Item Number: A01781

Item Title: 12pdr Canister Round Recovered from Exploded Ammo Chest at Spanish Fort

Price: $495

Shipping: Not included

Provenance: US

Type: Canister

Size: 12pdr

Sabot:

Fuse:

Book:

Location Recovered: Spanish Fort, AL

Description:12pdr canister recovered from exploded ammunition chest of the 14th Indiana at Spanish Fort, AL. This was a very famous incident where the the Washington Artillery firing the Lady Slocumb cannon scored a direct hit on a Union ammunition chest causing it to explode (see last photograph). 100 years later our intrepid digger read about this in the ORs and found the location. He recovered numerous canister pieces as well as bits of the ammunition chest itself.

These were pre-electrolysis days so old school preservation technique used was to clean the iron bits and coat them in shellac. I have left them that way, but I did put some of the pieces -- all from the same site -- back together to complete this round.

You rarely see dug canister with the side tin sleeve, but a lot of it is intact on this round. What is not present allows for a window into the interior shot stacked to make the round effective.

Despite the contemporary write ups of the tremendous explosion, it turns out this ammo chest was mostly filled with canister rounds. This makes sense as the two forces were lined up opposite each other and seperated by a short distance estimated at 200-300 yards.

This round will be tricky to ship so my preference would be to bring it to the Mansfield Show. If you can't do that and I have to ship it, you'll probably have to do some patch up repairs despite my best shipping efforts.