Equipment

1st Stuart Horse Artillery

Major General JEB Stuart

Major John Pelham

Major James Breathed

Equipment

1st Stuart Horse Artillery Battery of Virginia Incorporated has the best equipment owned and available for members to use. All of our equipment is individually owned and the battery members work together to supply ammunition and to maintain the equipment. For the 2012 reenacting season, we have available:

6-pound Bronze Gun (top left)

3 inch Ordinance Rifle (top right)

12-pound bronze Field Howitzer (bottom)

Two Limbers (not pictured)

We are often asked about the color of our equipment. It has become rather unique in the hobby.

The formula for the paint color of artillery equipment was the same in the ordnance and artillery manuals for both sides during the war and is described as “olive”. The formula has items included that are difficult to reproduce by today’s standards.

The formula calls for the base pigment to be yellow ochre and basically add black. The more black that is added the more green the color becomes.

The curator of a well-established museum in the Shenandoah Valley had the formula created which came out very close to the color we use. He also owns original equipment of this same color.

There is also original equipment that has the more green color to it. This has been the basis of much controversy over the years.

Upon studying many photographs of individual artillery pieces as well as artillery parks there are differences in the colors of many of these guns. You must discount any mud that has dried on the equipment in the photographs however as it tends to be a lighter color.

We surmise, that during the war, the paint was not always mixed to the standard formula, which gives the variation in color. We have found on our equipment that light changes the color rather dramatically.

It can appear a very olive to a rather bright yellow depending on the light of day. We believe it to be correct and prefer our current color of equipment to that of the more mainstream “olive drab” that is predominately being used.

2000 — 2010

10 years as a Battery.