Civil War Relic?

[Okie-Colin]

I have been hunting a civil war battle site on private property in Arkansas. On Tuesday, October 11th I found two lead musket balls buried about five inches deep on a ridge, Further away from this site my Fisher overloaded and on a whim I dug and recovered an iron ball at around four inches deep. It is iron, diameter of 1 - 5/8 's inches and weighs one pound. THe account of this battle lists the Confederates having two "2 inch Arkansas Rifles". None of the other artillery listed shows anything with a similiar bore. Any ideas, is this a civil war relic? If not, than what else could it be? There is a ball with the exact same dimensions listed on Ebay as a civil war relic.

 

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[JakePhelps]

Looks like a projectile to me

 

[SomeGuy]

I agree w/ SWR, but it doesn't quite fit the dimensions and weights listed here:

http://www.civilwarartillery.com/

( I bookmarked this site from another post about Civil War artilliery in this forum)

The closest thing here is grape from a 24 or 32 pounder, or solid shot from a 1 pounder.

 

[ClamBob]

Is there a hole for a fuse? I have found similar but larger artilliary projectiles (in pieces) where the rounded fuse hole was obvious. Never have found a whole one.

Actually, I did find a solid iron one about the size of a baseball in the river near my childhood home, but it was while bottle hunting, not detecting. My home town, in FL, was known to have Confederate blockade runners and there was a battle between two Union boats and a Confederate boat in that area. Rumor is the Confederate boat dumped its cannons to increase their speed to outrun the Union boats...now I wonder where those cannons are. Guess I should research that story.

Nice find and HH,
BobJ

 

[Okie-Colin]

No hole for a fuse Bob. I have a six pound ball that is solid that my Grandmother gave me years ago. This is like that, but smalller. A solid round ball.

 

[DigEmAll]

Looks like some of the grape shot that I have in my collection of civilwar stuff.

 

[trk5capt]

Possible pre cival war era ship's bow cannon ball. Have found same here in Charleston S.C. Any waterways nere where you recovered. trk5capt.

 

[Bo Hott]

Hey nice find the large iron ball is either solid 2" shot or a piece of canister grape from large caliber gun. Congratulations either way.

 

[goldencoin]

It is a Grape shot, part of a cannister loaded into a cannon and shot at infantry and calvery, I got one that i bought for $50, neat find