The Mystery of Object FOST 8998

In a storage container at Fort Stanwix National Monument sits an iron object catalogued as "FOST 8998." It was found in the remains of the 18th-century fort and entered in the collection in the 1970s as a nail. When staff came across it again during a 2023 inventory, a closer look suggested something else: a piece of modified shot, or bar shot, meant to be fired from a musket.

Object FOST 8998, which the park describes as unique among 18th-century military museum collections. National Park Service.

What bar shot was

In artillery, bar shot was a cannon projectile made of two balls, or half-balls, smaller than the gun's bore and joined by a solid iron bar. It belonged to the era of sailing ships and black-powder cannon. Once it left the muzzle, the pieces tumbled through the air and swept across whatever they struck, which made them useful for bringing down masts and cutting a ship's shrouds and rigging. The same tumbling made bar shot less accurate than an ordinary cannonball, so it was fired at shorter range.

Types of ammunition, including bar shot and chain shot. Image from the National Park Service's page.

Navies used fixed bar, expanding bar and chain shot to wreck enemy vessels. The weighted ends flew and spun with enough force to rip large holes in heavy sailcloth, split wooden hulls and bring down masts as thick as trees.

One of a kind, or simply never found?

Research into where the object came from found no other example in any collection of the period. There is, however, a written description of something very similar. In September 1776, while British and American forces fought for New York City, Major General William Howe wrote to George Washington from his headquarters on "York Island":

"My Aid de Camp charged with the Delivery of this Letter, will present to you a Ball cut and fixed to the Ends of a Nail, taken from a Number of the same Kind, found in the Encampments quitted by your Troops on the 15th Instant—I do not make any Comment upon such unwarrantable and malicious Practices, being well assured the Contrivance has not come to your Knowledge."

The park's article suggests Howe had reason to complain. If bar shot from a cannon could tear down sails and masts, a smaller version fired from a musket would have done terrible damage to a soldier.

What the object was remains open. Soldiers may have made such pieces on their own, or the Continental Army may have issued them; no records, other references or matching artifacts have turned up to settle it. Until something does, FOST 8998 keeps its secret.

Sources

• National Park Service, Fort Stanwix National Monument, "The Mystery of Object FOST 8998," part of the series Curious Collections of Fort Stanwix, The Oneida Carry Era. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/object-fost-8998-bar-shot.htm
• Howe's letter to Washington, September 1776, as cited by the park from Founders Online, National Archives (accessed by the park on May 31, 2023): https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-06-02-0283
• The park also cites Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopædia: or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1728).
• The park's article says research into the object's "providence"; the word meant is provenance, and it is written that way here.