Civil War Parrott/Read Shell, recovered at a Confederate site in Quantico, VA

This is another nice piece being offered, it is a 2.9-inch Parrott/Read case-shot shell, which would have been fired from a 10-pounder Parrott Rifle. It weighs 9.8 pounds, has an iron ring sabot, and has a zinc fuse adaptor for the paper time fuse. It was dug in the 1970s – 1980s by a Marine Lieutenant Colonel at Quantico, Virginia (see pictures).

More than half a century before the Marine Corps Base, Confederate troops spent four and a half months lobbing artillery at Union ships and batteries from what is now the shoreline of the base.

During the winter of 1861 and ’62, the Confederacy managed to blockade the Potomac River to Union ships traveling to and from Washington, D.C., with a series of about 15 batteries up and down the river. The largest two were at what was then called Shipping Point, now Hospital Point and home of Marine Corps Systems Command, next to the town of Quantico. The town was then called Evansport.

“It was quite an embarrassment for the Union, which had just instituted a policy of blockading and strangling the South,” said John Haynes, former Quantico base archaeologist. Now, the South was strangling the main waterway to D.C.

Haynes also prepared the nominations that got the sites of three Confederate winter camps, which supported the batteries and were on what is now the eastern side of the base, onto the National Register of Historic Places. Haynes said. “There would sometimes be hundreds of shots fired per day, according to some accounts.”

Excavations have unearthed some of those projectiles, as well as other remains. At the largest battery site, which Haynes said covered about 160 acres and camped four regiments, an unexploded 10-pound Parrott gun shell (possibly this one) and most of the pieces of an exploded, 9-inch Dahlgren gun shell were found, both probably fired by Union forces. He also said he found a 42-pound, solid cannonball off the shore from the site of the smaller Shipping Point battery, possibly from a Confederate gun that exploded.

It is in good condition for an excavated, fired shell. The shell's surface is moderately pitted and has a light layer of clear coat. Its fuse adaptor and sabot are both present. The sabot is missing a 1-1/4 inch section likely blown off upon firing. It has been deactivated and there are no repairs. I discuss these shells in more detail in my book “Civil War Artillery – A Pictorial Introduction” (see pictures).