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5. First Manufacture
Alexander Blakely was a designer of ordnance and was only gradually drawn into the manufacture of cannon. Blakely had to wait until 1865 to acquire his own substantial ordnance works. Previous to then he had to license gun founders and engineering concerns to make cannon to his specifications.  3.75 inch Blakely rifle used to fire on Fort Sumter, Charleston, 1861 The pattern for the first Blakely field piece provided for the Confederate States in 1861 by George Forrester of Liverpool was a design dated May 15, 1860 prepared by Fawcett, Preston & Company. It had a 3.75 inch bore, firing a 16 pound bolt, an 84 inch long barrel, a 73.5 inch long bore, rifled with 6 grooves having a right-hand twist, and a single 22 inch long, 3 inch thick “steel” breech sleeve or hoop. It was claimed, from experience, to be good for over 3,000 rounds. This was the piece used to fire on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. It had on its breech sleeve a brass plate that read: “Presented to the Sovereign State of South Carolina by One of Her Citizens Residing Abroad, in Commemoration of the 20th December, 1860.” The “Citizen” was Charles Kuhn Prioleau, partner in the firm of Fraser, Trenholm & Company, of Liverpool, who became treasury agents of the Confederate States. At Charleston this 3.75 inch gun, the first rifled artillery piece in the Americas, was located at Cummins Point Battery on Morris Island, 1,250 yards away from the island Fort Sumter. It was found that it penetrated the fort’s walls to 11 inches, the same as an 8 inch smooth-bore in the same battery. 
Breech marking on the 3.75 inch, 16 pounder Blakely rifle Picture courtesy William J Manon
Fawcett, Preston & Company “Captain Blakely’s gun with Mr Britten’s projectile, combined, may safely be recommended as the most perfect system at present known.” Fawcett, Preston & Company to Antony Gibbs & Sons, agents for the Republic of Peru, January 29, 1861 The principal maker of Blakely guns was the firm of Fawcett, Preston & Company, Phoenix Foundry, York Street, Liverpool; builders of steam machinery, engines and locomotives, since 1828. “Fossets”, as they were commonly known on the Mersey, were the closest of all the collaborators of the Agents of the Confederate States in England, allowing their name to be used to commission ships and machinery, as well as making for them iron ordnance to Blakely’s and other designs. “Fossets” also made the greatest numbers of Blakely cannon, as well as those of their own pattern. Blakely’s early relationship with Fawcett, Preston & Company is exemplified in August 1860, when the screw steamer Queen of England, 985 tons, was outfitted in Britain for the Italian revolutionary, Giuseppe Garibaldi. The vessel itself was armed with twelve or thirteen cannon with a value of £1,200, provided by “Fossets”, several were said to be of six or seven inches calibre to Blakely’s designs, one was a large pivot piece on the forecastle. In the holds were two 6 inch Blakely rifled guns and carriages, costing £540, fourteen 12 pounder smooth-bore cannon, £700, forty cases of shells, £360, and 336 “loose shells”, £25, as well as small arms and military stores. This was to be the model for their activities with the southern states. On August 17, 1860 Mechanics’ Magazine claimed that the firm had commenced production of 70 pounder (i.e. 6.4 inch) Blakely rifles for Garibaldi two weeks after receiving the order and was making “three a week” for the revolutionary leader. The magazine also observed that the “70 pounders in course of manufacture cost absolutely less than the Armstrong 12 pounders”.
Curiously, Fawcett, Preston & Company had during the 1840s manufactured iron guns for the Mexican Army, used against the invading American forces in 1848. Even more curious is the claim in the diary of Sir Richard Burton, the legendary explorer recently returned from Africa, also a retired military officer, that he and “my friend Blakely of the Guns” formed a plan to supply cannon to King Francesco II of the Two Sicilies in May 1860. It was this monarch that Garibaldi intended to overthrow.
Between April 27 and May 2, 1860, along with Fawcetts, Captain Blakely organised the first of a great series of artillery trials on Hightown Sands, near Crosby, north of Liverpool. The first private trial was undertaken on April 27, with Captain Blakely’s experimental large gun. It was then described as a 50 pounder, and with an elevation of 5 degrees and a “light charge” of powder threw a 48 pound shell 2,300 yards. It was claimed that this 50 pounder would cost less than a 12 pounder field gun made to W G Armstrong’s principles. It was tried again on May 15, 1860, when it was described as having a 6 inch bore, being 8½ feet long and weighing 5,376 pounds weight. It achieved then a range of 2,640 yards firing 58 pound Bashley Britten shells.
A further trial took place on July 21, 1860, lasting a week, when a new, larger Blakely 6.4 inch calibre muzzle-loading piece, 11 feet in length, of cast iron with a wrought iron breech band, weighing 6,800 pounds, threw a 68 pound Bashley Britten patent explosive shell 3,300 yards with a deviation of only two yards, before Captains Luckraft and Egerton of the Royal Navy, Captain Pigeard, the French Naval attaché, the Marquis d’Audigy, the French military commissioner, Colonel Filipi of the Austrian Marine Artillery, Captain Schwartz of the Russian Fleet, Mr Orlando, a Sardinian cannon-maker, and several others. The piece cost £250. In comparison the Whitworth 80 pounder weighed 9,400 pounds and cost £1,000, but only achieved 2,550 yards, whilst Armstrong’s 70 pounder reached just 2,400 yards.
Also tested in July 1860 was a 6 inch screw breech-loader made to Blakely’s patent by Fawcett Preston for “a foreign government”, 68 inches long in the bore, which had a range of 2,400 yards when firing a 56 pound shell using 7½ pounds of powder.
There was another demonstration on August 1, 1860. Delegations from Russia, Austria, France and Piedmont (Italy) were again all present. The two “Fosset-made” cannon from July were demonstrated: the 6 inch piece fitted with the French screw breech-loading mechanism, eight feet long, and the 6.4 inch piece. Similar long range results were achieved and widely publicised.
Finally in that year, on November 3, 1860, there was a trial at Hightown between three of “Clay’s” 3 inch breech-loading field guns, having 84 inch rolled-steel barrels rifled with 15 fine grooves, made by the Mersey Steel & Iron Company to Hugo Forbes’ patent, and one of Blakely’s 3½ inch muzzle-loaders, with a 72 inch cast-iron, steel-hooped barrel and five Scott-pattern ratchet grooves, weighing 1,176 pounds, made by Fawcett Preston. The Mersey guns fired government-pattern 12 pound lead-covered solid bolts, Blakely’s gun used Bashley Britten patent 11 pound shells with a 2½ pound propellant charge. They fired over a mile range at a 12 feet square target which could scarcely be seen in the “thick weather”. Blakely’s gun had the severe disadvantage of being on a naval truck mount rather than a manoeuvrable field carriage so did not perform well. Joseph Whitworth of Manchester was meant to compete with one of his all-steel breech-loading field guns, but did not make an appearance.
On January 17, 1861 yet another Blakely gun was tried at Hightown proving ground. It was a 12 pounder rifle, weighing 1,008 pounds and threw a Bashley Britten shell 1,670 yards with 1½ pounds of powder, having “marvellous accuracy”. The British Army 12 pounder smooth-bore weighed 3,808 pounds and had a range of 1,400 yards, which required four pounds of powder. The gun “was bought by a gentleman who was on the ground”. The purchaser further tested the gun, firing it point blank through a small wicker hamper at 440 yards distance at the first shot. There was an audience of “foreigners” for the trial, presumably from among the military attachés in London.
The same reports noted that Fawcetts had in hand in January guns ranging from a “beautifully light steel 6 pounder” of 224 pounds weight to a wrought-iron and steel 200 pounder of 5 tons. The November 1860 gun trials introduced for the first time the 3½ inch calibre field gun, a light weapon designed from the outset to fire elongated explosive projectiles. This was to be a bore almost unique to Captain Blakely; known also as a “12 pounder” from its use of Bashley Britten’s patent shells, and, in America, as the 3.5 inch gun or the “three-fifty”.
3½ inch or 12 Pounder Blakely rifled field gun 1861 A “standard” or production gun tube made between 1861 and 1866, here preserved at Rock Island Arsenal in North America This piece was probably manufactured for General Frémont in St Louis
Subsequently, the Engineer magazine gave an account of the trials of Blakely’s “production model” rifled field guns in its issue of June 28, 1861, at Hightown Sands, once again. There were three pieces being tested, a 12 pounder, a 9 pounder and a 4 pounder. It explained that they were “built up of concentric tubes shrunk on an inner body at a white heat, upon a plan which is exclusively the inventor’s. There are no rings, the guns having a clear run from vent to trunnion and from trunnion to muzzle.” All three had six groove, “centrical” or ratchet rifling. Blakely’s associate, Bashley Britten, was on the Sands, his patent shot and shell were being used in the demonstration.
At Hightown on June 18, 1861 the 12 pounder rifle was fired with a 1½ pound powder charge, the service charge for a 12 pounder smooth-bore being 4 pounds. With this, at progressive increases of barrel elevation, it achieved a “first graze” range of 2,320 yards, well over one-and-a-quarter miles. It was said in the newspapers to be 54 inches long and weighing 728 pounds.
The two smaller guns were intended for mountain service; “each can be lifted by one man, and easily carried anywhere by two, with slings.” The 9 pounder rifle was described as a howitzer, weighing 214 pounds, so presumably had a short barrel and high angle of elevation; loaded with a very small ½ pound powder charge, “one-sixth the ordinary service quantity for the old smooth-bore gun”, achieved a range of 2,200 yards. The little 4 pounder rifle, weighing “under 224 pounds” and 41 inches long, with an equally trivial powder charge, reached 2,740 yards!
“The lateral deviation,” the Engineer noted, “was so inconsiderable as not to require notice.” These three types of gun, 12, 9 and 4 pounder, fit the description of the ordnance being procured by the Republic of Peru, and were probably being tested for the benefit of Colonel Francisco Bolognesi, their representative in Europe. On Saturday, September 28, 1861, the London newspapers reported from Fawcett, Preston & Company’s works in Liverpool, “on Thursday and Friday no fewer than fourteen batteries of four field guns each were despatched for shipment. These guns were complete in all their details and furnishings. They were fully supplied with carriages, and had also equipments of elongated explosive shells. Besides the guns sent away, there were also on the premises, in various stages of forwardness, a number of pieces of all dimensions, from guns light enough for mountain service up to some of the largest in use, including one 400 pounder, 11 feet long, with a 10 inch bore; two 200 pounders, each 10 feet long, with an 8 ½ inch bore, and 2 feet 6 inches in diameter at the breech.” The destination of these pieces was not reported, but it is likely that that the bulk of the field guns were shipped to Peru, and that others were to the order of Captain Caleb Huse CSA, or Major Edward Anderson CSA, purchasing agents of the Confederate States in England. However US General John Frémont had already beaten the two southerners by having eight of the new field guns shipped to New York in August for use in Missouri! 
3½ inch or 12 pounder Blakely rifled field gun 1861 A model used only by the Confederate States, this one has an iron ring in front of the trunnion ring to correct its breech-heaviness A Peter Schwartz Picture Blakely’s relationship with Captain Huse did not commence well. Huse writing from London to Major Josiah Gorgas, Chief of Ordnance of the Confederate Army, on May 21, 1861, said: “I have met Captain Blakely and have conversed with him about his gun. As yet I have failed to see anything in his principle which would cause me to purchase his cannon. He uses the same principle that Armstrong employs - of wrapping an interior core with wrought-iron spirals - and in fact he claims the merit of the invention. The chief difference appears to be that Captain Blakely uses a cast-iron core, while Sir William has a wrought-iron centrepiece.” By that summer things had changed. Huse’s colleague, Major Edward Anderson CSA, visited Fawcett Preston in Liverpool on August 3, 1861, accompanied by Commander J D Bulloch and Lieutenant J H North of the Confederate States Navy, and placed an order for three batteries of 12 pounder Blakely rifled field guns, each weighing around 780 pounds. These twelve pieces were shipped in one lot on board the large screw steamer Bermuda on her first run through the abolitionist blockade in late in September, direct from Liverpool to Savannah, Georgia. Anderson made his purchase directly with Fawcett Preston rather than through Captain Blakely, and manufacture was completed within a month. The Bermuda also carried several, possibly six, 7½ inch heavy cannon cast by the Low Moor company in Bradford, rifled and banded at the breech to Blakely’s instructions.
On September 26, 1861, Major Anderson was visiting Bashley Britten, the civil engineer, who had patented the explosive shells used in Blakely’s guns, at his home in Brixton, in South London.
Both Commander Bulloch and Lieutenant North were to purchase ordnance from Blakely for the many ships, ironclads and cruisers, which they were having built for the Confederate States in Britain. But even before these official naval acquisitions the first Confederate warship had entered European waters; the large auxiliary cruiser Nashville arrived at Southampton, England, on November 21, 1861, armed with two 6 pounder Blakely rifles donated by the State of South Carolina!
On December 8, 1861 Captain Blakely announced that he had three 9 inch calibre guns, firing 200 pound bolts, and weighing from 16,000 to 20,000 pounds; two 7 ½ inch, 120 pounders weighing 8,400 pounds; eight or ten 6 inch, 58 pounders and many 40 pounders, ready for delivery to several countries. The screw steamer Bermuda, which was owned by agents of the Confederate government, was not so lucky on her next voyage in February 1862. She was captured; in her holds were “five finished Blakely guns in cases, with carriages”. These comprised three 7½ inch Blakely-Low Moor rifled conversions with 325 cases of 110 pound shells and two 2.9 inch Blakely field guns with 100 cases of shells. Also reported on board were two 5½ inch Whitworth guns and three Whitworth breech-loaders, with ammunition and carriages. Blakely appealed to the US Supreme Court for the return of these guns, which he claimed as his property, bound for “Hayti” by way of Nassau in the Bahamas. The suit went on until December 1865, when both steamer and cargo were condemned as contraband. An early sample contract with Fawcett, Preston & Company is that for the 4.6 inch Blakely muzzle-loading guns numbered 193 and 194, as Order No 306, commenced on October 1, 1862, intended for sea service. As well as the barrels the works provided over the next few months iron sights, iron pivot mountings and slides, brass deck sweeps for the pivot mounts, shells, shell lighters, grape shot, shell extractors, powder scoops, and other accessories for both pieces. A larger 6.4 inch gun, No 187, was provided as part of the same order for sea service in the following year, all three intended for the Confederate gunboat Alexandra, for which the firm also provided the engines. Fawcett’s Guns No 188 and 189 of 1862 were to Captain Blakely’s order as well, and may have been sister pieces. The 6.4 inch rifle and two of the 4.6 inch rifles, Order No 306, listed above, were transferred from Liverpool to London late in March 1863 after the Alexandra was seized by the British courts and used to outfit the new Confederate cruiser Georgia. As well as great guns Fawcett’s were commissioned by Blakely to make twelve cast-iron rifled field guns with steel sleeves to the breech in July 1862. These were numbered as Guns No 162 to 174. As late as February 1864 they made a battery of two light 2.9 inch field guns for the Blakely Ordnance Company, including carriages and ammunition limbers, although one carriage was cancelled and substituted with a slide mount for a boat in March. Their first 2.9 inch Blakely gun, with a 36 inch, 212 pound barrel of steel with a single trunnion ring was made in 1861. These small pieces, with long steel sleeves or breech cups, reaching the trunnion ring, and commonly termed 9 pounders, were also made to the identical specification, by Blakely’s own works at Bear Lane, Southwark. 
3½ inch or 12 pounder Blakely rifled field gun 1861 A view of the cast-iron tube, with its breech sleeve of steel Only Blakely guns used the unusual bore of 3½ inches Regarding their ordnance work, “Fossets” adopted a policy of concealment even in their own books: many artillery pieces, even some of the largest, were made for “stock” rather than being attributable to a particular purchaser as was usual in their record-keeping. It was just as well that they were furtive. On June 4, 1861 Fawcetts agreed to provide the Union General J C Frémont with eight 12 pounder Blakely rifled cannon, with carriages complete, which were furnished with Bashley Britten’s patent shells. They were shipped to New York in August 1861 and ended up in St Louis, where they were issued to the First Missouri Light Artillery. The purchase served the Union well, from 1862 until 1865. However Fawcetts were to charge Frémont £212 per gun, compared to their price of £109 for similar pieces for Peru! Although making Blakely’s rifled gun Fawcetts did not produce their accompanying shells. Manufacture of the Britten projectiles was licensed to Maudslay, Sons & Field, engineers, of Lambeth, London. Fawcett, Preston & Company are known from their records to have made the following guns for Captain Blakely between 1860 and 1864. The numbers shown are those cast into each piece in a sequence that Fawcett’s, and other makers, recorded as “Blakely Patent Guns”, though not all they made followed his banded design:
● Numbers 24 to 36, 12 pounders, twelve field pieces, cast-iron with flush trunnion rings and steel sleeves, 1861 (The “Confederate” Cannon) ● Number 37, 7 inch, naval piece, cast-iron with steel breech band, for CSS Florida, 1861 ● Numbers 41 to 43, 4½ inch or 30 pounders, three pieces, cast-iron with steel sleeves, 1861 (The Pulaski Cannon, originally four for CSS Florida) ● Numbers 47 to 50, 12 pounders, four pieces, cast-iron with steel hoops, 1861 (The Beaufort Cannon) ● Number 67, 20 pounder, cast-iron with a steel breech band, 1862 (The Chatham Gun) ● Number 69, 20 pounder, cast-iron with a steel breech band, 1862 (The Fort Nelson Gun) ● Numbers 97 and 98, 6.5 inch conversions with Bashley Britten’s rifling for trials by Woolwich Arsenal, cast-iron with a steel hoop, February 1862 ● Number 108, 9 pounder, cast-iron with a steel sleeve, 1862 ● Numbers 116 to 121, 3½ inch, six pieces, April 1862 ● Number 132, unknown type of Blakely exhibition gun, March 1862 ● Numbers 134 to 139, 4 inch, six pieces, not Blakely patent guns, April 1862 ● Numbers 140 to 143, 12 pounders, smooth-bore, four pieces, March 1862 ● Number 144, 8 inch or 68 pounder smooth-bore, naval piece, cast-iron, for CSS Alabama, April 1862 ● Number 145, 7 inch, naval piece, cast-iron with steel breech band, for CSS Alabama, June 1862 ● Number 146, unknown type of Blakely gun supplied to B & J H Thompson, April 1862 ● Numbers 147 to 150, 3½ inch, four pieces, all-steel, May 1862 ● Numbers 153 to 156, 32 pounder smooth-bore, four naval pieces, cast-iron, for CSS Alabama, June 1862 ● Number 162, 4½ inch, probably a naval piece, cast-iron with steel breech band (The New Canaan Gun), June or July 1862 ● Numbers 163 to 174, (probably 3½ inch), twelve pieces, cast-iron with steel hoops, July 1862 ● Number 187, 6.4 inch naval gun, probably cast-iron with a steel hoop, for gunboat CSS Alexandra, October 1862, ended up on the CSS Georgia ● Number 188, unknown type of Blakely gun, probably a 6.4 inch naval gun ● Number 189, 6.4 inch naval gun, cast-iron with a steel hoop, June 1862 ● Numbers 193 and 194, 4.6 inch naval guns, two pieces, probably cast-iron with steel hoops, for gunboat CSS Alexandra, February 1863, both ended up on the CSS Georgia ● Numbers 195 and 196, 9 inch naval guns, two pieces, cast-iron with steel hoops, part of an order for five pieces, September 1863 ● Numbers 221 to 223, 9 inch naval gun, three pieces, cast-steel with cast-iron breech sleeves, part of an order for five pieces, including four for the Laird rams, North Carolina and Mississippi, September 1863 ● Numbers 260 and 261, 9 pounder smooth-bore, cast-steel guns, two pieces for Laird Brothers, probably a yacht battery (1863?) Fawcett, Preston & Company billed Caleb Huse for Blakely patent guns No 25 to 36 during August 1861. They, and other ordnance stores, were forwarded by railway to West Hartlepool for shipment:
● Twelve steel rifled field pieces strengthened with iron hoops on Captain Blakely’s principle, to carry 12 pound elongated shot, length of guns 4 foot 6 inches, each fitted with brass tangent sights, also 12 iron elevating screws, et cetera, at £110 each, totalling £1,320 ● 1,600 solid compound shot for 3½ inch guns, 3,200 segmented shells for the same, 3,200 brass concussion fuzes, shipped from London, totalling £2,425 ● 24 sets of rammers & sponges and worms & ladles for 12 pounder steel guns at 30s 0d per set, totalling £36 The London supplier of shells was the engineering firm of Maudslay, Sons & Field.
From their patent numbers it known that these three 3½ inch, 12 pounder batteries were the commonest “Confederate” model of Blakely field gun, with the long breech-sleeve and flush fitted trunnion ring. Several are preserved on the battlefield site at Shiloh, Tennessee.
On November 12, 1861 Captain Blakely personally invoiced Huse for:
● Four long (63½ inch) rifled steel nine-pounder cannon at £360 (£90 each) ● 1,008 shells, loaded and fitted with percussion tubes at £340
The long 2.9 inch bore, 9 pounders arrived safely and were recorded by the Army Ordnance Bureau in Richmond. Curiously, though, a similar battery of four 2.75 inch bore, 6 pounders and 1,008 shells were loaded on to the blockade running schooner, “Stephen Hart”, for the firm of S Isaacs, Campbell & Company, the south’s primary supplier of army goods in November 1861. The vessel was captured and that cargo lost to the enemy on January 29, 1862. It is not known who made either of these batteries.
On March 4, 1862 the Blakely Cannon Company invoiced Huse for:
● Six rifled cast-iron cannon, 6 3/10 inch bore, with brass front and tangent sights for £480 (£80 each) ● Six strong elm carriages for the cannon for £93 (£15 10s each) ● 1,800 elongated shells for same cannon, fitted with brass bouches for the reception of percussion fuzes, with 2,000 percussion fuzes, for £2,220
These six pieces and their ammunition also were noted in the files of the Army as having been delivered. From their brief description and their low price it appears that these 6.3 inch “cast-iron” guns were not made to Blakely’s patent, although it is recorded elsewhere that they were rifled, so could fire bolts of between 54 and 70 pounds weight; nor is it known who cast them.
In the all of the above three invoices the explosive shells were made to Bashley Britten’s patent. Blakely guns without a recorded serial include a 5½ inch cast-iron, steel-banded rifle, with a garrison or fortress carriage, ordered in July 1862, a 5 inch piece for field service of January 1862, and an 8 inch wrought-iron “lined” gun of October 1860. Among the most interesting orders placed by Blakely with “Fossets” were those made on behalf of Commander Bulloch of the Confederate States Navy. Order 81 was for an 8 inch smooth-bore cast-iron gun No 144 and a 7 inch rifled banded gun No 145; Order 107 was for four 32 pounder smooth-bore cast-iron guns Nos 153 to 156. These were for the new cruiser, the CSS Alabama, being built by Laird Brothers at Birkenhead. Blakely, as a “dealer in ordnance”, was clearly quite happy to order guns that did not fall within his patent. All five of the unbanded smooth-bores were “pressure-curved”, something of a novelty to Fawcett’s foundrymen – the large 8 inch was cast with inadequate preponderance and had to have the tube machined down to reduce the weight at the muzzle end. It is likely that two or more 12 pounder boat howitzers were also provided.
Also supplied to the Alabama were 70 round shot and 70 round shell for the 8 inch, 70 elongated bolts and 70 elongated shell to Bashley Britten’s patent and 70 “armour-piercing” spherical steel shot for the 7 inch rifle, together with 40 shot and 40 shell for each of the Fawcett 32 pounders.
Another curious order in Blakely’s name is that numbered 66 made in March 1862. This consisted of six 3½ inch rifled guns, serials 116 to 121; six 4 inch rifled guns, 134 to 139, and four 12 pounder smooth-bore howitzer-guns, 140 to 143, on behalf of “A & E Cropstick”. This is probably A & E Crosskill, agricultural engineers of Beverley in Yorkshire, who also manufactured army wagons and ordnance equipment. Croskills may have made the field carriages for these pieces. It is possible that this was an artillery train provided for the Emperor of Morocco and delivered in October 1862.
Orders to Fawcett Preston from the Blakely Ordnance Company from the beginning of 1864 do not record the serial number.
2.1 inch or 4 pounder Blakely rifled mountain gun for Peru 1861 In the Chilean museum, Museo del Morro de Arica, on an improvised carriage Picture courtesy Carlos Carrera One of the first large orders received was from Peru in South America. In 1861 the Peruvian Director of Artillery, Colonel Francisco Bolognesi Cervantes was in England on a purchasing mission. Some fifty-four Blakely patent rifled, muzzle-loading steel guns were provided in 1861, along with Bashley Britten’s patent projectiles, to his order. He purchased both the guns and projectiles from Fawcett, Preston & Company in Liverpool:
● Fourteen 12 pounders for sea-service ● Twelve 12 pounder field guns ● Fourteen 9 pounder mountain guns ● Fourteen 4 pounder mountain guns Bashley Britten contracted to provide 2,800 solid bolts and segmented shells for the fourteen naval guns, and 4,800 solid bolts, segmented shell and common shell in equal quantities for the forty army pieces to his patent design.
The 12 pounders had cast-iron barrels of 67 inch length, with a long, very discrete “steel” or wrought-iron breech sleeve having a pierced cascabel for an elevating screw and a massive trunnion ring, with Bashley Britten’s shallow, “square” rifling of seven grooves. The Peruvian 12 pounders are different in specification from most of those supplied to the Confederate States.
The 9 pounder mountain gun barrels were short, as with a howitzer, with a 3 inch bore, a 36 inch length, 6½ inch maximum tube diameter, with a slender steel sleeve, a pierced cascabel, a massive trunnion ring and weighed 208 pounds. They were rifled with six Scott “centrical” grooves. The barrels of the 4 pounders were 41 inches long, weighing 226 pounds, with the same thin steel sleeve but lacked a cascabel at the breech. These also had six Scott-pattern rifle grooves. As well as having carriages with shafts they were provided with pack saddles and so could be carried on three mules; one each for the barrel, the wheels and carriage, and the ammunition.
The 12 and 9 pounder field and mountain guns of identical design but of different lengths were kept in production until 1866 by Fawcetts, Bear Lane and other manufactories. The long 4 pounder mountain guns seem to have been unique to Peru.
The fourteen 12 pounder naval guns were originally used to outfit the transport Guise in 1861. By 1864 they were distributed among four sailing transports, Lerzundi (6), Chalaco (2), Mayro (2) and Guise (4). With the coming of war in 1866 at least two were to be transferred to the army, keeping their navy truck carriages.
The Peruvians had also ordered a single 4 pounder Krupp cast-steel breech-loader in May 1860 before commissioning guns in England. About 1864, four 9 pounder Armstrong muzzle-loading guns were acquired, called 8 pounders in Peru to avoid confusion with the Blakelys.
The Blakelys served Peru well, the field and mountain guns forming the bulk of its two regiments of artillery in the wars with Spain and Chili in the late 1860s and 1870s, a few surviving in use until the 1880s.
As a satisfied customer, Colonel Bolognesi was to return to visit Captain Blakely in England in 1863. On December 16, 1862 it was reported that a large number of 40 pounder Blakely cast-iron banded pieces had been despatched to Egypt from Fawcetts on the order of the Captain’s associate, Commander Robert Scott RN, the Pasha’s agent in England. Blakely stated in December that three different nations had adopted his 300 pounder guns for their ships. It is not known which nations. Fawcett, Preston introduced Blakely to the work of his fellow countryman and British Army veteran Captain John Norton, probably best known for his invention of the explosive musket ball, a fearsome device used to kill very large game animals. At the time of his development of this, in 1832, Norton had also devised the flat-headed musket shell for piercing cavalry armour. In the Engineer magazine of November 21, 1862, Captain Blakely claimed to have been making flat-headed steel shells for rifled cannon, for “several years”, able to pierce the armour of any ship and explode within the hull. He said that he had “large contracts open” for 300, 600 and 900 pound flat-headed shell, inspired by Norton’s design. David Thomas, one of the partners in Fawcetts, had resurrected the flat-headed shell in 1855 for whale-hunting as they did not ricochet off water.
It should be noted that Fawcetts also manufactured twelve cast-steel field guns under Henry Bessemer’s patents in 1861 before he established his own works in Sheffield, Yorkshire. In 1862 they provided the Confederate States with at least one battery, four pieces, of 4 inch calibre cast-iron rifles, similar in appearance to the 10 pounder US Ordnance Rifle. Without breech reinforcing bands, these are not Blakely patent guns. 
32 pounder “Blakely” smooth-bore, cast-iron gun 1862 Four such pieces were ordered by Blakely of Fawcett, Preston & Company for the CSS Alabama. The 8inch after pivot gun for the Alabama was to the same design. It is not known who prepared the specification for these. Fawcett, Preston & Company undertook to proof test all their ordnance, at the customer’s expense, on Hightown Sands, Liverpool, rather than have their guns undergo the government trial at Woolwich Arsenal in London.
In 1863, Patrick Barry, in his book Dockyard Economy, gave a history of “Fossets” to that year:
“The Phoenix Foundry, Liverpool” “Among the leading engineering works in the town of Liverpool are those of Messrs Fawcett, Preston, and Co, and so long have they been established that at one period there was no other in the town. Some eighty years ago the foundry was not in existence; but in small premises at the corner of York Street the Coalbrookdale Foundry (in Shropshire) had a depot, managed by Mr Rathbone, the maternal uncle of the late Mr Fawcett. On the death of Mr Rathbone Mr Fawcett became his successor. Mr Fawcett during the greater part of his life resided in the old house at the corner of Lydia Ann Street, now a portion of the works; he was born in 1761, and died in 1844, in the eighty-third year of his age. During the long war, a great demand having arisen for iron guns to enable merchant ships to cope with privateers and vessels sailing under letters-of-marque, Mr Fawcett introduced the highly important improvement of casting the guns solid and boring them, as is the practice still, the previous custom, however, having been to cast them hollow. Mr Fawcett's innovation was so favourably received by the public that the annual value of the guns turned out by him was not less than £10,000 - a very large sum for such a purpose in those days. The carronades marked ‘solid’ on one trunnion and ‘F’ on the other may be seen now all over the world, and their origin identified.” 
The 8 inch Blakely gun made by Fawcetts for the 1862 International Exhibition It had a 68 pounder cast-iron tube and three wrought-iron sleeves “Progress of the establishment - Guns” “The establishment increased and prospered, shop after shop being added to it, with appliance on appliance, until the present large proportions have been reached. In addition to the foundry, there are now the brass foundry in York Street, and the extensive boiler yard and copper shop in Lightbody Street. Castings of the heaviest description are run in the foundry, among which are anvil-blocks for the Mersey forge, the heaviest weighing no less than 62 tons, and standing on a base of 110 square feet, foundation-plates for the cranes, and the fly-wheel weighing 60 tons. At this foundry the manufacture of guns is carried on extensively, - not the simple ship guns of former days, but every description of improved artillery, from the light steel mountain gun on its wrought-iron carriage to the heavy-built rifled Blakely 300-pounder. At present Messrs Fawcett, Preston, and Co have several 9-inch guns in various stages of manufacture, as well as numerous others of all classes. To the Peruvian and other foreign Governments they have supplied large quantities; and during the Crimean war our own Government was supplied by the firm with a large quantity of heavy sea-service mortars, weighing each 5 tons.”
“Land and Marine Engines, &c.” “Beyond the foundry, there are various workshops for the manufacture of the largest land and marine engines, hydraulic and other presses, rice and sawing machinery, water-wheels, caloric engines, and all the varieties of sugar apparatus for the refineries of Cuba, Java, the Mauritius and the world, from the little cattle cane mill up to that with 7-feet rolls, each weighing as many tons, and from the open iron teache [sugar boiler] to the largest vacuum apparatus. In fact, the manufacture of sugar apparatus may be said to be a speciality of the firm, and Liverpool will say that their reputation has been earned deservedly. Of marine engines the firm have made many. Among other vessels of mark, they fitted the Leeds with engines in 1826. This vessel was built for the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, to ply between Dublin and Bordeaux, and her performances so well pleased the French Government that they ordered several pairs of engines for war steamers, the Sphinx, the Gomer, the Asmodee, and others, the two last of 450-horse power. The Messageries Imperiales have also recently supplied a large portion of their fleet with engines made by this firm. The firm also made the engines for the following well-known ships: The Quorra, the first iron steamer ever built; the engines for the ill-fated President; the engines for the Royal William, the first steamer that ever crossed the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York; the engines for the Tigris, the Euphrates; the engines for the Merlin, Medusa, Medina, mail steamers for the City of Dublin Company; and a whole fleet for the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company - the Oriental, Hindostan, Bentinck, Orissa, Behar, Ottawa, Malta, Nubia, and Alma; and last, but not least, the engines for her Majesty's frigates Inflexible, Resolute, and Assistance: the engines for the Ganges and Jumna, for the Oriental and Inland Steam Navigation Company, are also the work of the firm, and at present several pairs of very handsome engines of high power are in hand.”
“Contract steamers” “In addition to fitting engines for others, they also contract for steamers complete, and of those they have already supplied are the San Luis, Pindari, Itapicuni, Capias, and Camossim, for the Brazils. The Oreto, for Palermo, is another of the steamers contracted for by this firm, and it is scarcely necessary to remark that she has since changed hands and is now sailing under the flag of the Confederate States as the Florida. There are still others: the Phantom, a steel steamer of great speed and beauty, which, by recent accounts, had found its way into Wilmington, N.C.; the Alexandra, still detained by Government until the legality of her construction is tested on appeal; the Great Victoria, for the Australian line; and also two beautiful and swift steel steamers on the stocks. Of steam tugs, dredge boats, and barges it is unnecessary to speak, these having been supplied in great numbers. Altogether, of the capabilities of the engineering works of Messrs Fawcett, Preston, and Co., it is impossible to convey an impression. The machinery for boring, turning, and other purposes, is on a scale of the first importance, and the last order for engines on the books is 2,307. Rightly has the establishment been called the Phoenix Foundry, for in 1843 it was burnt to the ground, which, although a serious injury at the time, ultimately proved an advantage, as in rebuilding the premises they were much improved in arrangement and convenience, and the antiquated tools replaced by others of the latest and most effective description.” Fawcett, Preston & Company continued to make guns for Blakely, advertising for sale on February 15, 1866, four of his 2½ inch bore steel rifles, with 48 inch barrels, on mahogany, brass-mounted carriages, with equipments and “suitable projectiles”. They had been made for a gentleman’s yacht, which then all carried a small battery of guns, classing them as naval auxiliaries and so being free of harbour dues. 
20 pounder, 4¼ inch bore Blakely rifle 1862 Made by Fawcett, Preston & Co in Liverpool, one of two known to have been acquired by the British government. Blakely Patent Gun No 69, now at Fort Nelson, near Portsmouth, Hampshire Picture courtesy David Moore of the Palmerston Forts Society
Other Gunfounders
Other ironworks commissioned by Blakely to make his guns included George Forrester & Company, Vauxhall Ironworks, Vauxhall Road, Liverpool, who cast, among others, the original 16 pounder piece that bombarded Fort Sumter in 1861 and the two great 13 inch guns for Charleston in 1863; the Low Moor Iron Company of Bradford who converted old guns to new on Blakely’s principles in 1861 and 1862 and made new guns under his patent for Russia in 1863 and 1864; and Jean Voruz of Nantes, who made the guns for the forfeited southern cruisers in 1864.
The guns of George Forrester and the Low Moor company were not numbered. It is likely that their licence with Blakely was “per ton” of ordnance made, rather than “per piece” as with the more complex cannon made by Fawcett, Preston. Costing by the “ton” was an historic measure in ordnance. Samuel Bastow, of Cliff House Ironworks, West Hartlepool, was sub-contracted to make one battery of the 9 pounder Blakely mountain guns ordered by Peru in 1861, either by Captain Blakely or by Fawcett Preston.
Josiah Vavasseur made a battery of long 9 pounders, with 2.9 inch calibre, 60 inch barrels, for Blakely in 1862 at his Gravel Lane works in Southwark. These had steel breech bands, quite unlike the common 12 pounder or 3½ inch Blakely “Confederate” field guns with their breech sleeves, and had sea-service breeching rings rather than cascabel knobs. They were shipped to Charleston, SC, with appropriate Bashley Britten shells, on the government steamer Georgiana. The ship, unfortunately, sank on the South Carolina coast. Equally unlucky were the four 2.75 inch calibre, 6 pounder Blakely rifles, 2,000 cartridge bags and 1,008 shells, “loaded and capped”, shipped on board the schooner Stephen Hart in London, bound for “Cardenas in Cuba” on November 19, 1861. They were seized by the abolitionist navy off Key West, Florida, on January 29, 1862, along with a haul of rifles and clothing, and condemned as contraband for the Confederate States. 
3½ inch Blakely rifle made by Archibald Cameron, Charleston, in 1861 In 1863 Captain Blakely observed to Parliament that Cameron & Company, of Charleston, South Carolina, had commenced making field guns to his model. Archibald Cameron & Company, engineers and machinists, of Hasell Street, Charleston, indeed constructed a 3.5 inch calibre cast-iron gun with a long wrought-iron breech sleeve, rifled with six Bashley Britten type square grooves, in May 1861 to Blakely’s pattern. Unfortunately Cameron’s works were burnt down in December 1861, and although rebuilt as the Phoenix Ironworks in King Street, Charleston, during 1862, rifling heavy cannon, casting artillery projectiles, and making steam machinery, they did not resume cannon making. The redoubtable Mr Cameron saw his works utterly destroyed once more in 1865, this time by the enemy, but again restored them to prosperity. After service at Cat Island, near Charleston, on the Waccamaw river and at Colombia, South Carolina, and capture, his single Blakely gun was returned to Charleston. Blakely was continually improving the specification and materials used in his cannon. His use of “steel” in making the reinforcing breech-hoops on the cast-iron barrel tubes of his muzzle-loading rifles before 1864 might be better interpreted, more accurately as using “wrought-iron”. These hoops were made from spiral wound bars hammered into a cylinder and applied when hot on to the breech end of the inner tube. The early rifling was commonly of saw-tooth or “ratchet” form, as devised by Blakely’s early collaborator, Commander Robert Scott RN, he also used in larger pieces the “square” rifling of Bashley Britten, who designed shot and shell for his ordnance.
Curiously, in June 1862 Blakely approached the old established firm of Thomas Astbury & Son, Smethwick Foundry, Rolfe Street, Birmingham, ‘engineers, ironfounders and manufacturers of ordnance to her Majesty’s and foreign governments’. They were to provide a sample of their 6.3 inch “American” cast-iron rifled guns to Blakely’s order for £75, as he had a large number of projectiles on hand to fit that size. The foundry unfortunately provided a 6.5 inch “Sardinian” pattern gun on July 1, 1862, which was rejected.
Much later, in April 1868, the Regent’s Canal Ironworks Company of Eagle Wharf Road, New North Road, London EC had in its possession, on its dissolution, among many other of its manufactures, “three Blakely Ordnance guns with jackets complete, 12 guns and 12 jackets”. This would seem to be yet another source commissioned by Blakely for components and finished guns. No size is given but from the quantity they would seem likely to be field pieces, rather than great guns. The Putnam Machine Company were constructing guns to Blakely’s patents in 1865 in Massachusetts. Blakely Cannon Company
To manage his many patents and to take the many orders from governments that he was starting to receive, in 1860 the Blakely Cannon Company was formed. This was a simple firm, in which Alexander Blakely was the sole member, with an office at 35 Parliament Street, Westminster. It occupied one floor of a house in the “lobbying” district, close to the government ministries. As well as a clerk or two the Cannon Company employed W G P Britten, brother of Bashley Britten, one of Blakely’s earliest collaborators, to work on developing shells for the new guns in May 1861. 
Advertisement in The Times newspaper of January 21, 1861 In January 1861 the firm of Owen, Richardson & Company, of 3 Newman’s Court at 73 Cornhill, London, were appointed agents for the sale of Blakely’s ordnance. They were machinery and hardware commission merchants who specialised in trade with the Baltic and with the north-of-Europe. It had Arthur Smith Owen as the managing partner, he was a former East India merchant and ship broker; it is likely that he led to Blakely’s successful connection with Russia. Although the connection did not do Owen much good; he failed in December 1864. A new, important, character now appears.
Sometime in December 1860 Josiah Vavasseur acquired the freehold of a small ironworks at what was then numbered 33 Bear Lane, Christchurch, Southwark, in the hands of David Davies, a smith and engineer, “occupying a space of 60 feet fronting Bear Lane, by a depth of 150 feet, having thereon a dwelling house, counting house, pattern room, large smiths’ shop, and lofts over sheds, extensive foundry with several forges, &c.”. It had a rental value in 1860 of £110, indicating that Vavasseur paid around £2,000 for the site. The foundry also had a house and entry at 28 Gravel Lane, Southwark, next to the White Hart public house, which in 1860 became the address of the works.
Blakely and Vavasseur came together when the new rifling machine devised by the latter was used to finish the largest of Blakely’s guns. Soon Vavasseur and Blakely began to co-operate in developing guns, projectiles and, especially, mountings and carriages to absorb the strains of new cannon. At least one battery of field pieces was made by Vavasseur at his Gravel Lane works to Blakely’s patents in 1862. The odd 6.3 inch “American” gun ordered by Blakely of Thomas Astbury’s works in Smethwick was to be delivered to J Vavasseur & Co. in Southwark in July 1862.
In October 1862 Vavasseur leased the adjacent timber yard of Samuel Rutt, adding to his works an area of 80 feet north to south, and 35 feet east to west, including another house and a large yard, so that the factory site became triangular in plan. With its new waggon entrance from Rutt’s yard to the south, giving access to large gun barrels for the first time, the address became No 1 Bear Lane, Southwark. The site was then surrounded on the three sides by small, mean houses in multiple occupancy. To the west was Bear Lane, to the east was Gravel Lane, to the north two small courts. Between 1861 and June 1864 the high brick arches carrying the tracks of the London, Chatham & Dover Railway to the Blackfriars station on the Thames were built, overlooking the new “gun manufactory” that maps of London indicated.
One of the unique ordnance “products” that Blakely and Vavasseur started to produce in 1863 were spherical steel shot for breaking iron armour. These were introduced by Henry Bessemer in 1862 as a way of upgrading elderly smooth-bored naval cannon to counter-act the new ironclad warships.
It was claimed that spherical steel shot could penetrate any armour then existing. Their manufacture was described by William Fairbairn in his book ‘Iron’ of 1865: “The mass to be operated upon is cut by a saw from a solid cylinder. The angles of the cylindrical lump are then reduced by pressure between curved surfaces. In this approximate form they are put at a bright red-heat into the rolling-mill, which consists simply of a revolving table in which an annular channel is formed. The channel being in section part of a circle of the diameter of the intended shot, a similarly grooved table is fixed above it. The axis of the lower one may be moved endwise by an hydraulic ram, there being a recess formed in the ram to receive the end of the axis. Now, when a mass of steel is put into this annular channel, and the table set in motion by powerful gearing, the hydraulic ram is made to act on the lower end of the axis, and compress the revolving mass between the grooved surfaces. The lump of steel in its passage round the central shaft also revolves on its own axis, which constantly varies in position, and thus insures the most perfectly spherical form.” By February 1864 the Bear Lane works was making 104 pound steel spheres for 9 inch guns, and 198 pound spheres for 11 inch guns, good for rifles or smooth-bores, using metal from Naylor, Vickers and Kenyon in Sheffield. Thousands were being produced to Russian order by Bessemer and Blakely. As with all such independent ideas the War Office, in charge of both army and naval ordnance, refused to believe in the efficacy of spherical steel shot; fortunately they were never tried against the Royal Navy.
Josiah Vavasseur’s elder brother, James, was a figure of considerable influence in the silk trade. It can be speculated that Blakely’s subsequent dealings with Henry Leighton and, more unfortunately, with Dent & Company in the China trade came through this connection. In September 1863 Blakely, through an intermediary, offered the Confederate States ten 9 inch cast-steel rifles and ten 11 inch rifles, “able to penetrate two 4 inch iron plates”, for immediate delivery. This offer, by Joseph Walker, agent of the state of South Carolina, by way of General P G T Beauregard in Charleston, was not taken up, and the 9 inch guns made for the Confederate States Navy’s Laird Rams were not delivered either. was not taken up, and the 9 inch guns made for the Confederate States Navy’s Laird Rams were not delivered either. This suggests that there was a falling-out between Blakely and the Richmond government. It possibly came about over the extremely high prices of his new steel ordnance, or, alternately, because of his association with S Isaac, Campbell & Company, the government’s most favoured (as well as being the most enthusiastic and successful) contractor for army goods in Europe, who were found to be overcharging. Also, the initial failure, through no fault of Blakely’s, of his 13 inch gun at Charleston would not have helped the relationship. Whatever the cause, no more orders were placed by the south with Blakely after the autumn of 1863; the last being through Jean Voruz in France.
Blakely was then well occupied in making great guns for Peru and for Russia. 
Blakely’s Ordnance works at Bear Lane, Southwark Marked as “Gun Manufactory” in the centre Bear Lane to the west, Gravel Lane to the east. Note the newly-built railway on a high viaduct to the west. The Thames river was to the north. Blakely Ordnance Company (a partnership)
The Blakely Cannon Company of 35 Parliament Street, Westminster, merged in 1863 with Josiah Vavasseur & Company, and Vavasseur became engineer and manager of a new partnership, called the Blakely Ordnance Company. This company was formed in a debenture between Alexander Theophilus Blakely of Bear Lane, Surrey, and John Dent of 35 Grosvenor Square. It continued the existing business in managing patents, designing guns, making field guns and commissioning large cannon of ironfounders. From about this time Lieutenant Frederick William Platt, an infantry officer, became private secretary to Alexander Blakely. He had entered the Army by purchase as an Ensign in April 1851, in the 7th Foot, becoming a Lieutenant in the 95th Foot. His history is opaque, but Platt stayed with Blakely until 1866.
The firm was a simple partnership between Blakely and Dent, with offices and works at Bear Lane, Southwark. The latter became Blakely’s business address henceforth as a “Manufacturer of Ordnance”.
John Dent of the mercantile firms of Dent & Company of Hong Kong, China, and of Palmer, McKillop & Dent, 11 King’s Arms Yard, Lothbury, London, provided funds for Blakely to acquire and extend the engineering works of Josiah Vavasseur in Southwark. These works, the buildings of which, incidentally, existed until the year 2000, were confined and inconvenient; only after they were expanded in 1863 were they capable of making any but the smallest of pieces. The rooms at 35 Parliament Street, Westminster, near the Houses of Parliament and the offices of government, were kept on for several months until Blakely finally gave up trying to sell his guns to the War Office.
Palmer, McKillop & Dent were old-established East India and China Merchants, the firm dating from the early part of the century. The firm’s title altered over the years as the partners came and went. The three families provided Members of Parliament and Lord Mayors of London throughout the period, the latter a significant honour. Coincidentally the firm had acted for South Carolina and Florida in floating their State Bonds in the 1840’s on the London financial market. John Dent, whose personal history is outlined in the chapter on Blakely’s Associates, was senior partner in Dent & Company, of Hong Kong. He had only recently arrived in London from the Indies, age 41. From 1863 onwards Blakely concentrated on manufacturing ordnance from steel. In this he, once again, out- sourced production, relying on the few producers of crucible steel for raw stock for the Bear Lane works and for forging and finishing components for guns and, increasingly, for more sophisticated carriages to manage his great guns. The Sheffield firms of Naylor, Vickers & Company, John Kenyon & Company, and Thomas Firth & Sons all produced tubes and hoops in steel for Blakely’s new range of ever larger guns.
The novel process of ordnance manufacture adopted by Captain Blakely in the mid-1860s deserves better recognition as it is a triumph of modern logistics using railways as much as of technical ability.
By 1863 the steel industry in Britain had come of age, and cast-steel was just about to become available in sufficient quantity to make its use economically viable for ordnance and armour plate.
Rather than develop a complete vertically-integrated plant on a single site Blakely chose, or more probably had no option but to use, a production process that had the several components of his great guns made in multiple locations and shipped to his small Bear Lane factory for finishing and assembly.
This involved the co-ordination of component manufacture at at least eight sub-contractors; ensuring precise specifications and tolerances were maintained, and shipping massive pieces of metal, gun tubes, jackets and trunnion rings, in steel and iron, from many locations about the country into London. A modern, sophisticated process.
The suppliers of large scale components such as castings and forgings included:
● John Brown & Company, Atlas Works, Sheffield ● Fawcett, Preston & Company, Liverpool ● Thomas Firth & Sons, Norfolk Works, Sheffield ● Friedrich Krupp Cast Steel Works , Essen, Rhenish-Prussia ● John Kenyon & Company, Millsands, Sheffield ● Lancefield Forge Company, Anderston, Glasgow ● Low Moor Iron Company, Low Moor, Bradford ● Naylor, Vickers & Company, River Don Works, Sheffield (from Millsands, Sheffield, in 1863)
Gun carriages were also sub-contracted, at least in part, in this period to other firms:
● J & G Rennie, Albion Works, Blackfriars Road, Southwark (wrought-iron) ● C E & T Ferguson, Mast House, Millwall, Poplar, London (wooden)
This method of sub-contracting continued even after Blakely established his own much larger ordnance works in 1865. One of Blakely’s longest business relationships was that with William Needham, a partner in the Butterley Company, iron and coal masters of Butterley and Codnor Park in Derbyshire. This venerable firm had been formed in 1779; the partnership of Needham and William Jessop dating from June 1830. It was a very large scale enterprise, owning coal-pits, iron foundries and iron works. Butterley had made Blakely’s earliest field pieces in 1855 and Needham assisted him in forming his manufacturing concerns. When Britain was at war with Russia in 1856 the firm backed Blakely to the extent of promising to manufacture for the government 16 inch (!) guns formed in a number of layers to his design for £800 each when their actual cost would be £860. The offer was ignored by the War Office. A small insight into Blakely’s production is revealed in an article in the Kentish Chronicle newspaper of February 6, 1864. It states that in the “last fortnight exports by the Blakely Ordnance Company were one 9 pounder, three 500 pounders, six 300 pounders, four 100 pounders, one 140 pounder, two 18 pounders, one 42 pounder and 300 tons of shot and shell”. All made in steel. The same paper reported two weeks later that Blakely had orders for 1,000 tons of steel shot and shell for export to the Continent, worth £40,000. 
Tavistock Ironworks or Mount Foundry, in 1861 A small integrated site with workshops, leats for water power and accommodation Scarcely suitable for making steel or cannon
Tavistock Ironworks & Steel Ordnance Company, Limited (a corporation) Blakely’s first effort to create an industrial base similar to that of his competitor, William Armstrong, occurred in 1864 with guidance of William Needham. He assembled a range of financial and industrial interests to launch the Tavistock Ironworks & Steel Ordnance Company, Limited, on April 27, 1864, with a capital of £200,000, one half to be called up, in 5,000 shares of £20 on which £10 was to be subscribed. This would leave £50,000 available to acquire the 60 year old engineering and ironfounding business of Gill & Company in Tavistock, Devon. These works had been established as the Mount Foundry Ironworks by Gill, Bray & Hornbrook around the year 1809. John Gill became the sole owner in 1818, and in the 1830s was joined by John Rundle. It had manufactured steam engines and boilers, chains, hammered iron and edge tools, as well as mining and other machinery. The works already had the patent rights to Edward Smith Crease’s pneumatic tunnelling engines, “to effect a complete revolution in the scientific working of mines”, from which much was expected.
The directors of the Tavistock Ironworks were Captain T A Blakely of Southwark “and St Petersburg”, Henry Alers Hankey, chairman of the New Zealand Banking Corporation, Philip Henry Benett of Henry Leighton & Co., George Payne Kitson, a “getter-up” of financial companies and banks, Charles Burn, a civil engineer, and J J Russell, of Wednesbury, a large-scale maker of iron tubing. As well as the works it maintained offices at 14 Gresham House, Old Broad Street, London.
The firm had its account with the Agra Bank in London, of which more later.
The firm of Henry Leighton & Company of London and Shanghai, had commissioned Blakely to make cannon for the Emperor of China. The Tavistock Ironworks was “established to carry out on an important scale the manufacture of steel, under Bessemer’s or other patents, to construct steel ordnance, manufacture steel shot and shell, draw steel wire, manufacture and erect steam engines, boilers and all kinds of machinery and implements”.
The property had thirteen acres of land with the works, a mansion with plantations and grounds, a manager’s house, and cottages and gardens for the workers. It had its own water power for machinery. Its profits were to derive from several patent rights and contracts and a licence to manufacture Blakely guns.
The works was said to be accessible by canal with Plymouth Sound and the ocean, and by railway to the rest of the country.
The new company anticipated taking possession of the works from Gill & Company on April 30, 1864. It was a poorly-sited facility, with, as it turned out, very bad access for materials and for large iron work such as cannon barrels; the City investors were not convinced of its viability. It never was operational in making steel or in any of the advanced manufactures proposed in the initial promotion.
A fair sum of money was invested in the Tavistock property but it remained a small-scale tool works as the inventory of 1868 indicates. The buildings then comprised a forge, fitting shop, plating mill, patternmakers’ shops, two foundries, a smiths’ shop, an iron store, general store, gatekeeper’s lodge, seventeen workmen’s dwellings, a managers’ house and larger house for the owner’s family, as well as stabling, meadow land, and large yards. The works were equipped with four tilt hammers, cranes and furnaces, shears, plate bending rolls, a large surfacing and boring lathe, self-acting turning and screw-cutting lathes, shaping, planing, drilling and screwing machines, hydraulic proving apparatus, grindery, three cupolas with fan blast, three core stoves, two foundry cranes, a large iron-casting pit, smiths’ forges, and a five-ton weigh-bridge. The machinery was driven by six overshot waterwheels, equal to 200 horsepower. A new foundry and a new smithy had been added since 1864, but nothing to make either steel or cannon.
Eventually, by mid-1866 the Tavistock company had a paid-up capital of £32,374 with outstanding liabilities to creditors of around £14,000. As £15 on each share had then been called up, this would require a call of £5 to cover all of its debts. On the petition of the then directors, Alexander Blakely, Charles Burn, a civil engineer, and William Gill, an order was made to wind-up the Tavistock Ironworks & Steel Ordnance Company, and a liquidator appointed on December 22, 1866. The property was taken over in 1869 by Nicholls, Mathews & Co. of Bedford Iron Foundry, all Bedford activities transferred to the Tavistock Foundry, where more and reliable water power for the machinery was available. By 1880s ownership had passed to Joseph Mathews & Co., general engineers. William Gill involved Blakely in a shady deal regarding the Perran Iron Mine at Perranzabuloe near Newquay, Cornwall, between June and November 1865. Also known as the Mount Mine, it was one of many mining properties that had fallen into the hands of Edward Carter & Company, bankers of St Columb. Gill was convinced that the Perran ore was particularly good for steel making in the Bessemer blast process and Blakely agreed to buy the iron mine for £65,000.
It then transpired that Gill and Carter were forming a syndicate that would buy the mine for £75,000, and, with the assistance of Captain Blakely, set up a joint-stock mining company to which they would sell the property for £125,000! The finance for the formation of the firm and for the purchase of the Perran mine would come from the Crédit Foncier et Mobilier of England, Limited, a London firm of money dealers and company promoters. It was quickly discovered that Carter did not have right of sale, and was involved with a band of fixers and middle-men. Crédit Foncier and Blakely both abandoned the scheme. Gill also contrived to associate Captain Blakely with the Old Gunnislake Mining Company, a copper extractor, of Calstock, Cornwall, a few miles away from Tavistock. It was another joint-stock promotion of the year 1864, with a capital of £45,000. William Gill was banker to the firm. The company bought the old, run-down mine and installed new steam pumping and winding machinery. It also introduced Crease’s tunnelling machine in 1867. Blakely became the chairman of the board of directors in March 1866; it is not know what his capital participation was. It had failed by 1870.
It should be added that Captain Blakely attempted to become the Member of Parliament for Tavistock in the general election of 1865. Captain Blakely was also a director of the South Kensington Hotel Company, a joint stock venture promoted in February 1863 to convert six mansion houses in Queen’s Gate Terrace, London, into a 100 room hotel and club-house. It was to raise £100,000 and opened for business on October 20, 1864. Blakely Ordnance Company, Limited (a corporation) In 1865 Captain Blakely was a Manufacturer of Ordnance with customers around the world demanding ever larger cannon and more massive, sophisticated iron carriages to manage the recoil of these pieces. He needed capital to create a foundry, forges, rolling mills and rifling machines. In that year he promoted to the public the Blakely Ordnance Company, Limited, a joint stock company offering limited liability to its shareholders, seeking several hundred thousand pounds in money with which to build a new ordnance works on the banks of the Thames river in London. The story of the Blakely Ordnance Company, Limited, merits a chapter of its own...
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