Gabriel James Rains and his younger brother George Washington Rains liked blowing things up. Both ended up working in the Confederate Ordnance Department: Gabriel heading the Torpedo Bureau and George the Nitre and Mining Bureau, where he established the Augusta Powder Works and kept the Confederacy supplied with gunpowder. Gabriel was more concerned with devilish devices to use the powder: mines (“torpedoes” in Civil War parlance) that could be buried on land or anchored in water. Methods of detonation for the landmines varied from pressure-sensitive fuses to tripwires or lanyards. They were used in the Peninsula Campaign, in the defense of Charleston, at Fort McAllister in Georgia, and the defenses of Richmond, and elsewhere. Underwater mines included some sophisticated electrical detonation, as the USS Commodore Jones found out in the James River in May 1864. Rains also tried his hand at less sophisticated methods, like making an iron imitation of a lump of coal that could be loaded with powder and smuggled into an enemy ship’s coal bunker.

By comparison, his grenades were gentlemanly. Patterned after the Federal Ketchum grenade, the body was a similar powder-filled tapered iron cylinder. Detonation was still by a plunger, though he apparently used his own pressure sensitive fuses. His initial drawings indicated its flight would be stabilized by a set of fins at the tail, like the Ketcham, but with the addition of a long cloth tail by which it could be slung by the user to a much greater distance. Rains termed them “Dart Grenades” and envisioned grenadiers carrying a dozen or more in tubes attached to a waist belt with shoulder support straps, though they could also be used as an improvised land mine by planting them in the ground nose-up. How they were actually used in action is a bit unclear, but they were requested by some officers and are occasionally excavated, like this one.

This is a scarce example, about four inches long and likely his one-pound version. It has expected overall corrosion and pitting, but has its iron plug in place in the base and the housing in the nose for the plunger. It is a scarce piece of Confederate ordnance and interesting example of how southern ingenuity sought to overcome the north’s advantages in numbers and industrial capacity.  [sr] [ph:m]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THIS ITEM, AS WITH ALL OTHER ITEMS AVAILABLE ON OUR WEB SITE,

MAY BE PURCHASED THROUGH OUR LAYAWAY PROGRAM.

CLICK HERE FOR OUR POLICIES AND TERMS.

THANK YOU!