Here is a more detailed answer to the questions about the Northern manufacture of Bormann fuzes found in Southern shells. It primarily focuses on Tredegar's role because I have been studying CS artillery associated items from the Virginia theater for Thunderbolts. As tensions mounted during late 1860, a number of ordnance experts from Richmond, including Robert Archer and James Burton, were allowed to visit Northern arsenals and armories to study their output and production methods. The first photo below is a page of information about the Bormann fuze copied at the Watervilet Arsenal by a Virginia officer. I found it in the wartime state records. A March 4, 1861, article in the Daily Richmond Dispatch reported: "This new military contrivance for exploding shells at given times is now being manufactured in great quantities at the Virginia Armory.
Meanwhile, there was considerable munitions trade with Northern manufactories. This had been a traditional practice by the agrarian Southern states that continued up until the day Fort Sumter was fired on. On Nov. 23, 1860, the Daily Dispatch quoted the New York Journal of Commerce, "The only people gathering any advantage from the present crisis are the manufacturers and sellers of arms." The article mentions specific shipments of rifles, revolvers, cannon carriages, etc., and concluded "A firm in New York receives from 20 to 50 orders daily from South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia."
This brings us to Tredegar's fuze production as things heated up in early 1861. A flood of orders for 6, 12 and 24 pounder cannonballs for several Southern states and individual militia organizations began to arrive in December 1860. Most wanted Bormann fuzes. Tredegar had never manufactured those items and getting them from the Virginia Armory was not an option. Relations between Dimmock's state ordnance department and the Ironworks were frosty at best in 1861. Virginia mostly avoided doing business with Tredegar, instead contracting with other local foundries for their cannon and extra projectiles. This latent hostility was a primary reason for the early development of two different 3 inch shells and bolts, the beloved Archer and Burton, which we can discuss in detail in a future posting.
So, Tredegar turned to their New York associates, Cooper & Pond, a military supplier who acquired many items like port fires, friction primers, U.S Navy watercap and Bormann fuzes for Tredegar. All went well for a couple of months as the great ironworks dispatched as many as 10,000 Bormann-fuzed projectiles to Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and others. Then complaints arrived from Charleston. The second photo below shows Tredegar's response dated March 22, 1861. The second paragraph is revealing. "We are sorry that any of the fuzes shipped you are objectionable, but as we wrote you heretofore, we had to get them made outside our shop & consequently could not pay that attention to their functioning(?) as would like to have done." Robert Archer, a full partner in the company, almost certainly wrote this letter. As the 'primary' for all projectile related matters, he obviously proceeded to field test the northern Bormann fuzes. One after another they burned thru the top. On April 2, 1861, he fired off an angry note to Cooper and Pond (3rd photo below). The former Navy officer got right to the point. "The Bormann fuzes you sent us are entirely worthless. They appear to be improperly made, as the metal covering the magazine, which is intended to be blown off by the explosion, is made of ordinary plate tin instead of some thin soft metal. The consequence is that in several we have tried, not one exploded at the bottom, or burnt thru the thin plate, but all invariably exploded thru the top, which seems to be the weakest part of the fuze." Outraged to the end, Archer closed with this advice: "It will be wise for you to get an explanation of this matter from the manufacturer."
Two days after he penned the previous missive to Cooper & Pond, Archer sent the fourth letter pictured below to his prewar Army friend, Maj. George Ramsey, a leading authority with the U.S. Ordnance Dept. His complaint about the Northern Bormanns is clearly stated and his questions suggest he was in the process of deciding to have the ironworks manufacture its own version of the popular white metal time fuzes. He first asked "if the Bormann fuze is now perforated thru the thin plate below the magazine so as to ensure the ignition of the charge in the shell?" Archer explained the problem, "I saw several tested that were made in N. York & not perforated and not one gave way at the bottom, but burst through the upper plate." The close of Archers letter suggests he is seeking additional info to launch his own fuze shop. "What size hole do you drill through the brass plug upon which the fuze is seated?"
There is no record of a reply by Maj. Ramsey. With the attack on Ft. Sumter days away, it is unlikely. Starting around May 1, 1861, Tredegar began producing thousands of their own Bormann fuzes. Example of both versions can be found in the noses of the 10 pounder Read-Parrotts made by Tredegar for the state of Virginia during the spring of 1861.
Woodenhead
