Sipsey Street Irregulars: Praxis or Civil War Archaeology, take your pick: Civil War Crimean Ovens

Friday, March 30, 2012

Praxis or Civil War Archaeology, take your pick: Civil War Crimean Ovens

When I last ventured to DC, I took a selfish day before the hearings and visited Gunston Hall, the home of Founder George Mason. Luckily, the Friends of Fairfield Archaeology were having a seminar that Saturday and I learned a heckuva lot about local historical archaeology, Gunston Hall, etc. and met a whole bunch of nice folks. Now, FOFA is having their Spring Symposium on Archaeology of the Civil War at the James Lee Center, Monroe Gymnasium, 2855 Annandale Road, Falls Church, Virginia on Saturday, March 31 between 8:30 AM and 3:30 PM. Admission is free, although seating is limited to 200.

I mention this because one of the topics will be Civil War Crimean Ovens, presented by Wally Owen, Assistant Director of the Fort Ward Museum and Historic Site (which was itself within spitting distance of my hotel).

I have always been interested in military technology and this method of heating large tents and living spaces without endangering the occupants with carbon monoxide poisoning seemed interesting to me. Offered for what it is worth.

3 comments:

Dedicated_Dad said...: Excellent idea - I see something similar used in "thermal mass heaters" that just use a big pile of rock, brick or cob with a snakey-chimney to capture as much heat as possible.

One question though: how does this NOT endanger the occupants with CO? If flue gases escape the trench, then....??!!; March 30, 2012 at 2:20 PM
Happy D said...: Neat.
Thanks for sharing.; March 31, 2012 at 11:50 AM
pdxr13 said...: http://neilorme.com/Rocket%20Mass%20Heaters.pdf

By having the burning part inside the shelter, you get ventilation. The Crimean tent heater is a low-efficiency version of the RMH as described by Evans/Jackson.

I'm sure that the tents over the crimean heaters were "ventilated" pretty well, and they did their best to make the chimney tight to optimize chimney effect as well as minimize smoke in the tent.

A big advantage of the external fire pit is that officers keep warm while enlisted people keep the fire burning. Busy enlisted people don't think so much and cause less trouble.; March 31, 2012 at 1:40 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Friday, March 30, 2012

Praxis or Civil War Archaeology, take your pick: Civil War Crimean Ovens

3 comments:

Blog Archive

Followers