Why Do Metal Detectorists Find So Many Dropped Minié Balls And Other Bullets?

[EL NINO77]

 

[Rattlehead]

Minieballs are like the Mercury dimes of relic hunting. Very common, but I never get tired of digging them.

[Bob S.]

The US military in the period before the Civil War owe the French quite a bit. It was a Frenchman named Claude-Étienne Minié who developed the twist rifled barrel bore and Minie Ball (1846) that we often find metal detecting. Before that time, larger caliber muskets were smooth bore and had to be patched in the bore to have some exit accuracy. The Minie ball had a parabolic rear cavity which expanded into the rifling upon powder detonation which spun the bullet on it's axis, thus providing more accuracy than a round ball. Also, most styles of soldier uniforms during the Civil War were derived from French cuts and patterns, which actually started during the militia period prior.

I spent many of my younger years being a Civil War equipment historian and re-enacter firing a rifled Model 1861 Springfield. We shot blanks of course at our friendly foe's, but we rolled and made authentic paper cartridges none-the-less. Yes, you would (try) rip the paper tail off the cartridge with your teeth and pour the charge down the bore, but you usually would get a small bit of blackpowder on your lips and mouth in the process! 🙂 I don't think we exactly really know how a soldier in the 1860's would load his cartridge in battle, but I do know the Minie balls of the period were fairly close in tolerance to the internal bore diameter (no patch), so I doubt the paper cartridge covering the ball was rammed down the bore. Repeated blackpowder fowling and ball lubricant would have accumulated in the bore and prevented this. That is why you find the occasional William's Cleaner ball along with the standard Minie balls on the battlefield.

My theory is the soldier had to pinch the ball out of the cartridge tube into the muzzle in the heat of battle and would drop the ball and start again. I remember reading about a relic barrel found with multiple successive unexploded loads filling the bore. That poor soldier in battle probably fumbled the small percussion cap over the firing cone that many times!

On one of my Southern relic hunting trips long ago, I remember my partner finding 10 Washington "Star Based" Minie's in the same hole along with that many copper percussion caps. That would be one complete issued 10 round package. A Union soldier's leather cartridge box would have two rectangular "tin's" side-by-side. Each tin had two compartments, upper and lower, each holding one pack of 10 cartridges (5x2). The upper open tin had a divider which held the cartridges upright (tail up) for awhile, 2x2 + 3x2. After much loading, the remaining cartridges started to lay down and were hard to grab in the recess of the tin. The tins were tight fitting in the cartridge box usually and when the top 20 cartridge were used up, the tins were pulled and the bottom compartment packages were opened and moved to the top compartment. That is why so many soldiers carried extra rounds in their uniform pockets and haversacks! It was just easier! By the way, the standard issue Union cartridge box had two flaps! The large outer flap that held the brass lead-filled plate and the inner flap covering the two tins. I give you all this above because it is my opinion that the majority of Minie balls we find unfired were dropped in the frenzy of battle.

I had two New York ancestral family members who fought for the Union starting in 1862. One of the brothers first name was Hiram which I carry as my middle. I have the diary of his younger brother John which is soaked in blood from his fatal wound at the battle of Cold Harbor. Let's hope we never have this happen to us again.

[JCR]

Also,  when cartridges & percussion caps got wet,  they were often discarded complete. Especially in the Union Army as they had a ready resupply.   The Confederates had to be more frugal & recycle the bullets.

[Bob S.]

28 minutes ago, JCR said:

Also,  when cartridges & percussion caps got wet,  they were often discarded complete. Especially in the Union Army as they had a ready resupply.   The Confederates had to be more frugal & recycle the bullets.

Yes, that is indeed why someone would have to discard a paper cartridge. But in my years as a re-enacter, and sometimes being soaked through thru the wool from heavy downpours, I never had any of my cartridges, even if the paper was damp, ever not fire. I suspect soldiers back then would tuck their large cartridge box flap under their waist belt during battle (if it wasn't looped thru the back of the box) to keep the box more open and easier to grab cartridges. That would definitely make it easier to get cartridges soaked.

[Ripcode]

This is great info and I am going to watch that video now! 👍🏼

[L David Keith]

Many times soldiers would tear open cartridges to use the powder to start campfires. Union troops were told not to leave anything lying around that Confederates could pick up and use so those bullets were tossed in the fire. Today we call this "camp lead." I used 21 pounds of camp lead to turn into 14.4 lbs of duck decoy anchors. Other times, when your cartridge box tins were full of 40 rounds, they fit tightly together so pulling a round out of the tins/cartridge box would often spill a round or two on the ground. During battle those were generally left behind. During the heat of battle, rounds were lost, left behind or spilled out of cartridge boxes when dead or wounded soldiers fell. During my decades of detecting CW bullets, I've recovered from .22 short to .74 caliber projectiles but several being extremely rare to the most common from battle fields to campsites. I still get excited digging lead. 

[rvpopeye]

Impressive collection LDK !   👍