what about oil?

What did they oil their guns with during the civil war? The whaling industry pretty much collapsed about 1840 and modern petrolium did not come on line untill after the civil war. There was a lot of shooting going on and a lot of guns needed cleaning.

 

[musketman]

What did they oil their guns with during the civil war? The whaling industry pretty much collapsed about 1840 and modern petrolium did not come on line untill after the civil war. There was a lot of shooting going on and a lot of guns needed cleaning.

Lots of bears in the Appalachian Mountains, perhaps they were supplied with rendered bear fat and oil...

 

[roundball]

What did they oil their guns with during the civil war? The whaling industry pretty much collapsed about 1840 and modern petrolium did not come on line untill after the civil war. There was a lot of shooting going on and a lot of guns needed cleaning.

Apparently the momentum of the whale oil industry would have carried it through the Civil War...here's some info turned up in Google:


Abraham Gesner saved more whales than Green Peace ever will.
In 1849, Gesner devised a method to distill kerosene from petroleum.

In 1846 there were 735 ships in the whaling fleet.

Thirty years later, in 1876, the fleet was down to 39 ships...Kerosene had taken over the whale oil market.

 

[AZ-Robert]

What did they oil their guns with during the civil war? The whaling industry pretty much collapsed about 1840 and modern petrolium did not come on line untill after the civil war. There was a lot of shooting going on and a lot of guns needed cleaning.

I think whaling peaked 1820-1850. It declined in the years before the CW, but didn't stop altogether. Whale oil was still probably the main source of lubricant.

Whaling ships were an important target of the Confederate Navy, and wartime losses on the fleet helped bring about the post war demise of the whaling "industry." One ship (CSS Shenandoah) is pretty much credited with ruining the Union's whaling fleet - capturing 32 "whalers and merchantmen" in one year. In fact, the last action of the CW was CSS Shenandoah's sinking of a whaler near Alaska 7 weeks after the surrender at Appomattox.

So say Dupuy & Dupuy in their Encyclopedia of Military History.