Black Powder, White Smoke — September 2016

Black Powder, White Smoke

New Jersey Arms Collectors Cancel Show

I regret to inform my New Jersey readers that the Board of Directors of the New Jersey Arms Collectors Club has had to cancel the club’s annual Veterans Tribute arms and artifacts show. The NJACC had booked the Veterans Center in Kenilworth in January 2016 for November 5, but a scheduling mix-up resulted in a date conflict. The only option still available at the Center was on Thanksgiving weekend. However, the Board members thought would not be a good date for the show. Although the Board investigated alternative sites, they concluded that while most of these venues had the overall space, they lacked the necessary tables for the show. Since tables would be expensive to rent, the Board decided it would be best to cancel this year’s event. Hopefully, this excellent show will be back in 2017.

The flood of foreign weapons, primarily .577 caliber Pattern 53 British Enfields and .54 caliber Austrian Model 1854 Lorenzes, proved critical in arming the Union and Confederate armies in the Civil War. In February 1862, one Union soldier reported his “well armed” brigade had one regiment armed with Springfields, two with Lorenzes and another with Enfields. By one estimate, 42% of the small arms carried by the Army of the Potomac’s infantry in September 1862 were imports.

The Enfield, of course, is the most common imported arm, not only in the 1860s but also in modern reenactments, living history presentations and N-SSA target shooting. The Austrian Lorenz was a very important arm, in both original .54 and in hasty conversions to .58. There were thousands of Lorenzes in General Joseph Johnson’s army at the outset of the campaign of 1864. It is estimated that as many as 227,000 Lorenzes were imported by the Union and over 100,000 by the Confederacy. Lorenz quality varied, as a number of contractors made them, as well as the Austrian government, and the gun got both good and bad reviews from its American users.

If you are interested in how an original Lorenz performed, I highly recommend a Hungarian black powder shooter’s video test available on Youtube.com. The shooter, using original style cartridges he made himself (and he shows you how he made them in detail), conducted a comparison test between the Lorenz, the primary Austrian arm in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, and its opponent, the breech loading Prussian Dreyse. The historical analysis value of such testing is immediately apparent, as he disposes of the longheld myth that escaping gas from the Dreyse’s breech compelled Prussian soldiers to fire their guns from the hip. They may have done so, but purely as the result of a tactical decision, not a necessary one due to a failure on the part of the gun.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5x- H1YELizY&feature=youtu.be

Just when you think you’ve killed it, just when you think it will not raise its head ever again – back it comes. A recent magazine article in a publication dedicated to western history revived the legend that people carried extra cylinders to quickly reload their cap and ball revolvers in action. The premise of the article was based entirely on hearsay, bolstered by a scene in an old Spaghetti Western in which Clint Eastwood takes a loaded cylinder from a holder on his belt and uses it to replace the fired cylinder in his cap and ball Remington revolver.

In rebuttal, I have never seen a period advertisement in an American publication for extra cylinders or, for that matter, an ordnance order for them either, although it is likely that ordnance shops kept a few on hand for repairs. I have never seen a primary source that mentions anything about carrying extra cylinders or reloading by switching cylinders. I have seen considerable provenance in memoirs, contemporary newspaper accounts and official reports that the common practice was to carry extra guns, not extra cylinders. The report on the demise of “Bloody Bill” Anderson detailing his armament provides graphic evidence of this.

Revolvers were mostly cavalry weapons. I would advise anyone who thinks otherwise to envision switching cylinders on horseback – especially with a Colt. To remove the cylinder from a Colt, the most popular handgun of the black powder percussion era, you have to disassemble the whole gun. This entails tapping out the barrel retention wedge with a small hammer or similar tool. Once done, you would have the tool, plus four pieces of the gun, including the extra cylinder, in hand. In addition, a loaded and capped cylinder is like a hand grenade – drop it accidentally and you have, to be kind, a big

Civil War Catalog Featuring a large assortment of Civil War and Indian War autographs, accoutrements, memorabilia, medals, insignia, buttons, GAR, documents, photos, & books.

Te Artilleryman is a quarterly magazine founded in 1979 for enthusiasts who collect and shoot cannons and mortars primarily from the Revolutionary War, Civil War to World War II.

The Artilleryman Magazine

Extra cylinders were offered with the original Paterson revolvers, as well as a few examples of cased expensive presentation handguns, but again, I have never seen evidence of use in the field. I did once see an offer for extra cylinders for British Tranter revolvers in an Australian newspaper dated around 1860. It was far easier just to carry an extra revolver, however, and we have plenty of evidence for that practice.