Bullet and Shell Civil War Projectiles Forum
Relic Discussion => Artillery => Topic started by: speedenforcer on July 17, 2019, 01:15:37 PM
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I question how affective the wooden sabot on the Confederate Shenkl was. Any one have opinions or facts. obviously the wood had to be small enough so the shell would go down the tube, would the wood ::) expand and take the rifling?
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The tapered tail of the Schenkl facilitates the expansion into the rifling of the barrel. From the initial blast, the sabot is forced up the cone-shaped tail and thus expands outward.
Wood is soft and more durable than the papier mache the Federals used. This papier mache is not the type you made with newspaper, flour and water as a 4yr old. Its more akin to the fiber board in sheets of floor underlayment, maybe a little softer and more fragile.
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Ah I see, Thanks Mike.
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Have any Confederate Schenkl's been found besides those from the river cache? And if so, where?
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What is the river cache?
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As the story goes, the majority of the Confederate Schenkl's are from a caisson that fell into a Louisiana River during Banks' Red River Campaign.
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Only one caisson. I knew they were rare but dang.
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Double Bridges, Louisiana. In the far tree line is the site of the second of two bridges that spanned the Dupont bayou near Robeline, LA. The Federal army in retreat from its early loss at Mansfield, burned the bridge. A caisson of captured Confederate shells was left in the middle of the bridge and tumbled into the water below. It remained there until October 15, 1969 when the bayou temporarily dried up and Wilbur Davis discovered the caisson remains and the projectiles inside. As Terry Waxham recounted, “it was an exciting day and sad day for him. He got so excited that he suffered a major heart attack and crawled a great distance to an old house for help. He lived for a few years after this and suffered another heart attack and died. His son, Larry is one of my best friends… No shells had fuses in them and quite a few of the three flame groove parrots (Marshall Texas Reads) were found in the bayou with them. Tom Dickey was the first to use Provencal as the location in his first book, probably to keep the hordes of relic hunters at bay until the area was well hunted and twenty years later a few of the shells were still being found on top of the hill there.”
This picture was taken on March 5, 2008 from my car from a bridge on rte 120 over the bayou.
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Terry recovered two with the wooden sabot intact at the Marshall, Texas Powder Mill area. One is in the museum at Mansfield, LA and he sold me the other one. He told me when he found them his son was with him and his son got sick so they had to cover the hole up and go home. He said it was a long two weeks waiting until he could go back and finally get them.
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wow, sad story. sounds like some bad ju ju. one man has a heart attack then a kid gets sick. Nothing sais stay away like that.
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I was lucky enough to get one with about 50% of the wood sabot still on it and with some of the bottom tin plate. I don't know its provenance, but it sounds like it was from the same caisson.
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Here is mine I got at Dalton this year from Glenn Dutton. I do not know where it was found at.
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I would love one but there is no way my pocket book will ever get that big for a shell. Not having a wife and 2 boys. That's ok Ill take the family over a shell any day. maybe ill see one at a show sometime and I can touch it. LOL.
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Way back when I knew almost nothing about relics, I found a Shenkle with a paper mache sabot in tact, in a gun chamber in the Wilmington area. I had seen some shells with Naval Ordinance fuses and brass sabots and some CS shells with percussion fuses. I had never seen the fuse that was in the Schenkle; it turned out to be a CS time fuse plug. I cannot remember the size of the shell, but I think it was around 30 pndr size. I found out later just how rare it was. Jack Wells ended up with that shell. I would guess it is in a collection somewhere. By the way, there was an 8" rifled gun in that chamber during the Civil War.
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that's outstanding, sure would love to see that
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Pictured below is the only non-dug Schenkl conversion shell that I know of. It was found at Gettysburg in Hoffman's barn on the East Cavalry Field. It has never been handled by a dealer. That's important with such a rare piece because a lot of creative work has been done in years past to raise the value of artifacts. It appears likely that the Richmond Arsenal covered many or all of their wood sabots with readily available tin cans for 3 inch cannisters. They probably learned about wood expansion the hard way. About 30 years ago, Gary Wilkinson offered Dan Hoffman what was then a king's ransome for this beauty, but I don't think he ever got it.
W.H.