Neat video purporting to be a science experiment on determining the position of artillery on preserved battlefields, but there’s less science on display than yeehawing reenactors and buffs getting to shoot live ammunition from a Napoleon cannon.
Seeing the grapeshot’s range and scatter disquieting. I am amazed anew at the bravery of the men who marched willingly into the face of that threat. Hearing that peculiar jangling noise as you marched within range must have been terrifying.
Not sure this would be worth a trip – hunks of metal all tend to look the same after a while – but it’s neat to read about.
They were the messengers of death in America’s bloodiest war: special rifle ammunition that caused mayhem on Civil War battlegrounds, artillery shells designed to blow ironclads out of the water and early mines and napalm.
They are one display in a new exhibit at the Charleston Museum in the city historians say has been bombarded more than any place in the Western Hemisphere.
As part of the sesquicentennial of the war that started in nearby Charleston Harbor and saw the city bombarded by Union shells for 567 days, the museum is mounting the exhibit “Blasted: Assorted Projectiles and Explosives of the Civil War.”