Why were 20 balls found in a muzzle loaded weapon?

Question

I recall, way back in high school, someone came to describe the American Civil War, show local artifacts, that sort of thing. I remember them mentioning that muzzle-loaded weapons had been found with as many as twenty (I think? memory hazy) balls loaded into them. I took it that this represented some sort of wider phenomenon than a couple of odd weapons found. At the time, for whatever reason, I took away one of these mental pictures:

(1) Terrified by the horror of the situation, the owner of the weapon compulsively loaded it too many times. Perhaps it wouldn't fire, and it's all they could think to do.

(2) Alternatively, they used the excuse of 'needing to load their weapon' to avoid the fray, perhaps because their weapon was inoperational for whatever reason.

I thought back to this this morning, and wondered if there might be other scenarios:

(3) In scrounging for weapons, a soldier would pick up a found weapon and load it. This doesn't make a lot of sense, because I assume this weapon would explode if already loaded.

(4) Maybe, for whatever reason, this weapon was not meant to be fired at that time, but to carry the balls and powder.

Anyway, it's a bit of a riddle to me. Is it a common artifact? Maybe someone has some insight on it?

Answer 1

#1 happened often.

Soldiers were drilled to load, aim and fire in a fixed rhythm to maintain volley fire. In a well-drilled unit, this was muscle memory. If a soldier's musket did not fire, they may not notice with all the other guns going off simultaneously. The order to load would come, and they would dutifully pour more powder in and ram another ball down. The result would be something like this...

-------------------------------------
>=|*=|*
-------------------------------------

> spark source  = powder  | wad  * ball  - barrel

When fired, the spark from the primer would fall on the same inert gunpowder as before. The new powder would be blocked by the ball and wad. Click.

As volley fire continues, there will be more smoke and more very, very loud noises going off in the soldier's ear further befuddling them, but the drill will continue. Load, aim, fire, click. Load, aim, fire, click. Load, aim, fire, click.

At some point they'll notice they can't ram the ball down nearly as far as they should, but they may also think the barrel has been fouled by black powder residue and simply ram harder.

This scene from Glory shows an officer simulating battle conditions to rattle a soldier and impress upon his men the importance of drill.

---

#2 is covered by User58220 and sounds plausible to me.

---

#3 does not make sense, it would have to happen 20 times.

---

#4 is a very problematic way to store balls. They could get stuck in many, many ways. Balls were generally slightly smaller than the barrel, but this was in no way guaranteed. Lead is soft and manufacturing techniques were not very good. The balls could easily be misshapen in manufacturing or handling. Barrels became fouled by black powder residue from firing and the balls may no longer fit so loosely. While traveling, jarring the gun might cause a ball to jam in the barrel.

To ready your gun, you would first have to remove all the balls from the barrel and be sure you got them all out. There might be days between loading the barrel and readying it to fire. "Now did I put 18 balls in there or 19?" If a single ball gets stuck, you cannot fire the weapon and must disassemble it for cleaning.

Then you have to put them all those extra balls somewhere while you fire and march. If you put them on the ground, you'll lose them or march away from them. You need a bag or pocket, which is where you would have carried them in the first place.

Furthermore, militaries would not be carrying ball and powder separately. They used paper cartridges to increase their rate of fire. The powder and ball would be wrapped in a convenient package. The paper would be torn, powder poured down the barrel, then the wrapper for wadding, and finally the ball. Here is an excellent video showing the making and use of paper cartridges in the American Revolutionary War era.

Tubular magazines do exist, but they came much later and for breech loading repeating rifles.

In contrast, a bag has none of these problems.

---

Finally, muskets, cannon and pistols were sometimes "double-shotted" by loading two balls and extra powder, or more often a ball and some buckshot. Loading this way was a slow process, and put extra strain on the barrel. It was typically only done for the first shot and at very close range. This would only work with a smoothbore weapon and not with a rifle.

Answer 2

According to The Big Book of Gun Trivia, of the 24000 loaded muskets recovered after the Battle of Gettysburg, a quarter were properly loaded, half were double loaded, and the last quarter were multiple (>2) loaded. A further 11000 were unloaded.

Research (http://www.policyscience.net/ws/marshall.pdf among others) has shown that combat soldiers in past wars were very reluctant to deliberately fire on the enemy. Repeatedly going through the process of loading and attempting to fire is one way a Civil War combatant could avoid killing without standing out from those around him...

Answer 3

My great-grandfather (76th Pennsylvania) was an excellent shot. Told my grandfather he wasn't mad at anybody, he always fired in the air.One time he fired and he did see a man fall. When he told this story a tear fell from his eye.

Answer 4

This apparently refers to a Gettysburg study. The story is that after the battle of Gettysburg, the ordnance department collected all the abandoned rifles from the battlefield and examined them. In some cases rifles were found with multiple loadings, ie, ball, wadding, powder, ball wadding powder, ball wadding power, etc, one after the other in the barrel.

The reason for this is that once a misfire occurs you are screwed because now the ball is stuck in the barrel and you have to clear it--a timeconsuming operation. So what would happen is that soldier would simply reload his weapon and fire the cap which makes it APPEAR as though he is shooting, even though he is not.

Note that some modern authors have claimed this is evidence that soldiers were relunctant to kill people and just pretended to fire to avoid harming anyone. I find it far more likely that reloadings were a consequence of misfires and jams, not altruism.

Old Answer

Here I am assuming (A) the guns are old muskets, and (B) they were found in a random place. Based on further info this is probably not the case.

Possibly what you are seeing is the guns being used to simply store the balls. Typical ball bags of the period held 20-30 balls. If you wanted to carry more ammo than that, an easy way to do it was was to just drop the balls into the bore and plug it with a rag. This is even better than using a bag because the musket is hung on your back and so the weight of the balls is distributed across your back, whereas a ball bag has all the weight in one place, so it is more annoying to carry.

(this is probably not applicable to the case here, because the OP is almost certainly relating the Gettysburg ordnance study)

Answer 5

Muzzle-loading weapons were apparently frequently loaded with multiple shot. You can read this in the old literature, for example in Robinson Crusoe (17 century), where the procedure is described in detail. Multiple shot scattered increasing the probability of a hit.

Answer 6

I live west of Boston, near the Audubon Broadmoor nature reserve. This year, a hot summer dried out a vernal pool on my property to the point where I could walk the bottom. I went metal detecting and found a fused double musket ball.

Photo Link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/QRTM5NqiCcDQHUyK6

This was found at a depth of about 8" and I feel safe in making the assumption that both musket balls were fired from the same weapon (and were not two separate shots landing near each other just so and then fusing over the centuries).

This is a wooded area with deer, wild turkeys, beavers, otters, fisher cats, racoons, foxes and coyotes. It looks to me like a double shot was intentionally loaded - perhaps in the belief it would ensure greater destruction on impact.

I don't think this was an accidental double loading. If the two balls were separated by powder, they would have flown separately. Instead, I think it is clear that the heat and impact of the single discharge fused the two by ramming the driving ball into the outer one - probably in the first milliseconds of the discharge, while the two were still within the muzzle. Both, now fused, flew out as a single unit (and missed their target), as they remain, now hundreds of years later.

Colonial artifacts have been found in the area, as reported by the previous owners. If anyone knows how to accurately date these musket balls, please advise.

Answer 7

I'm not sure if this has been touched on; the first few responses did not.

In order to kill another human, you have to view them as lesser, inferior, or as an object. This is to say that for a soldier to kill another person, they need first to be brainwashed, then convinced the aforementioned views apply to the enemy.

While the brainwashing of an adolescents' mind constantly happens at a social level, brainwashing someone of mature mind is more difficult, especially when considering your countrymen as enemies.

The battles of the civil war were often fought between people of familiarity. For the majority of these soldiers, the side they fought on was chosen by proximity, rather than moral standing.

I believe these factors led to some soldiers not wanting to kill the enemy, and while following the volley orders, they loaded their rifle, but never pulled the trigger.

I can't remember the details, but I learned 20(?)-40(?) percent of soldiers who served in either World War admitted to intentionally fire above the enemy. If the separation of enemies in the World Wars still was not enough to convince soldiers to kill one another, then it follows the soldiers in the Civil War had even more reason to not want to kill the enemy.

In conclusion, I feel multiple rounds found in muzzle loaded rifles are a result of the good nature in humans.