Sources
The written historical sources regarding Alexander Blakely are meagre. For example, the letter books, accounts and day-to-day files of his several companies no longer seem to exist. There is no biography or even an obituary of his life. The writer has not found a verifiable likeness of Captain Blakely in any published work. For those interested the following are the major accessible references to the man and his cannon:
● Alexander Theophilus Blakely, Adrian Caruana, Journal of the Ordnance Society, Volume 4, 1992
● Alexander Theophilus Blakeley (sic), an Addition to the Debate, Mary Mills, Journal of the Ordnance Society, Volume 11, 1999
● Theophilus Alexander Blakely and the revolution in Victorian gun design, Nicholas Hall, Royal Armouries Yearbook, Volume 6, 2001
● The American Cyclopaedia; George Ripley and Charles A Dana, D Appleton and Company, 1873
● Artillery and Ammunition of the Civil War, Warren Ripley, Promontory Press, New York, 1970
● Artillery through the Ages, Col H C B Rogers, Seeley, Service & Co., London, 1971
● Blakely and Armstrong Guns, a statement by Mrs Blakely, Harriette Catherine Blakely, London, 1898
● Mrs Blakely, Case for Justice, Harriette Catherine Blakely, London, 1902
● The Big Guns, Civil War Siege, Seacoast and Naval Cannon, Edwin Olmstead, Wayne E Stark and Spencer C Tucker, Museum Restoration Service, Alexandra Bay, New York, 1997
● Charleston at War, the Photographic Record 1860 – 1865; Jack Thomson, Thomas Publications, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 2000
● Charleston’s Civil War “Monster Guns”, the Blakely Rifles, C R Horres, Jr., South Carolina Historical Magazine, Volume 97, Number 2, April 1996
● A Cheap and Simple Method of Manufacturing Strong Cannon, Captain A T Blakely RA, Ridgway, London, 1858
● Civil War Heavy Explosive Ordnance, A Guide to Artillery Projectiles, Torpedoes, and Mines; Jack Bell, University of North Texas Press, Denton, Texas, 2002
● Confederate Foreign Agent; The European Diary of Major Edward C. Anderson, Edited by W. Stanley Hoole, Confederate Publishing Co., University, Alabama, 1976
● Dockyard Economy and Naval Power, Patrick Barry, Sampson Lowe, Son & Co., London 1863 ● ‘The Engineer’ magazine, London, 1856 to 1868
● ‘Engineering’ magazine, London, 1866 to 1868
● A Few Remarks on the Science of Gunnery, Captain A T Blakely RA, Ridgway, London, 1858
● Field Artillery Weapons of the Civil War, James C Hazlett, Edwin Olmstead and M Hume Parks, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois, 1983
● Guide to Charleston Illustrated; being a sketch of the History of Charleston, SC; Arthur Mazyck, Walker, Evans & Cogswell, Charleston, SC, 1875
● Heavy Rifled Ordnance, Cast Iron and Wrought Iron, Bashley Britten, W Mitchell, London, 1871
● Historia General del Ejército Peruano, Lourdes Medina Montoya, la Comisión Permanente de Historia del Ejército del Perú, 1989
● The Iron Guns of Willard Park, John C Reilly, Naval Historical Center, Washington, 1991
● Ironclads and the Big Guns of the Confederacy, The Journals and Letters of John M Brooke, George M Brooke , University of South Carolina Press, 2002
● The ‘Law Journal’ Reports for the Year 1868, Cases in the Court of Probate, the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes and on Appeal therefrom, New Series Volume XXXVII, Edward Bret Ince, London, 1868
● A History of Massachusetts in the Civil War, Volume I, William Schouler, E P Dutton, Boston, Massachusetts, 1868
● Law Reports of the Chancery and Exchequer Courts of England; London, 1850 to 1870
● The Life of Captain Sir Richard F Burton, Isabel Burton, Chapman & Hall, London, 1893
● Major Caleb Huse CSA & S Isaac Campbell & Co., David Burt, Author House, Milton Keynes, 2009
● ‘Mechanics’ Magazine’, London, 1855 to 1868
● Official Catalogue of the Museum of Artillery in the Rotunda, Woolwich; Brig Gen J H LeFroy RA, HM Stationery Office, London, 1864
● Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies - Series I, Volumes 1 to 53; U S Government Printing Office, Washington, 1880-1898 ● Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion – Series I, Volumes 1 to 27, and II, Volumes 1 to 3, U S Government Printing Office, Washington, 1894-1921
● Österreichischer Bericht über die Internationale Ausstellung in London, Joseph Arenstein, KK Ministeriums für Handel und Volkswirtschaft, Vienna, 1862
● Recollections of a Rebel Reefer; James Morris Morgan, Constable & Company, London, 1918
● Report from the Select Committee on Ordnance – Parliamentary examination of Sir W G Armstrong, J Whitworth and Captain A T Blakely, HM Stationery Office, London, 1863
● Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, Volumes I to XII, W. Mitchell & Son, London, 1858 to 1868
● ‘Scientific American’ – random mentions of Blakely between 1858 and 1866, usually quoting the British publications, ‘Mechanics’ Magazine’, ‘The Artizan’ and ‘The Engineer’.
● The Story of the Guns; Sir J Emerson Tennent, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, London, 1864
● The Supplies for the Confederate Army: How they were obtained in Europe and how paid for, Caleb Huse, T R Marvin & Son, Boston, 1904
● A Treatise on Ordnance and Armor, Alexander L Holley, Van Nostrand, New York, 1865
● ‘The Times’, London, 1850 to 1880
● A Visit to the Cities and Camps of the Confederate States; Fitzgerald Ross, William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1865
The descriptions of the Blakely Ordnance Company’s East Greenwich works, the list of machinery and tooling and the inventory of guns left in 1866 come from the 1868, 1870 and 1871 sale advertisements of the auctioneers, Fuller, Horsey, Son & Company, 11 Billiter Square, London E C. The inventory of the Tavistock Ironworks & Steel Ordnance Company comes from the 1868 advertisements of the same house.
Kristina Dunn Johnson of the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room & Military Museum, Columbia, S C, kindly provided copies of the invoices from Captain Blakely and Fawcett, Preston & Company to Captain Caleb Huse CSA held in the Colin McRae archive.
I have to specially thank Sr. Carlos Carrera and Admiral Reynaldo Pizarro, who have spent much time researching the work of Captain Blakely in their country of Peru, for providing original archive documents, translations and photographs, and for their excellent advice. I must also thank Sr. Gilles Galté, their friend and collaborator, who has supplied many pictures of the Blakely guns in the museums of Chile.
Very many thanks must also go to the late Wayne Stark of Baden, Pennsylvania - always a generous fount of knowledge regarding Civil War period great guns.
Jack Melton has very kindly allowed use of several photographs from his CivilWarArtillery.com website.
I also owe a lot to the advice and researches of my good friend from Nebraska.
The late Captain Caruana’s fascinating article for the Ordnance Society is the only truly original piece of research regarding Blakely. Mary Mills’ excellent follow-up deals with the history of the East Greenwich ordnance works. Nicholas Hall fills in some of the gaps in Captain Caruana’s work and adds a great deal of historical perspective. Mr Horres’ article is an excellent account of the two great guns at Charleston but with scarcely any context relating to affairs in Britain. Professor Brooke is the grandson of John Mercer Brooke CSN, and has well-edited his grandfather’s correspondence. ‘Mechanics’ Magazine’ was a consistent friend and promoter of Captain Blakely, its columns scrupulously compared his theories with those his competitors. Blakely’s name is a thread running through the Official Records. Emerson Tennent’s book describes in detail the Whitworth and Armstrong guns and manufacturing processes, however he is a blatant partisan of Joseph Whitworth’s camp, entirely ignoring Captain Blakely.
Two picture books, albums containing around sixty photographs of pieces of ordnance taken in 1865 and 1866 for the Blakely Ordnance Company and about 1880 for J Vavasseur & Company, exist at Southwark Local History Library in London. In 1865, coincidentally, the Royal United Service Institution acquired several photographs of 11 inch and 9 inch Blakely guns for its collection.
Pictures
Several of the featured photographs were obtained or scanned some years ago and the sources, through incompetence, were unrecorded or misplaced over time. Any picture to which there is legal objection will be removed. The engravings used are all from sources over 140 years old and are out of all copyright.
The photographs attributed to the London Borough of Southwark are reproduced here under license for personal research and non-profitmaking use only.
Surviving Blakely Guns
As well as the thirty-two pieces in the United States, and several in Peru and Chile, there are three, or possibly four, Blakely guns surviving in Britain. Two are 4.25 inch pieces dating from 1862, patent guns number 67 and 69, made by Fawcett, Preston & Company, now in the museums at Fort Nelson, Portsmouth, and Chatham Historical Dockyard, Kent, and a 2.9 inch mountain gun made in 1865, patent gun number 477, at Fort Nelson, made by the Blakely Ordnance Company. There is also a peripatetic 2.5 inch Blakely mountain gun, in private hands, described in 2001 as having a 33 inch barrel rifled with six grooves, made by Fawcett, Preston & Company. This has been seen at Usk, in Wales and in County Durham, England, in recent years.
Calibre A note is necessary on the “calibre” of guns in the mid-nineteenth century. There was change in progress from smooth-bore artillery firing a solid round shot or “ball” to rifled ordnance that used elongated cylindrical shot or “bolts”. Smooth-bore pieces were universally calibrated on the weight of solid shot they fired; a 12 pounder fired a twelve pound spherical iron shot. Shell, being hollow to contain a bursting charge of powder, was lighter in weight. Rifled pieces, depending upon their engineering, could fire a much heavier projectile through the same diameter bore:
Calibre...........Smooth-bore ball...........British rifle bolt...........American rifle bolt
2.50 ins.....................................................6 pound............................ -
2.90 ins..................3 pound......................9 pound.......................10 pound
3.00 ins....................................................12 pound......................9.5 pound
3.20 ins..................4 pound.................................No equivalent
3.67 ins..................6 pound......................18 pound......................20 pound
3.75 ins.....................................................20 pound.......................... -
4.20 ins..................9 pound...........................................................30 pound
4.62 ins..................12 pound...............................No equivalent
4.75 ins.....................................................40 pound..........................-
5.82 ins..................24 pound...............................No equivalent
6.41 ins..................32 pound.....................70 pound.....................100 pound
7.02 ins.................42 pound.....................110 pound....................130 pound
8.01 ins..................68 pound.....................130 pound...................150 pound
Officers, even ordnance officers, of that period of enormous technological change in the mid-1860s often “confused” smooth-bore calibre with the new rifled calibre, by referring to a piece as a “X-pounder”. As an extreme example a gun bored to 3.67 inches called a 6 pounder might therefore fire, obviously, a 6 pound ball or, if rifled, a 12, 18 or even a 20 pound bolt! This is a particular problem in accurately identifying field ordnance in the Confederate States Army.
“Original inventor of improvements in cannon and the greatest artillerist of the age” From the gravestone of Mary William Blakely, his mother
© Steven Roberts 2010
The right of Steven Roberts to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the United Kingdom Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. For more information contact info@captainblakely.org