Dutchman Dick
Member
|
I just won a great group of relics on Ebay. They all came from Confederate lines at Port Hudson, Louisiana. The grouping consists of 5 field-cast bullets: a .69 musket ball, 2 3-band "minie"-type bullets, and 2 Enfield-Pritchard bullets (the 4 elongated balls apparently side-cast, as the noses aren't flat). There is also the bowl of a large iron spoon with some melted lead in the bottom (apparently a ladle used for pouring lead into molds), and a large blob of melted lead. All of the artifacts were found in the same area. According to the seller, the Confederates were desperately using all the lead they could find to cast bullets during the siege: fired Union minies, sabots from artillery shells, etc. Since my great-great grandfather fought at Port Hudson (on the Union side), this was a special find.
As a side note, in other bids I won the following:
1) A VERY corroded 6-pounder solid shot from Yorktown (Gloucester Point)
2) 4 small (1.4" or so) grapeshot (or large cannister balls) from Cooper County, MO - probably relics of the battle of Boonville
3) 3 small (3/4") iron cannister balls from central Tennessee
4) a very interesting 3-inch Hotchkiss shell fragment from the Wilderness. It consists of the nose of the shell, which blew up in such a way as to fracture neatly along the flame-grooves and create a "cross section" of a complete Hotchkiss shell nose section.
|
