Another feature of the English accoutrements was that the cap pouch was not worn on the waistbelt. The British accoutrement set was issued with a second leather bag known as a ball bag or “expense pouch.” This piece was worn on the waist belt where the cap pouch would normally be found in the American system. To the British, a cartridge box and a cartridge pouch were two different things, a distinction not made with US/ CS accoutrements. The English cartridge box was designed to hold and transport a supply of unopened cartridge packs. The rank and file soldier took a pack of ten cartridges from his cartridge box tin, opened it up and placed the ten loose rounds in the “expense pouch.” When that was empty, the soldier would remove another ten round arsenal packet from the cartridge box, open it, and re-fill the expense pouch. As a result the British soldier taking the field with a full cartridge box and expense pouch would have 60 rounds available before needing to be re-supplied. The cap pouch on the shoulder strap had an angled back loop and was either made with white buff leather or black.
In contrast, the American (US and CS) cartridge boxes were designed for twenty loose rounds to be packed in the top compartment of the tins while two extra arsenal packs of ten each were carried unopened in the bottom compartment(s). Some CS boxes had a single tin rather than two individual tins like the US patterns.
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the English “system” is that the .58 cal US and CS pattern boxes
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would not hold the taller English .577 Enfield rounds made in England, but they would fit in the older pattern US 1839 (.69) box. Augusta Arsenal “re-manufactured” hundreds of thousands of imported Enfield rounds to the American system so they could be carried in the “standard” US/ CS designed .58 cartridge boxes.
Craig L. Barry was born in Charlottesville, Va. He holds his BA and Masters degrees from the University of North Carolina The (Charlotte). Craig served Watchdog Civil War Quarterly as Associate Editor and Editor from 2003–2017. The Watchdog published books and columns on 19th-century material and donated all funds from publications to battlefield preservation. He is the author of several books including The Civil War Musket: A Handbook for Historical Accuracy The Unfinished (2006, 2011), Fight: Essays on Confederate Material Culture Vol. I and II (2012, 2013) and three books (soon to be four) in the Suppliers to the Confederacy series on English Arms & Accoutrements, Quartermaster stores and other European imports.