canton, China, he was the senior partner in the firm of Dent & Company of Hong Kong, merchants dealing in tea, silk, indigo and opium since 1823, and which comprised John Dent, Francis Chomley, Henry Dent, Alexander Turing and H P Hanssen. The firms business was estimated in the London press in the 1860s to turn over two to three millions sterling. Dent himself was represented as worth 800,000. It was one of three original Hongs or trading firms in Canton. It was Dents opium stash in its Canton godown or warehouse that was condemned by the Chinese authorities and started the Opium Wars of the 1840s. John Dent had returned to London in 1863 with a frank, confiding disposition and his ostensible wealth, aged 41. He became the favourite of fortune in London society, building a mansion house in Grosvenor Square, contending the Parliamentary seat of Totnes in Devon, being elected to a half-dozen of the most fashionable clubs. It was said in the more vulgar newspapers that John Dent had fled China in fear of his life, leaving his partners to face the Taiping insurrection that terrorised the Empire in the early 1860s. There is no record as to how or why Alexander Blakely and John Dent became partners in the original Blakely Ordnance Company of 1863. There was a binding deed of partnership between them by which Dent financed Blakelys work to the extent of 30,000. It can only be presumed that Dent, Palmer & Company, the London house associated with the China Dents and with a history of finding finance for the southern states over a period of twenty years, made the introduction. John Dent also invested in joint-stock companies, lending his impressive name to their boards of directors in 1865. The most prominent of these was the Blakely Ordnance Company; another was Reuters Telegram Company, the famous news-agency, as well as partici-
16. Sources
_________________________________________________ The written historical sources regarding Alexander Blakely are meagre. For example, the letter books, accounts and day-to-day files of his several companies no longer seem to exist. There is no biography or even an
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obituary of his life. The writer has not found a verifiable likeness of Captain Blakely in any published work. For those interested the following are the major accessible references to the man and his cannon: Alexander Theophilus Blakely, Adrian Caruana, Journal of the Ordnance Society, Volume 4, 1992 Alexander Theophilus Blakeley (sic), an Addition to the Debate, Mary Mills, Journal of the Ordnance Society, Volume 11, 1999 Theophilus Alexander Blakely and the revolution in Victorian gun design, Nicholas Hall, Royal Armouries Yearbook, Volume 6, 2001 The American Cyclopaedia, George Ripley and Charles A Dana, D Appleton and Company, 1873 Artillery and Ammunition of the Civil War, Warren Ripley, Promontory Press, New York, 1970 Artillery through the Ages, Col H C B Rogers, Seeley, Service & Co., London, 1971 Blakely and Armstrong Guns, a statement by Mrs Blakely, Harriette Catherine Blakely, London, 1898 Mrs Blakely, Case for Justice, Harriette Catherine Blakely, London, 1902 The Big Guns, Civil War Siege, Seacoast and Naval Cannon, Edwin Olmstead, Wayne E Stark and Spencer C Tucker, Museum Restoration Service, Alexandra Bay, New York, 1997 Charleston at War, the Photographic Record 1860 1865; Jack Thomson, Thomas Publications, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 2000 Charlestons Civil War Monster Guns, the Blakely Rifles, C R Horres, Jr., South Carolina Historical Magazine, Volume 97, Number 2, April 1996 A Cheap and Simple Method of Manufacturing Strong Cannon, Captain A T Blakely RA, Ridgway, London, 1858 Civil War Heavy Explosive Ordnance, A Guide to Artillery Projectiles, Torpedoes, and Mines; Jack Bell, University of North Texas Press, Denton, Texas, 2002 Confederate Foreign Agent; The European Diary of Major Edward C. Anderson, Edited by W. Stanley Hoole, Confederate Publishing Co., University, Alabama, 1976 Dockyard Economy and Naval Power, Patrick Barry, Sampson Lowe, Son & Co., London 1863 The Engineer magazine, London, 1856 to 1868 Engineering magazine, London, 1866 to 1868 A Few Remarks on the Science of Gunnery, Captain A T Blakely RA, Ridgway, London, 1858 Field Artillery Weapons of the Civil War, James C Hazlett, Edwin Olmstead and M Hume Parks, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois, 1983 Guide to Charleston Illustrated; being a sketch of the History of Charleston, SC, Arthur Mazyck, Walker, Evans & Cogswell, Charleston, SC, 1875 Heavy Rifled Ordnance, Cast Iron and Wrought Iron, Bashley Britten, W Mitchell, London, 1871 Historia General del Ejrcito Peruano, Lourdes Medina Montoya, la Comisin Permanente de Historia del Ejrcito del Per, 1989 The Iron Guns of Willard Park, John C Reilly, Naval Historical Center, Washington, 1991 Ironclads and the Big Guns of the Confederacy, The Journals and Letters of John M Brooke, George M Brooke , University of South Carolina Press, 2002 The Law Journal Reports for the Year 1868, Cases in the Court of Probate, the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes and on Appeal therefrom, New Series Volume XXXVII, Edward Bret Ince, London, 1868 The Life of Captain Sir Richard F Burton, Isabel Burton, Chapman & Hall, London, 1893 Law Reports of the Chancery and Exchequer Courts of England, London, 1850 to 1870 A History of Massachusetts in the Civil War, Volume I, William Schouler, E P Dutton, Boston, Massachusetts, 1868 Major Caleb Huse CSA & S Isaac Campbell & Co., David Burt, Author House, Milton Keynes, 2009 Mechanics Magazine, London, 1855 to 1868 Official Catalogue of the Museum of Artillery in the Rotunda, Woolwich, Brig Gen J H Lefroy RA, HM Stationery Office, London, 1864 Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies Series I, Volumes 1 to 53, U S Government Printing Office, Washington, 1880-1898 Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion Series I, Volumes 1 to 27, and II, Volumes 1 to 3, U S Government Printing Office, Washington, 1894-1921 sterreichischer Bericht ber die Internationale Ausstellung in London, Joseph Arenstein, KK Ministeriums fr Handel und Volkswirtschaft, Vienna, 1862 Recollections of a Rebel Reefer, James Morris Morgan, Constable & Company, London, 1918 Report from the Select Committee on Ordnance Parliamentary examination of Sir W G Armstrong, J Whitworth and Captain A T Blakeley, HM Stationery Office, London, 1863 Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, Vol I to XII, W. Mitchell & Son, London, 1858 to 1868 Scientific American random mentions of Blakely between 1858 and 1866, usually quoting the British publications, Mechanics Magazine, The Artizan and The Engineer.
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The Story of the Guns, Sir J Emerson Tennent, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, London, 1864 The Supplies for the Confederate Army: How they were obtained in Europe and how paid for, Caleb Huse, T R Marvin & Son, Boston, 1904 A Treatise on Ordnance and Armor, Alexander L Holley, Van Nostrand, New York, 1865 The Times, London, 1850 to 1875 A Visit to the Cities and Camps of the Confederate States, Fitzgerald Ross, William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1865 processes, however he is a blatant partisan of Joseph Whitworths camp, entirely ignoring Captain Blakely. Two picture books, albums containing around sixty photographs of pieces of ordnance taken in 1865 and 1866 for the Blakely Ordnance Company and about 1880 for J Vavasseur & Company, exist at Southwark Local History Library in London. Coincidentally, in 1865, the Royal United Service Institution acquired two photographs each of 11 inch and 9 inch Blakely guns for its collection. Surviving Blakely Guns As well as the thirty-two pieces in the United States, and several in Peru and Chile, there are three, or possibly four, Blakely guns surviving in Britain. Two are 4.25 inch pieces dating from 1862, patent guns number 67 and 69, made by Fawcett, Preston & Company, now in the museums at Fort Nelson, Portsmouth, and Chatham Historical Dockyard, Kent, and a 2.9 inch mountain gun made in 1865, patent gun number 477, at Fort Nelson, made by the Blakely Ordnance Company. There is also a peripatetic 2.5 inch Blakely yacht gun on a truck carriage, in private hands, having a 33 inch barrel rifled with six grooves, made by Fawcett, Preston & Company in 1865. This has been seen at Usk, in Wales and in County Durham, England, in recent years. _________________________________________________ Original inventor of improvements in cannon and the greatest artillerist of the age From the gravestone of Mary William Blakely, his mother _________________________________________________ Steven Roberts 2012 London, England The right of Steven Roberts to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the United Kingdom Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. For more information contact essroberts@msn.com _________________________________________________ Issue: May 16, 2011
The descriptions of the Blakely Ordnance Companys East Greenwich works, the list of machinery and tooling and the inventory of guns left in 1866 come from the 1868, 1870 and 1871 sale advertisements of the auctioneers, Fuller, Horsey, Son & Company, 11 Billiter Square, London EC. The inventory of the Tavistock Ironworks & Steel Ordnance Company comes from the 1868 advertisements of the same house. Kristina Dunn Johnson of the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room & Military Museum, Columbia, S C, kindly provided copies of the invoices from Captain Blakely and Fawcett, Preston & Company to Captain Caleb Huse CSA held in the Colin McRae archive. I have to specially thank Sr. Carlos Carrera and Admiral Reynaldo Pizarro, who have spent much time researching the work of Captain Blakely in their country of Peru, for providing original archive documents, translations and photographs, and for their excellent advice. I must also thank Sr. Gilles Galt, their friend and collaborator, who has supplied many pictures of the Blakely guns in the museums of Chile. Very many thanks must also go to the late Wayne Stark of Baden, Pennsylvania always a fount of knowledge regarding Civil War period great guns. Jack Melton has very kindly allowed use of several photographs from his CivilWarArtillery.com website. I also owe a lot to the advice and researches of my good friend from Nebraska. The late Captain Caruanas fascinating article for the Ordnance Society is the only truly original piece of research regarding Blakely. Mary Mills excellent followup deals with the history of the East Greenwich ordnance works. Nicholas Hall fills in some of the gaps in Captain Caruanas work and adds a great deal of historical perspective. Mr Horres article is an excellent account of the two great guns at Charleston but with scarcely any context relating to affairs in Britain. Professor Brooke is the grandson of John Mercer Brooke CSN, and has well-edited his grandfathers correspondence. Mechanics Magazine was a consistent friend and promoter of Captain Blakely, its columns scrupulously compared his theories with those his competitors. Blakelys name is a thread running through the Official Records. Emerson Tennents book describes in detail the Whitworth and Armstrong guns and manufacturing
Steven Roberts 2012

Captain Alexander Blakely RA

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