A question about Belgian rifle calibers.

tbuckley

Sergeant
Joined
Jul 13, 2015
In the Official Records Series 1, Vol. 30, Pt. 2, P 616, there is a letter from a Confederate ordnance officer in Abingdon, Virginia, Jno. J. Rodgers to Brig. Gen. John W. Frazer. In the short letter, Rodgers says "We have the rifles (Belgian) of different calibers, .69, .71, and .75; not in very good condition, though would do."
What Belgian rifle would have been .75 caliber? All that I have looked at were about .71 caliber.
(Frazer replied requesting 200 Belgian rifles caliber .71.)
Thanks and Happy New Year!
 
maybe this


edit: or something similar - this one os from 1866 (hadn't seen the vid before posting it)

smilie_girl_259.gif
 
Last edited:
The .75 caliber "rifles" could possibly be percussion altered and rifled copies of the French M1822. That is just speculation my part; normally a French rifled M1822 mikes out at roughly .708", so that very well may not be the case.
It is entirely possible that the ordnance officer misclassified the arms and that they may have been something entirely different.

You are correct that most Belgian arms are nominally .71 caliber, although there are a number of .58 caliber Belgian made arms including copies of the P1853 Enfield Rifle-Musket, the P1856 Enfield Rifle, M1851 and M1857 Saxon (Dresden) Rifles, and even .58 caliber muskets based on the French M1857 Rifle-Musket.
 
The .75 caliber "rifles" could possibly be percussion altered and rifled copies of the French M1822. That is just speculation my part; normally a French rifled M1822 mikes out at roughly .708", so that very well may not be the case.
It is entirely possible that the ordnance officer misclassified the arms and that they may have been something entirely different.

You are correct that most Belgian arms are nominally .71 caliber, although there are a number of .58 caliber Belgian made arms including copies of the P1853 Enfield Rifle-Musket, the P1856 Enfield Rifle, M1851 and M1857 Saxon (Dresden) Rifles, and even .58 caliber muskets based on the French M1857 Rifle-Musket.

Thanks for the information. Misclassified arms makes sense.
 
I have a French Model 1822 musketoon. The caliber is at least .72 as it will take the .72 ball I use for the Brown Bess and, like the Bess ball, it wobbles down the barrel indicating a bore a bit bigger than .72. The barrel also accepts an original Bess bayonet. This particular model was made in Belgium, Liege works. I know that some of these arms were later converted to percussion and were given the addition to the model number of the letter, T (to indicate the conversion or (T)ransformation) hence, Model 1822T. I do not know if they were also rifled when converted. Mine is still in the original flint so is not the T model and is a smooth bore. I recall reading that some of these were dumped onto the American market when the war broke out.
 
The ammunition requested would have worked in several early English imported muskets and rifles, all of which had been condemned there purchased for very little and run through the blockade early in the War.
The Ptn 1839 musket was .76, the earlier Ptn 1838 was .75, the Ptn 1842 was .75 { as was the rifled Ptn '42}. The Ptn 1851 Minie rifle was .70. Just to use the P. '51 as an example; documentation exists that the London gunmaker, Barnett, assembled 10,000 of these from scrap parts, had the barrels re-proofed, and sold them to Confederate buying agent Caleb Huse.
To go back even more, I have an example of a Rev. War Charleville, "No. Carolina" marked, which was altered to percussion by the Fayetteville Armory, CS.
I surmise the Ordnance Officer didn't identify his muskets correctly, as "the .75 caliber rifle" was most likely a English Ptn. 1842, of which there several known with Confederate marks and associations to soldiers.
Desperate times required desperate measures.
 
Thanks for the replies.
It seems that maybe there was misidentification of the arms. I am thinking that maybe large bore foreign muskets and rifles could have been lumped together as "Belgian" by Ordnance Officers. It could be that classifying the arms by caliber was more practical than by where they were actually made.
 
It has occurred to me that an ordnance officer would probably have been very familiar with firearms in general, but might not have been knowledgeable when it came to identifying foreign made arms.
 
Well the Liege gun making operation was enormous and they copied other countries pattern arms unscrupulously. I kind of doubt it would be a French pattern arm in .75 because they were most often in .69 cal from the time of the Charleville, which is why the US adopted that size for their early muskets. I know the English bought quite a few P53s from Belgium when the so-called "original four" Birmingham gun makers defaulted on the first Enfield contracts during the Crimean War, those were .577. Belgians also copied the 1854 Austrian Rifle pattern.

I don't doubt that there were a great many surplus Belgian arms from over the years that made their way to America during the Civil War. I just never knew of any in .75 cal, but I don't doubt the citation...there it is.
 
Hmmm...all I can find in my notes is the various complaints about Austrian arms coming from Liege (Herman Boker contract) from reports filed by Maj Hagner and Capt Silas Crispin, but apparently those arms were refurbished there rather than manufactured at Liege.
 
I'll start digging through the McRae Papers, and try to get some numbers on the Confederate / Austrian weapons, of all types, which came through the blockade. It's going to take some time though, as artillery, swords, etc., are listed in different sections of the papers.
 
I've bitten off far more than I can chew...This would take a few people a very long time to go through and read all pertinent documents... So far I've found receipts for 55,288 Austrian rifles, and 12 batteries {8 guns in each} complete. As you can see, some of the documents are not in a fantastic state of preservation. Suffice it to say that quite a lot of military goods were purchased in Austria by the Confederate government.
a_56 copy_0054.jpg

26,899 Rifles on the ship Harriet Pinckney

h_020_0045.jpg

artillery batteries, shipped on The Columbia.

h_037_0064.jpg
 
I've bitten off far more than I can chew...This would take a few people a very long time to go through and read all pertinent documents... So far I've found receipts for 55,288 Austrian rifles, and 12 batteries {8 guns in each} complete. As you can see, some of the documents are not in a fantastic state of preservation. Suffice it to say that quite a lot of military goods were purchased in Austria by the Confederate government.View attachment 179838
26,899 Rifles on the ship Harriet Pinckney

View attachment 179839
artillery batteries,

View attachment 179840

have fun :D

... and a proper digestive
 
The ammunition requested would have worked in several early English imported muskets and rifles, all of which had been condemned there purchased for very little and run through the blockade early in the War.
To expand further. A British service arm in good condition had it's grading progressively down graded whilst in store until it was no longer needed at all. It may have been in perfect or simply adequate condition but fit for issue. These were sold off to the Trade and had to be re proofed by the civilian proof houses before export. These would be bought in batches by the larger dealers and these would be readily available to US purchasers of either (or both) sides. Some dealers would add upgrades or changes to make them more acceptable and enhance the price. Other service arms would not be fit for use. These would normally by broken down to their parts and the parts fit for use kept in store to replace other worn or damaged items on arms in service. Those parts not fit for this would be sold as scrap. Dealers would often buy these and rework them for civil or foreign sales. Again they would have to pass civilian proofs to be sold. Eventually an arm type would be come obsolete and the spares in store also cleared out by public sales to dealers who would might look to set them up as complete weapons. These also had to be, by law, proofed in the civilian proof houses. Lastly there are parts which failed to match the official pattern or failed proof but had not burst. Without exception the law required each and every one to pass and be marked with the evidence that they had passed the normal proof for guns of their type and calibre.

Purchasers for either side could not buy them at the public sales. Other governments would sell direct but not the British government. Thus British dealer bought arms may have been surplus or made from parts not accepted for service or to be reused as replacement parts but none were unfit for use when sold.

The only legal loophole was for parts sold by dealers as scrap parts but, were they set up as arms in Britain, they must have been proofed before export. This was rigidly adhered to. If a service arm was sold by the government to another government then it was another matter and it was only subject to the recipient government's own processes.

Certainly an obsolete British service arm was far cheaper than a new Enfield but they were all refurbished to a greater or lesser extent and all proofed as fit to use even if the pattern was condemned as too obsolete for service or made from reworked 'scrap' parts.

BTW with their normal large windages for muskets British musket or carbine cartridges would indeed have been useable in these calibres.
 
Back
Top