We decided to spend another day at Gettysburg (remember, every day is Saturday!). We took a tour of Eisenhower's farm which was very interesting. Unfortunately, it started to rain like hell, so we didn't really get to wander around very much.
During our guided tour yeaterday, our guide mentioned that there were two Whitworth rifles on display near the Eternal Light Peace Memorial (the irony seems pretty thick, but I digress). It turns out that two of these weapons were fielded by the Confederates at the battle of Gettysburg. They were manufactured in England and the Confederate Army seemed to get them through the blockade. Few were fielded by the Union army. The most interesting feature of these rifles was the fact that they were breach loaders. That would seem to be a way to increase the rate of fire. This was a 12 pounder with a bore of 2.75 inches. The interesting part was that the bore was hexagonal (not rifled) and fired a projectile that had a hexagonal cross section. Other rifled canon, which were muzzle loaded, had rifling and used a sabot type round (like a Minie ball). I found this very interesting and ended up buying a couple good books on Civil War artillery.
