9-inch Roundshell with wood-plug fuzehole

[Pete George]

  A local friend brought me a heavily encrusted large-caliber ball for me to make Inert. I had to chip off some thick rust-&-dirt encrustation to get a decent circumference measurement, which turned out to be 27-&-1/4-inches, indicating a 9-inch caliber ball. No fuze could be seen due to the heavy rust-encrustation. When I removed it, a fuzehole was revealed, which was much smaller than normal for such a large-caliber ball... less than one inch in diameter, and non-threaded.

  I have a vague memory of another woodfuzed 9-inch ball being discussed here a few years ago, but my keyword search failed to find it.  Does anybody remember it?

  Insofar as I'm aware, there was no 9-inch cannon in the Revolutionary War nor the War Of 1812.  Therefore, I think this woodfuze 9-incher was made by the Confederates for use in the 9-inch Dahlgren shellguns they came into possession of when they seized the US Navy's Gosport (Virginia) Navy Yard upon Virginia's secession in 1861.

  My search of this site did turn up an old post by Carl, about him buying some muzzle fragments from a blown-up 9-inch Dahlgren.  In that post, he mentions one of those Gosport-captured yankee 9-inch Dahlgren shellguns being set up "on the James" to delay the Yankees march up the Peninsula.  If you remember details about that location, Carl, please tell me... because my friend's woodfuzed 9-inch ball was found "somewhere SouthEast of Richmond"... and it was apparently an unfired one, because when I pressure-flushed it, there was absolutely nothing inside but some orange dirt.

Regards,
Pete

[CarlS]

Pete,

I have the paperwork on that and will dig it up and send you a private email.  I'll share the general info here until I can get permission from the digger to be more specific out of courtesy to him.  The cannon frags were some very neat pieces RelicRunner and I managed to get in Franklin from the digger who was from the Richmond area.

[emike123]

I have a blown in half 9" ball with the seacoast drive in watercap fuse. On the commercial partof the website a few months ago, I had a complete 9" ball with no fuse in it but the fuse hole was for a wood adapter or drive in seacoast.  It was also from the Richmond area.  I have seen a couple from the Vicksburg area too.

[Pete George]

  Thanks for the responses, Carl and Mike.

  I'll look forward to your email, Carl.

  Mike, your report of the two 9-inchers with a seacoast-size fuzehole is interesting.  There is "precedent" for that... I recall that the US Navy fired some 8-inchers with Army Seacoast fuzes into the Confederate fortifications at Grand Gulf Mississippi.

  The fuzehole in my friend's 9-incher is so small that when I was chipping away the thick rustcrust I thought the hole was a loading-tong hole.  But it turned out to indeed be the fuzehole.

Regards,
Pete

[Dave the plumber]

 I was poking around in my storage area today, and saw I have a 9 inch wood fuze too.  I did not measure the hole diameter, but it was not the size " of a tong hole" , much bigger.   Came from around Richmond

[Pete George]

  I found out why the fuzehole in this 9-inch roundshell is so small.  Contradictory to the previous report, it turns out the ball was found during long-ago construction at the Tredegar Ironworks site.  The hole is the "raw-cast" version of the fuzehole... it had never been reamed out on this raw-from-the-mold shell.  The location also explains why the ball had nothing but dirt in it.

  Mike, Carl, and Dave, thank you for the information you contributed to this discussion. I'm sure it has been Educational for more than just us four.

Best regards,
Pete