A Strange Engine of War: The “Winans” Steam Gun and the Civil War in Maryland

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Description

Within the Spring of 1861, with secession in full flower and Baltimore occupied by General Benjamin “Beast” Butler’s nervous Union troops, reports emerged that Southern sympathizers there possessed a terrible weapon of mass destruction, one able to firing 300 rounds per minute and utterly destroying anything in its path. But not everyone was once impressed. “A very amiable machine, indeed, for killing friend and foe,” said the Scientific American. “We suppose that the inventor intended to make use of it for the aim of committing suicide.” What was once this awful “engine of war,” and did it ever work? John Lamb presents for the primary time in print the whole story of the “Winans Steam Gun” and its antecedents, from inception Within the fertile – from time to time fantastical – minds of nineteenth century mechanical engineers, through personal jealousies, patent disputes, and test firings. Here too, is the tale of Ross Winans, the colourful, pro-Southern Baltimore industrialist to whom the gun was once mistakenly attributed, and who as seized and briefly imprisoned after its capture.

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