✅ SOLVED Cannon ball what war?

[VaNana]

In light of my other finds recently I was wondering about this cannon ball that my son found about 15 years ago when he was about 10. He found it in an old rotting stump. We though at the time someone found it in one of the fields and placed it there. But now that I have found old bullets and an old foundation about 150 feet away maybe they are connected some how.
Since the whole thing is not there it is hard it measure. The diameter is about 4.4" to 4.2" and the top hole is about .94" or .83"


This is the other bullet I didn't get the info on yet.
31.6g (1.115oz.), diameter.56", and 1.03".
Thanks for your help!

 

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[Guest 1551]

dang that is sweet!

 

[BosnMate]

Looks like a Civil War 12 pound explosive shell to me. The idea was for a time fuse to explode the shell above and forward of the advancing troops, supposedly hitting them with the round balls. CannonBallGuy should be here soon, and he'll give you the straight dope. By the way, great find.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

It is about half of a civil war artillery (or earlier) antipersonnel exploding cannonball, a type which was called a Case-Shot shell. The antipersonnel balls still stuck to its inside appear to have rust-crust on them, which indicates they are made of iron. Use a magnet to check whether the small balls are iron or not.) If they actually are iron, your cannonball fragment is a Confederate-made "Sideloader" Case-Shot.

If a dug-in-America cannonball's antipersonnel balls are made of lead, it could be either civil war yankee or Confederate-made, or from the War Of 1812.

 

[VaNana]

The small balls are iron and rusted together. Do you think it hit something and broke or filled with water froze and that caused it to brake with the balls rusted inside?

 

[VaNana]

Thank you again BosnMate and Cannonball Guy for your help!

What about the bullet?

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Because you asked:

The iron antipersonnel balls inside your Confederate Sideloader Case-Shot shell were "cemented" in place by a matrix consisting of asphalt or pinesap. An external impact powerful enough to break that type of shell into pieces would knock the balls loose from the shell's iron body. Therefore, the odds most highly favor your 12-pounder caliber Sideloader Case-Shot shell having been broken into two (or perhaps three) unusually large pieces by water getting into it and freezing... like sometimes happened to glass milkbottles (full of milk) left on the houseporch in deep wintertime by the Milk Deliveryman when I was a young child (1950s).

That being said... there is one other possibility, though it occurs VERY rarely. A fired explosive cannonshell would sometimes burrow deeply into the ground before its fuze detonated the shell. (Relic-diggers call that a "groundburst" shell.) In that situation, the side of the shell which was pressing against the very-hard subsoil tended not to break into small pieces, while the side which was facing the softer topsoil blew to bits. On a couple of occasions I myself have dug one of those underground-exploded shells, and the deepest fragment of it had some of the antipersonnel balls still stuck onto the frag.

By the way... now that you've confirmed that your cannonball fragment's antipersonnel balls are iron, which means it is part of a Confederate "Sideloader" Case-Shot shell, I can tell you with certainty that the approximately .9"-diameter hole on the edge of your frag is the "sideloader" hole (for loading the antipersonnel balls into the shell when it was being manufactured).

Here's a photo showing what that shell looked like when it was intact... and another photo showing one which has been professionally sawed in half. The halfsection shows the shell's copper fuzeplug, the lead sideloading plug, and the iron antipersonnel balls helf in pinesap matrix. The one-inch-wide dark-grey area below the fuze down the bottom of the shell is its gunpowder bursting-charge.

Almost forgot to mention... the bullet is one of the many varieties of civil war .58-caliber "Minie-ball" which had three body-grooves. Those were manufactured by both sides in the war. To be able to tell you whether yours is yankee-made or Confederate-made, I need to see photos of your Mine-ball's top and the cavity in its base.

 

[VaNana]

That is just what I wanted to know. Thank you!

 

[VaNana]

Here is the top and bottom of the bullet. Was it fired or just smashed by farm equipment?

 

[SkaBa]

My guess is smashed.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Thanks for the closeup photos. As I hoped, the base-view photo shows something which identifies your 3-groove .58 Minie-bullet as US or CS-made. Its base-cavity has a raised 5-point star. That is the mark of a yankee arsenal. There is debate about which arsenal... some folks say the raised star mark represents the Frankford PA arsenal, others say it represents the Washington DC arsenal. Even the Thomas brothers (Jim and Dean), whom I consider the top experts on civil war bullets, aren't sure. Personally, I lean toward the answer being Frankford Arsenal, because many Bormann artillery fuzes have the raised star mark, and Frankford was the yankees' main producer of artillery fuzes.

Here are a couple of closeup photos showing the RAISED star mark in your version of Minie-bullet.

Your other question:
SkaBa's guess (he himself said he was guessing) is correct... your bullet is definitely an unfired one. I wouldn't say it is "smashed," because its body is almost entirely undamaged. The only damage is seen at its thin base-rim, which on a Minie-bullet is called its "skirt." The thin skirt got bent out-of-round, by being pressed-on... it is most likely the result of being stepped on when the bullet was laying on very hard dry clay soil.