The Charleston Arsenal

Artillerymen have a rather arcane vocabulary.

In this photograph, possibly taken by George Barnard in the spring of 1865, Jack W. Melton Jr., the scholar of Civil War artillery projectiles, sees several types of Confederate ammunition in the Charleston Arsenal Yard: a pinch-waist projectile for smoothbores; a stand of grape; elongated 10-inch Brooke spheroidal shot for smoothbores; and rifled Blakely, Brooke, Harding and Tennessee-sabot projectiles. Note that the ammunition has been identified with white-painted descriptions.

There are cast iron frame torpedoes (underwater mines), wood barrel torpedoes and a cylindrical two-compartment floating torpedo. Union Seaman John Jackson, of the mortar schooner C. P. Williams, “by…bravery and coolness” prevented damage to that schooner by removing two of these infernal machines from the Stono River, and removing ninety pounds of powder from one of the torpedoes.

In the lower right is “Piece of 600lbs. “BLAKELEY.” The breech of the Blakely, from Battery Ramsay at White Point Garden, is in the background as shown by “BREECH of the ‘BLAKELEY’ GUN CHARLESTON, S.C.”

This is the caption as printed in 100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Charleston in the War. It has not yet been through this site’s research and fact-checking pass.