Research Arsenal Spotlight 41: William Prince Ordnance Department
William Prince was the son of a well-known horticulturalist, William Robert Prince, and Charlotte Goodwin (Collins) Prince of Flushing, New York. William Prince initially served as a private in the 9th New York State Militia (later designated the 83rd New York Infantry). He was wounded at the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862. Although he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the 159th New York Infantry, he never served with them and instead took up a position in the Ordnance Department, serving much of his time during the war at the Washington Arsenal.
Most of William Prince’s letters in the Research Arsenal collection were written to his brother, “Banny,” better known as LeBaron Bradford Prince, who later became the 14th Territorial Governor of New Mexico.
Appointment at Washington Arsenal
William Prince wrote the first letter in our collection to his brother on January 14, 1864, from Washington, D.C. He was very excited and proud of obtaining a position in the Ordnance Department, as there were few positions available and it required a rather arduous examination which few men were able to pass. Making it through the examination, granted William Prince a certain level of recognition from his peers, which he described.
“You see I am almost unique before the board only 1 other being under way at the same time that has got through. I have heard the poor innocents slaughtered off 3 or 4 a day. But when they stick to a man it takes 1 whole day almost for the oral examination. Its astounding what a cheek some of these candidates must have had to try this thing on. This fact of there being only 2 of us makes it far pleasanter in our daily intercourse with this Office than if we were 2 of a whole rabble of newly pledged officers. The clerks and others in the office seem to look upon us as the ones that had weathered a pretty stiff gale and respect us accordingly.”
In a letter written March 13, 1864, William Prince provided his brother with a detailed floorplan of the house he shared with several other ordnance officers (see above). He also shared that Ordnance Officers didn’t remain at one post for long, and that he should expect to be stationed at various arsenals throughout his service.
“One thing I must tell you before I forget. When I handed my order in at the office to be entered on the Post order Book the Clerk looked over and said, there is no “temporarily” in the order so you will be here for 6 months. It now appears that Ordnance Officers are rotated from Post to Post every 6 months in order to familiarize them with the different classes of work done at the different Arsenals & Posts. This is done with all officers except commanders of Posts unless some unusual circumstance may dictate a different course. They say my next will probably be Watervliet.”
William Prince Testing Ordnance
In the same lengthy letter written on March 13, 1864, William Prince also described his current duties at the Washington Arsenal, which involved testing a large number of experimental firearms.
“One of my duties has been to conduct the trials of new Rifles or Carbines of which one new design a day is about the average. In these cases I send over by the orderly from the Office to the Master Armorer at Shop “A” that a Carbine is in the Office to be tried, and that he will send over a man for it and make the necessary arrangements and that I will be at the 300 yard stand in half an hour (Oh we are so deliberate). In half an hour I strode to the 300 yard stand and witness the firing from a fixed rest 20 shots, making notes in my memorandum book on the general operation of the piece, the men at the target taking the coordinates of the shots. I then order down a standard arm of the class in question and have it fired 20 times; then order the firing squad to the 500 yard stand and do the same thing. Then walk over to the office simply saying to Mr Dudley the master armorer, “Mr D before sending in your target record you will please fire the piece 3 times at the “penetration target” and enter the result also weigh the piece before sending it back cleaned to the Office.
The Book is sent in and my Clerk makes out a blank form report on 4 blank forms reducing each target of 20 shots from coordinates at center of target to coordinates of “center of impact” and enters the weight, kind, length &c of piece the grs of powder & lead in cartridges, the no of grooves, the length of twist, the calibre, and several other points in their proper places, and next morning say they are handed to me I have meanwhile made a report on the peculiarities of construction in the piece, the points that I consider advantageous and the defects or objectionable features in my opinion and refer to the detailed reports of firing which accompany the report, finally stating whether I think it on the whole sufficiently meritorious to deserve further trial in the hands of troops.
If I (even I) recommend the latter course, the proprietor of the invention (who is present always at the trial) receives a day or two afterwards, from the ordnance office, an order for the regular 1000 pieces which are always ordered first if we conclude to try it, just to arm on regiment. This with Carbines is about $30,000 and it rests with me 2 days out of 3 to say whether somebody shall have it or not, with the prospect of further orders. You have no idea how complicated the question of breech loading carbines is getting. We have 137 different designs now on hand and they come about 5 a week.”
On September 25, 1864, William Prince wrote a fascinating account of some of the weapons testing he witnessed at the nearby Navy Yard. These tests cost enormous sums of money and were used to see the effectiveness of different types of weapons against various mock ship hulls, all modeled off of existing ships.
“I went over with Maj Benton, Genl Dyer, Maj Rodman and two other Genls not Ordce to see some experiments at the Navy Yard Battery in firing large guns against iron plates. There has of course been a vast amount of this kind of experimenting going on the[re] as the Washn Navy Yard is the headquarters of the Ordce Dept of the Navy. The plates used are generally 10 to 15 feet long by 5 or 6 feet high and of all kinds of thicknesses and numbers of thicknesses. There are seen the results of previous experiments, the huge plates ranged like books in a titan library and labelled “La Guerre,” “Warrior” “Bellerophon” &c &c all made of the plates from precisely the same English, French or other firms that furnished the plates for the vessels named and all with the broken oak backing still kept on them, said backing having been carefully constructed from drawings and descriptions of the same vessels. The holes through the plates are all catalogued, dated and there appears in hieroglyphic characters P 300.40 M SP Parrott 300 pounder 40 lbs Mortar Powder Steel Punch, then Dahlgreen 15 inch smooth bore 60 lbs Mortar powder 480 lbs shot 200 yds, Brooks Rifle 180 lb Tennessee Sabot 35 lbs Cannon Powder. 280 yds &c &c. Here also are all the proposed systems of sheathing with successive inch plates instead of 5 solid plates and with alternate plates of iron & rubber each an inch thick. Every native and foreign conception is here with the results of our own and foreign guns upon it. Each lages (plate) can be fired at about 4 times and as they cost some of them as high as $35,000 a piece with the ship side built behind them the experiments are somewhat costly. Targets of chains in single & double thickness over a ships side a la Kearsarge are here also. Well what I saw was this. About a quarter of a million was to be expended in the trials of some of John Brown of Sheffield’s great plates of the very best wrought iron which the English have used. He is their great man and when they use other than his plates it is because they don’t want to go the expense. One plate of 5 inch thick was fired at 4 times it had 5 feet of solid oak behind it and a 1 inch plate on the far side.
The shots were all different. Three of them pierced it and 2 tore away all the oak and went 10 and 15 feet into the bank behind it. The one that didn’t pierce it was a Brooks projectile from an 8 inch Brooks gun. The Tennessee’s gun, a kind made for the Rebs by the British, and considered their tip topper. There were ever so many more trials of French and English as well as Amcn plates but I will only mention the big thing which was firing the 15 inch gun with 60 pounds Cannon Powder and a round shot of turned cast steel weighing 480 lbs against a plate of Steel 7 inches thick and backed proportionately with oak. The shot went through this plate and tore things generally so that no more shots could be tried at it till it is rebacked. The edges of the holes in these cases are usually red hot and the wood work is invariably set on fire by the heat generated by compression, the balls when other than cast iron are mashed into disks in some cases almost turned wrong side out. The one central point of the rear side of the ball is the only one that has no tendency to change and it remains in what is technically called a tit thus [sketch of before and after of a ball’s deformation on impact]. The cast iron shot are partially fused but not till they have done their work.”
Fire At Washington Arsenal
On June 17, 1864, there was a horrific explosion at the Washington Arsenal after flares left in the sun to dry ignited and flew into a nearby warehouse where they caused a barrel of gunpowder to explode and blew the roof off of the building. At the time 108 women were working in the building, and 21 were killed in the resulting fire and explosion.
William Prince was working at the Washington Arsenal at the time of the explosion and described the grizzly seen to his brother in a letter written on June 20, 1864.
“But now the roof has fallen in and the South end is all on the ground and beginning to break up, and there they are, Mr Brown had sworn that he knew they had all got out, he hoped the fire would give him a temporary respite by obliterating the traces. At any rate he lied perhaps to snake himself believe that his carelessness had not been fatal. But there they were, the beams were supported by them angularly as they had fallen on them and they peered out, deadening the fire in smouldering [smoldering] roasting spots with tangles of steel hoop of skirts. A horrible smell and peeps of white bones. Oh Banny it was worse than a battlefield, and we were sick even the major.
Well there were 17 burned up in the building and 3 have since died. No more will die and there are but 3 or 4 more much burnt. There were some 120 in the building at the time I think I can safely say that they were suffocated almost instantly. The fire was kept in one building in the midst of an Arsenal. We all felt that we had done well. Mr Brown was in reality not as much to blame as he was scared. The funeral was immense the coffins (made at the post the same afternoon) were splendid black walnut & silver in profusion. The men of the Arsenal have given a days wages for a monument or the families, and the Officers must do something handsome.”
William Prince continued to serve in the Ordnance Department through the end of the war and after, at times stationed in New York, Pennsylvania, and Charleston, South Carolina, eventually reaching the rank of captain before his death at the age of 47 on December 18, 1880.
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If you enjoyed this article, check out some of our other featured collections like Benjamin Hulburd of the 2nd Vermont Infantry and Samuel Huntingdon of the 100th New York Infantry.
