13 inch Blakely rifle defending Charleston, South Carolina, October 29, 1863
From a sketch by the Virginian artist Conrad Wise Chapman
1. An Introduction
Captain Alexander Blakely RA is a name that any one interested in the American Civil War will be familiar with; his cannon are mentioned in battle after battle, in page after page of its history, on land and at sea. Yet scarcely anything is known about this man – his very name is subject to query and question even now.
He and the guns he designed flourished only briefly between 1855 and 1866, he and they are forever associated with the South. The number of Blakely cannon imported or used by the Confederate States of America is not known; but of the more than 470 guns manufactured under Blakely’s patents between 1855 and 1866 the largest number were made for the south during the Civil War. They ranged from the 3¾ inch calibre field gun used to fire on Sumter in 1861 to two great 13 inch cannon of 60,000 pounds that defended Charleston in 1863. There were several batteries of 3½ inch Blakely rifled field guns with the Armies of Northern Virginia and of Tennessee. 7½ inch Blakely cannon protected Vicksburg and Mobile.
On the high seas the steamer Nashville, in November 1861 the first Confederate warship to visit Europe, was armed with two Blakely rifles.
The cruisers Alabama and the Florida carried the Confederate flag and 7 inch Blakely cannon across the great oceans. The battery of the cruiser Georgia included three Blakely rifles. The famous rams built in 1863 by Laird Brothers in Birkenhead to devastate Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York City were each to carry four 9 inch Blakely guns in their turrets. The four cruisers building in France in 1864 but never delivered were each to have twelve 68 pounder Blakely guns.
The Brooke guns, so-called, of Confederate manufacture were cast, forged and assembled for the Confederate States Navy under Captain Blakely’s patents with the consent and co-operation of the inventor. In Parliament on June 18, 1863, Captain Blakely declared, archly, that shot at Charleston were fired “from guns either made by me, which have found their way there somehow, or else made (and very ably made) by Captain Brooke of the Confederate Artillery, from models supplied by me.”
A remarkable thirty-two Blakely guns still exist as relics in North America either whole or in parts.
His support went further than simple commerce. In addition to making guns for the South, during March 1862 - in an attempt to conceal their true ownership - Blakely bought ten batteries of Austrian bronze artillery off Captain Caleb Huse CSA for shipment from Hamburg to the south by the government’s steamer Bahama. Blakely travelled to Hamburg to supervise shipment, even managing the rescue of eight cannon sunk in a lighter on the river Elbe through sabotage.
But there is more, much more to the life of Captain Alexander Blakely...
His guns were sold in hundreds to nearly a dozen other countries, from America to Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, Egypt, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Russia, Sweden and, especially, to Peru... But he never was able to sell a single cannon for service in Britain.
His life ended in ruin and scandal; this is the story of Captain Blakely and his Cannon.
Dedicated to the memory of John Roberts,
who died in action on June 19, 1864, off Cherbourg, France,
beside a 7 inch Blakely gun
