Bullseye lantern

[Marine Mike]

Re: Bullseye lantern

Old wicks can get gummed/varnished diminishing their ability to wick so another vote to replace it.

[Ferguson's Artillery]

Re: Bullseye lantern

The recent (April, 2012) press conference to announce the completion of the conservation of the dark lantern from the H.L. Hunley submarine proves that such lanterns were in use during the War. Photos of the lantern are on the Friends of the Hunley Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/HunleyProject#!/photo.php?fbid=346566012057754&set=a.346565992057756.69751.129387790442245&type=3&theater

This "dark lantern" was a common style in long use, so is appropriate for use in an authentic War event. Similar antiques are available on E Bay, but you must look for the early models. Any lantern with "Boat Signal Lantern" written on it is postwar, for sure. The best bet for our use is a lantern with a "bullseye" lens, not the fresnel type, which is postwar. Look carefully at the burner: the early models, sure to be extant during the War, burned whale oil, and have two burner tubes, which extend deeply into the oil reservoir. Whale oil was viscous, especially when cold, and the long wick tubes were so fashioned to conduct heat into the oil and make it flow more easily. Later models burned other petroleum fuel mixtures, and had flat wicks; a knurled knob to raise the wick is also postwar.

The Lantern Guild web site (Google it) is a great source of information on these lanterns.

Now, this dark lantern, so-called because it has a sliding internal shade to allow the operator to hide or reveal the light within, was later valuable to cops stalking nefarious individuals, and thus came to be called a "police lantern" in later years. You may also find it referred to as a "bullseye" lantern.

The dark lantern which came out of the H.L. Hunley submarine was not a signal lantern. You can see how folks might think so, since later, similar lanterns actually had "Boat Signal Lantern" written on them. However, a dark lantern is not made for signaling, and is singularly unsuited to the task. The Hunley's lantern, despite what continues to be stated by uninformed dilettantes and some of the professionals tasked with conservation of the Hunley artifacts, was not the source of the "blue light" which figures so prominently in the Hunley story.

Period "blue light" was a pyrotechnic signal in use by the military and civilian worlds for many generations before the War. It was familiar to everyone in the 1860s, and the historical references to "blue light" in the Hunley story are to this handheld, pyrotechnic signal, not a blue lantern. That's why the lens on the Hunley's dark lantern is clear, not blue: it wasn't used to produce the blue light signal. If you want to use period blue light in your impression, see my two YouTube videos which show how to make it, and what it looks like when you burn it: "Burning Blue Light" and "Making Civil War-Era Blue Light." Setting off a round of blue light at your next reenactment is a sure crowd-pleaser, and you can be confident that it is a documented period method of signaling and illumination.

Chris Rucker