Inspector's Report - Captured Tredegar Iron Works

[whitworth]

This was an inspection report, an engineering report, on the condition of the Tredegar Iron Works, Richmond, shortly after its capture. It highlights how poor the Confederacy was in terms of industrialization.

It had poor industrial production capability at the start of the war. And what they had or could build was warn down or destroyed at its end.

This was the best iron works in the Confederacy. It produced half the cannon made in the Confederacy.

At the end, the Tredegar Iron Works signified what the Confederacy was. A worn down shell.

Some highlights of that report.



RICHMOND, VA., April 28, 1865.
Brig. Gen. A. B. DYER,
Chief of Ordnance, U. S. Army, Washington, D. C.:


I have visited and carefully inspected the Tredegar Iron Works, and find them in nearly the same condition as when work was stopped there on the Saturday previous to the evacuation of the city by the Confederate
forces...

...But as all the shops have, for the last few years, been pushed to their fullest capacity, and the supply of the finer machinery, which was formerly purchased from Northern manufactories, cut off, very few repairs have been made. Some new machines have been made at the
works, but they are not of the best pattern and workmanship. The lathes and machinery are much worn and would require repairs before nice work conld be done. The leather belting in all the shops is so much worn that new would soon have to be substituted. All the far.
naces require new fire-brick...

...and two large unfinished lathes for making steam-ship engines...

...Outside the building is a vertical turning-
lathe which has been used for boring cylinders for steamship engines.
This machinery is generally much worn...

...Aside from the character of the iron, the appearance of the castings which I examined would, I think, cause them to be rejected on inspection...

...The cost of finishing the guns which have been commenced would be very small, but, being of models different from those used by our army, they would
be of little use, except as trophies, and owing to the inferior quality of gun-iron from which they are made their endurance is doubtful...

...Before the furnaces could be used it would be necessary to rebrick them, and fire-bricks for that purpose would have to be brought from the North.
The fire-bricks which were used here, after the supply on hand at the beginning of the war was exhausted, were made from an inferior clay and could only endure the fire for about three days...

...Recommendations.—For reasons which have been explained in this report, I do not deem it advisable or economical to the Government to put these works in operation. No ordnance stores could be manufac-
tured here with which the department is not well supplied, and with some of them overstocked, owing to the sudden stoppage of expendi-tures in the armies...


D. W. FLAGLER,
Captain of Ordnance.