Blakely rifle or Blakely gun is the name of a series of rifled muzzle-loading cannon designed by British army officer Captain Theophilus Alexander Blakely. The British army declined to use the design. The guns were mostly sold to Russia and the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Blakely rifles, especially the 3.5-inch and 3.6-inch, 12-pounder muzzle loaders, were imported by the Confederacy in larger numbers than other Imported English cannon.

Development and first use 
The Blakely rifled artillery gun was designed with a cast-iron core and included wrought-iron or steel banding to reinforce the breech. Blakely himself noted that the cannon was to be built up tube after tube, compressing the inner tubes and extending the outer tubes by a certain calculation. This was to be done to prevent the inside breaking before sufficient strain was sent to the outside as would be the case with any thick tubes made in one piece. Blakely wrote that, paradoxically, by using this method of two layer construction, a thick tube would be strengthened by diminishing its thickness and would weigh half as much. Blakely wrote that he had shown that no rifled cannon of considerable size succeeded when made in one mass.

Blakely was a pioneer in this two tube, or two layer, design. Nonetheless, the British government rejected his designs. The contemporaneous Armstrong guns of Sir William George Armstrong were of similar design, but unlike Blakely, Armstrong had his own foundry. Because Blakely believed that Armstrong had infringed his patents, he stopped offering his designs to the British military when Armstrong became superintendent of the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich.

Blakely was more successful in selling cannons to the Confederacy. One of the guns was a 12-pounder Blakely delivered to the Confederates for use against Fort Sumter at the start of the American Civil War. That gun was the first rifled cannon fired in the war. It had been bought by Charles K. Prioleau in London and sent to Charleston before the surrender of Fort Sumter. The gun was used from Morris Island where it accurately sent projectiles against Fort Sumter, 1,250 yards (1,193 meters) away.

Blakely contracted with companies including Fawcett, Preston, & Company of Liverpool, Vavasseur of London, George Forrester and Company of Liverpool, Low Moor Iron Company, and the Blakeley Ordnance Company of London for the manufacture of his guns. The cannon foundries produced about 400 guns to Blakely's design. Most were made of iron. Blakely also sold some guns to Russia. Massachusetts bought eight 9-inch and four 11-inch models.

Because Blakely continued to experiment with designs, he produced five to as many as ten different designs, which were manufactured, some with variants. The Blakely rifled guns fired ammunition weighing between 10 and 470 pounds.

Variations 
At least nine varieties of 3.5-inch 12-pounder rifles alone were produced. Rifling types included flat-sided bores or bores with grooves cut in them into which flanges on the shells would fit.

The foundries manufactured Blakely rifles in 2.5-inch (6-pounder), 2.9-inch, 3.5-inch (12-pounder), 3.75-inch (16-pounder), 4-inch (18-pounder), 4.5-inch (20-pounder), 6.4-inch (100-pounder), 7-inch (120-pounder), 7.5-inch (150-pounder), 8-inch (200-pounder), 9-inch (250-pounder), 11-inch and 12.75-inch (450-pounder shells or 650-pound solid shot) bores.

Further use in the American Civil War 
A Confederate horse artillery battery, suggested by Colonel Turner Ashby, was organized November 11, 1861. R. Preston Chew's battery, the initial battery of the unit was originally called Ashby's Horse Artillery. The battery was engaged in Stonewall Jackson's Shenandoah Valley Campaign (1862). According to historian Jennings C. Wise, the armament of the battery "from first to last consisted of 3 pieces; a Blakely imported British rifled piece, which fired a percussion shell; a smooth-bore 12-pounder howitzer; and a 3-inch iron rifle."

The Confederate commander of Fort Pulaski near the coast outside of Savannah, Georgia during the Siege of Fort Pulaski, Colonel Charles H. Olmstead, used two 4.5-inch Blakely rifles in his ultimately unsuccessful defense which ended with the fort's surrender on April 11, 1862 after a 112-day siege.

A July 3, 1862 letter from Frank M. Coker of the Sumter Flying Artillery to his wife mentions that during the Seven Days Battles he was ordered to carry down the line a large Blakely rifled gun.

The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia had a variety of artillery pieces at the Battle of Antietam. Many were inferior models to those of the Union Army of the Potomac. Blakely rifles were among the better rifled models used by the Confederates at that battle. Confederate batteries performed well despite being hampered by the frequent deployment of four different cannon in a battery. John B. Brockenbrough's battery, which was heavily engaged in the battle north and west of the Dunker Church, had four different cannon, including a Blakely rifle. 

Blakely rifles were used by the Confederate ship SS Georgiana, which was run aground and scuttled on the night of March 19, 1863, while attempting to run past the Federal Blockading Squadron and into port at Charleston, South Carolina on its first voyage. Two Blakely rifles were recovered from the wreck in 1974.

"The Widow Blakely" was a 7.5-inch rifle that the Confederates used during their 1863 defense of Vicksburg, Mississippi. On May 22, 1863, a shell exploded while in the gun's barrel while the widow was firing at a Union gunboat. The explosion only took part of the end of the muzzle off. The Confederates cut what had been a 124-inch-long barrel back to 100 inches and continued to use the rifle as a mortar until Vicksburg fell to the Union Army under the command of Major General Ulysses S. Grant.

Two 12.75-inch Blakelys, the largest guns in the Confederate arsenal, were mounted in 1863 at Charleston, South Carolina.

The commerce raider CSS Alabama carried a Blakely rifled gun.

Chew's Battery fought at the Battle of Fairfield, one of the cavalry battles on July 3, 1863, the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Blakely rifles, as the most commonly imported British artillery guns, continued in service through the war. Chew's Battery served through the rest of the war concluding with the Appomattox campaign.

Citations

References 
 Blakely, "A. T." Remarks on Artillery on JSTOR  open access. This is a paper published at pages 316-324 in Volume 7 of the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (1836-1869) entitled "On the practical application of a principle announced to the academy by R. Mallett, Esq.; and some remarks on rifled cannon" with a reply by "Dr. Hart" and further reply by Captain Blakely. Attribution: Public domain.
 Hansen, Les D. Blakely gun. In Historical Times Illustrated History of the Civil War, edited by Patricia L. Faust. New York: Harper & Row, 1986. . p. 66.
 Hartwig, D. Scott. To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. .
 Hazlett, James C., Edwin Olmstead, and M. Hume Parks. Field Artillery Weapons of the American Civil War, rev. ed., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983. .
 Huey, C. A. Imported English Artillery in Current, Richard N., ed., The Confederacy. New York: Simon and Schuster Macmillan, 1993. . Macmillan Compendium. Sections from the four-volume Macmillan Encyclopedia of the Confederacy. pp. 85-86.
 Krick, Robert E.L. Defending Lee's Flank in Gallagher, Gary W., ed. The Antietam Campaign. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. .
 Longacre, Edward G. Lee's Cavalrymen: A History of the Mounted Forces of the Army of Northern Virginia. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2002. .
  Melton, Jr., Jack W. Basic Facts on Artillery: Civil War Cannon. Artilleryman Magazine, May 5, 2022 Updated Sep 4, 2022.
 Smith, Graham. Civil War Weapons. New York: Chartwell Books, Inc., 2011. .
 Smith, Timothy B. The Union Assaults at Vicksburg: Grant Attacks Pemberton, May 17-22, 1863. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2020. .
 
 Wise, Jennings C. The long arm of Lee, or, The history of the artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia : with a brief account of the Confederate Bureau of Ordnance. Volume 1.  Lynchburg, VA: J.P. Bell and Co., 1915. . Attribution: Public domain.
 Wittenberg, Eric J. Gettysburg's Forgotten Cavalry Actions: Farnsworth's Charge, South Cavalry Field, and the Battle of Fairfield, July 3, 1863, revised and expanded edition. New York: Savas Beatie LLC, 2011. .

External links 

 Captain Alexander Blakely RA—A biography

Artillery of the United Kingdom
Field artillery of the Confederate States of America
Field artillery
Muzzleloaders