Last Casualty of the American Civil War

[John Nelson]

The American Civil War claimed another victim earlier this year when a civil war ordinance buff was killed by what he thought was an inert Civil War naval shell.

Article in next post.

[John Nelson]

Civil War cannonball kills Virginia relic collector

 

By STEVE SZKOTAK, Associated Press Writer

Fri May 2, 4:25 PM ET

 

CHESTER, Va. - Like many boys in the South, Sam White got hooked on the Civil War early, digging up rusting bullets and military buttons in the battle-scarred earth of his hometown.

 

As an adult, he crisscrossed the Virginia countryside in search of wartime relics — weapons, battle flags, even artillery shells buried in the red clay. He sometimes put on diving gear to feel for treasures hidden in the black muck of river bottoms.

 

But in February, White's hobby cost him his life: A cannonball he was restoring exploded, killing him in his driveway.

 

More than 140 years after Lee surrendered to Grant, the cannonball was still powerful enough to send a chunk of shrapnel through the front porch of a house a quarter-mile from White's home in this leafy Richmond suburb.

 

White's death shook the close-knit fraternity of relic collectors and raised concerns about the dangers of other Civil War munitions that lay buried beneath old battlefields. Explosives experts said the fatal blast defied extraordinary odds.

 

"You can't drop these things on the ground and make them go off," said retired Col. John F. Biemeck, formerly of the Army Ordnance Corps.

 

White, 53, was one of thousands of hobbyists who comb former battlegrounds for artifacts using metal detectors, pickaxes, shovels and trowels.

 

"There just aren't many areas in the South in which battlefields aren't located. They're literally under your feet," said Harry Ridgeway, a former relic hunter who has amassed a vast collection. "It's just a huge thrill to pull even a mundane relic out of the ground."

 

After growing up in Petersburg, White went to college, served on his local police force, then worked for 25 years as a deliveryman for UPS. He retired in 1998 and devoted most of his time to relic hunting.

 

He was an avid reader, a Civil War raconteur and an amateur historian who watched History Channel programs over and over, to the mild annoyance of his wife.

 

"I used to laugh at him and say, 'Why do you watch this? You know how it turned out. It's not going to be any different,'" Brenda White said.

 

She didn't share her husband's devotion, but she was understanding of his interest.

 

"True relic hunters who have this passion, they don't live that way vicariously, like if you were a sports fanatic," she said. "Finding a treasure is their touchdown, even if it's two, three bullets."

 

Union and Confederate troops lobbed an estimated 1.5 million artillery shells and cannonballs at each other from 1861 to 1865. As many as one in five were duds.

 

Some of the weapons remain buried in the ground or river bottoms. In late March, a 44-pound, 8-inch mortar shell was uncovered at Petersburg National Battlefield, the site of an epic 292-day battle. The shell was taken to the city landfill and detonated.

 

Black powder provided the destructive force for cannonballs and artillery shells. The combination of sulfur, potassium nitrate and finely ground charcoal requires a high temperature — 572 degrees Fahrenheit — and friction to ignite.

 

White estimated he had worked on about 1,600 shells for collectors and museums. On the day he died, he had 18 cannonballs lined up in his driveway to restore.

 

White's efforts seldom raised safety concerns. His wife and son Travis sometimes stood in the driveway as he worked.

 

"Sam knew his stuff, no doubt about it," said Jimmy Blankenship, historian-curator at the Petersburg battleground. "He did know Civil War ordnance."

 

An investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will not be complete until the end of May, but police who responded to the blast and examined shrapnel concluded that it came from a Civil War explosive.

 

Experts suspect White was killed while trying to disarm a 9-inch, 75-pound naval cannonball, a particularly potent explosive with a more complex fuse and many times the destructive power of those used by infantry artillery.

 

Biemeck and Peter George, co-author of a book on Civil War ordnance, believe White was using either a drill or a grinder attached to a drill to remove grit from the cannonball, causing a shower of sparks.

 

Because of the fuse design, it may have appeared as though the weapon's powder had already been removed, leading even a veteran like White to conclude mistakenly that the ball was inert.

 

The weapon also had to be waterproof because it was designed to skip over the water at 600 mph to strike at the waterline of an enemy ship. The protection against moisture meant the ball could have remained potent longer than an infantry shell.

 

Brenda White is convinced her husband was working on a flawed cannonball, and no amount of caution could have prevented his death.

 

"He had already disarmed the shell," she said. "From what I was told, there was absolutely nothing he had done wrong, that there was a manufacturing defect that no one would have known was there."

 

After White's death, about two dozen homes were evacuated for two days while explosives experts collected pieces from his collection and detonated them.

 

Today, there is little evidence of the Feb. 18 blast. The garage where White did most of his work is still crammed with his discoveries, many painstakingly restored and mounted. Rusted horseshoes are piled high in the crook of a small tree.

 

White's digging partner, Fred Lange, hasn't had the heart to return to his relic hunting.

 

"I truly miss him," Lange said. "Not a day that goes by that I don't think of him."

[Paul in Qatar]

It is remarkable how often a ACW shell kills someone. Every couple of years it seems. I suppose the filler crystalizes and becomes less stable?

[Sardaukar]

Fiddling with old UXO is so incredibly stupid that it should have own category in Darwin Awards.

[Delta tank 6]

My wife and I went to Verdun, France to visit the battlefield back in 1983 or so. We decided to have a picnic lunch and we pulled into an area with picnic tables and sitting on top of one of the tables was a 75mm projo. I guess someone found it and decided to place it on the picnic table. I said to my wife it did not explode during the battle but it might explode today! We decided to have a picnic somewhere else! Verdun to this day is probably full of unexploded shells. Not to mention a lot of the Kasernes in Germany.

 

Mike

[irregularmedic]

My wife and I went to Verdun, France to visit the battlefield back in 1983 or so. We decided to have a picnic lunch and we pulled into an area with picnic tables and sitting on top of one of the tables was a 75mm projo. I guess someone found it and decided to place it on the picnic table. I said to my wife it did not explode during the battle but it might explode today! We decided to have a picnic somewhere else! Verdun to this day is probably full of unexploded shells. Not to mention a lot of the Kasernes in Germany.

 

Mike

 

The entire area that was Western Front battlefield has UXO. French EOD explodes literally tons of UXO from WWI every year. There were an incredible number of duds, and nature slowly brings a few of them to the surface each year. IIRC some French farmers have gotten pretty blase' about it and just carry them to the edge of the field for EOD to pick up later.

[Rich]

The entire area that was Western Front battlefield has UXO. French EOD explodes literally tons of UXO from WWI every year. There were an incredible number of duds, and nature slowly brings a few of them to the surface each year. IIRC some French farmers have gotten pretty blase' about it and just carry them to the edge of the field for EOD to pick up later.

 

My favorite....

 

-----

Farmer who is sitting on a bomb

By Neil Tweedie, Telegraph

Last Updated: 12:44am GMT 12/01/2004

 

 

 

Estate agents are used to talking up the good points of a property while drawing a veil over its less attractive aspects. But it would take a particularly resourceful one to gloss over the downside of La Basse Cour in Belgium.

 

The first bit is easy: "Attractive farm consisting of seven buildings set in 150 acres in the heart of historic Flanders on the Messines Ridge near Ypres. Ideal getaway for the busy metropolitan family. One hour 30 minutes from Channel Tunnel."

 

The problem lies with one of the original features: the bomb. Not any old bomb, but the world's biggest unexploded bomb - 50,000lbs to be exact. Still there, 80 feet under the farm, waiting for its big day. "Potential for redevelopment" might cover it.

 

The bomb - or more accurately mine - was the product of one of the greatest and most secret engineering exercises of the First World War. It lay half-forgotten for 80 years until British researchers were able to establish its exact whereabouts using maps of the period.

 

In January 1916, thousands of British miners began tunnelling out of the Ypres Salient towards the German lines on the Messines Ridge.

 

Roger Mahieu with one of the many artillery shells he has unearthed working his farmland

The plan was to plant 25 enormous mines under the enemy trenches and then blow them shortly before a major offensive planned for the summer of that year. The operation was postponed until the summer of 1917, but when it took place the results were spectacular.

 

More than 1,000,000lbs of high explosive were packed into underground chambers along a seven-mile front. On June 7, 19 of the mines detonated in the space of 30 seconds in the biggest series of controlled explosions yet seen. Buildings within a 30-mile radius rocked on their foundations, and the bang was heard in Downing Street. In Switzerland, seismographs registered a small earthquake.

 

As many as 6,000 German troops perished in the inferno and the Messines Ridge was quickly taken by General Sir Herbert Plumer's Second Army. The Battle of Messines was regarded as the most successful local operation of the war.

 

M Mahieu at the entrance to a German counter shaft dug to foil British mining

But it left a legacy: six mines were not used. Four on the extreme southern flank were not required because the ridge fell so quickly, and another, a 20,000lb mine codenamed Peckham, was abandoned before the attack due to a tunnel collapse.

 

The sixth, and one of the biggest, was planted under a ruined farm called La Petite Douve. It was lost when the Germans mounted a counter-mining attack, and never used.

 

After the war, La Petite Douve was rebuilt by its owners, the Mahieu family, and later renamed La Basse Cour. The mine is beneath a barn, next to the farmhouse .

 

Roger Mahieu is proud that he still farms the same land as his father and grandfather, and, luckily for the estate agents, he isn't selling.

 

Indeed, the little matter of 22 tons of high explosive lying 80 feet below his property seems to trouble him hardly at all.

 

"It doesn't stop me sleeping at night," he said. "It's been there all that time, why should it decide to blow up now?" The story of the La Petite Douve mine - and the Peckham mine, which by unfortunate coincidence also sits under a farmhouse - is recounted in the Channel Five documentary Ultimate Explosions, shown tonight.

 

M Mahieu, 60, who lives at the farm with his wife and daughter, seems to have a relaxed attitude to the subject of ordnance.

 

Like many farmers in areas of Belgium and northern France scarred by the Western Front he is used to digging up old artillery shells and other potentially lethal devices during his work.

 

But history suggests he should not be all that relaxed. In 1955 one of the four unused mines at the southern end of the ridge detonated after 38 years in the ground.

 

The explosion was believed to have been triggered by a lightning strike.

[bd1]

My mother-in-law walked in her youth over a small path every day for over 15-20 years until a neighbor got a foot caught on something on the trail and fell on her nose - it turned out to be a row of AT-mines laid prob. in 1944.

 

Also in my youth (1988?) a friend of mine (he had suffered meningitis) on our way home pulled out something from a little river and throw it to us asking ´What is this ?´ . It was a 82mm. mortar round AFAIR.

[Arthur Hubers]

Better yet, the live 9135 lbs of Torpex being neatly packed in the Grand Slam bomb on display at the gate of RAF Scampton for some fifteen years...

http://www.gunnies.pac.com.au/gallery/grand_slam.htm

[BP]

It is remarkable how often a ACW shell kills someone. Every couple of years it seems. I suppose the filler crystalizes and becomes less stable?

 

My mother's friend had a live shell pulled out of her house (from an interior wall) in Charleston a few years back. It hit during a Union bombardment, and was progressively plastered and painted over, becoming indistinguishable until it was exposed during a renovation.

 

The EOD tech said it was one of the most dangerous he handled, as it was still live and the original fuse was unstable as hell (had cork and thin metal in the detonator).

[BansheeOne]

Yep. On the Autobahn, no less.