Black Powder, White Smoke — March 2016

Black Powder, White Smoke

This month I would like to report on an interesting Civil War firearms postal match between my friend Bill Adams’s 34th Virginia Cavalry Battalion N-SSA team and the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Vintage Arms Society, a group of British muzzle loading shooters.

In May 2014, North-South Skirmish Assn. Commander Phil Spaugy was contacted by British shooter and retired army officer Michael Hunting regarding a possible postal match between his Vintage Arms Society located near Nottingham and an N-SSA unit.

Hunting explained that his organization’s membership participated in matches shooting “historic arms from flintlock to World War 2.” The group’s team of .577 Enfield shooters, the North of England Champions, was “keen to see if a team (or more) from the U.S. would like to compete, in a postal match, against us.”

“Postal” is an old term going back to when teams would shoot and mail their results to each other.

Since Commander Spaugy was busy attending to his duties running the N-SSA, he asked Bill Adams, a period small arms expert in his own right, if he and his 34th Battalion Virginia Cavalry team would take the lead and set up a trial match with the British.

The “Nighthawks” of the 34th accepted the challenge and corresponded via email with

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Hunting to establish parameters for the contest. They decided on a trial run, with only the 34th participating on the American side, to take place during the admittedly busy schedule at the N-SSA Fall Nationals shoot.

The N-SSA Board of Directors was advised and voted to make the match an official N-SSA event and therefore covered by the organization’s insurance.

The Rules for Enfield Postal Competition (2014) adopted by the 34th and the Vintage Arms Society were as follows:

3. Position: Prone, offhand or sitting.

4. Type of rifle: .577 Enfield (3 band, 2 band or carbine) original rifles, or reproductions, or .58 Springfield (any version or type as used in the Civil War), original or reproduction.

5. Number of shots: 13 shots in 30 minutes by each team member, with best 10 to count.

6. Sights: Standard as issued. (N-SSA-style sighting holes in sight leaves permitted.)

7. Ammunition: Any type of bullet to suit rifle and shooter.

8. Slings: May be used as a shooting aid.

9. Dress: Any dress may be worn and shooting gloves are permitted.

10. Targets: 100-yard approved by the North South Skirmish Association.

11. Scoring: 50 percent scoring: The score allocated to each shot is the one where 50 percent or more of the bullet hole appears.

The match, using bull’s-eye targets, was fired in October 2014. They also had a match last year, which I will report on in a later column.

The first match saw the 34th firing its portion at the N-SSA National Range in Winchester, Va., during the last relay of individual matches on Friday afternoon.

National Range property manager Tim Scalan worked with the American shooters in site preparation and timing, but there were some logistical problems as N-SSA relays run for 20 minutes while the agreed-on time limit with the English shooters was 30 minutes.

The Brits wore modern shooting jackets and shot from prone. The Americans wound up shooting mostly offhand and sitting, in Confederate uniforms and period accoutrements.

The 34th Battalion team posted a score of 532-5X. Still photos

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and video of the competition were held until the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire club members completed their match the following weekend.

When Michael Hunting notified Bill that the British team had completed its portion of the match, photos and videos were exchanged and scores compared. The British team won with a score of 551-11X besting the 34th Battalion Virginia Cavalry by 19 points and 6 Xs.

Bill noted that five members of the English team fired Parker-Hale Enfields in the competition. “Mike Mott, related to Capt. Alexander Mott of the 5th Ohio Infantry, fired an original Enfield rifle”.

The 34th members fired a variety of American arms that included Richmonds, Fayettevilles, Whitneys and a Norris & Clement.

Firearms folklore often takes a long time to die. A recent article in Military History Quarterly retold the tale of President Abraham Lincoln’s test of the Spencer rifle.

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Christopher Spencer, “faced by resistance from the Union Army... cannily pitched his rifle to President Lincoln who became an advocate for the weapon.”

In actuality, Spencer rifles had been ordered and delivered to the U.S. Navy prior to Lincoln’s test. There were problems with some of the early production guns. Spencer went down to Washington to assure the president that those problems were overcome and that his gun was a viable firearm. Part of the process was to allow Lincoln to personally fire it.

Was it a clever public relations performance? Certainly, but the reason why has been muddled over the years.

Another Spencer legend that needs to be put to rest is the idea that the Blakeslee cartridge box with its preloaded ammunition tubes was a regular accoutrement of Spencerarmed soldiers in the field. It was not.

The Blakeslee box was indeed used in the war, but only at the very end of the conflict, most notably by Spencer-armed cavalrymen in Wilson’s Raid into Alabama in April 1865. Interestingly, there were a few accidents, when jostling of horseback riding detonated cartridges in the tubes in the boxes.