Newest Acquisition: 1850 Ordnance manual Army and Navy

Michael W.

First Sergeant
Joined
Jun 19, 2015
Location
The Hoosier State
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Not what I was planning on bringing home from Gettysburg last week, but a nice addition to my Naval collection. 1850 edition ordnance manual for both the Army and Navy, mainly covering artillery projectile weights, powder needed to fire weighted projectiles at what distance, trajectories with mathematical calculations. This book came out of the ship's library of the U.S.S. Wabash.

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Wow I’d early war dates and we know the ship! I’m so jealous, great find and congrats! This will be a interesting research project, as you find out more please share!!!
 
Very Nice congrats on your new addition.
 
View attachment 189242 View attachment 189243 Not what I was planning on bringing home from Gettysburg last week, but a nice addition to my Naval collection. 1850 edition ordnance manual for both the Army and Navy, mainly covering artillery projectile weights, powder needed to fire weighted projectiles at what distance, trajectories with mathematical calculations. This book came out of the ship's library of the U.S.S. Wabash.
Very sweet! Those are packed with information...…..
 
View attachment 189242 View attachment 189243 Not what I was planning on bringing home from Gettysburg last week, but a nice addition to my Naval collection. 1850 edition ordnance manual for both the Army and Navy, mainly covering artillery projectile weights, powder needed to fire weighted projectiles at what distance, trajectories with mathematical calculations. This book came out of the ship's library of the U.S.S. Wabash.
Could you scan the pages and make it into a pdf?
 
Perhaps this book might answer a question I have. I have been researching U.S. Mint correspondence from the early 1870's, and there are several letters from the Naval Ordnance Dept. to the Director of the Mint returning large silver discs of apparently various sizes to the Mint for credit for the metal and requesting new ones to replace them. These go up to "the XV-inch gun." One of the letters mentions that the silver has been "compressed." A typical order was 50 or 60 discs, so perhaps these were being used for some experimental purpose and not every gun in the fleet.

Logically these discs are being placed at the base of some gun(s) before powder and a cannon ball is placed atop it and fired, which would sure as hell compress it, but why? What would it accomplish?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
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