[Hey, I found an Internet connection!]
We’re (still) back at the Perryville reenactment for two more days …
While we were visiting with some of the folks in the horse-drawn artillery unit, we walked with a couple of them to meet another artillery unit and see their pieces, which were on display but not being used.
Over the course of the day, we learned that a unit of horse-drawn artillery would’ve had six or eight cannon, each pulled by six horses. As you’ve seen in the previous artillery photos, each cannon is attached to a limber (the front wheels of the four-wheeled device) with a box on top. That box carries the cannon’s ammunition (thirty-nine shells in the case of the twelve-pound howitzer we saw).
Each cannon, then, would’ve been accompanied by a second horse-drawn limber with a caisson attached, and each caisson carried another two boxes of ammunition. As you can see here, a spare wheel was carried on the back of the caisson.
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Portions of this particular limber and caisson are original, and it has all sorts of nooks and crannies and carrying cases for a spare pole, an ax, a hatchet, etc.
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Each unit also had its own blacksmith, who would’ve had a setup like this:
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The Slower Road 