Since these might well be the longest observed hits with a patched round ball, its worth looking into the background of the author of those claims.
Immediate response from many here has been that he was just "making it up". Indeed, prior to looking him up on the 'net, I too had never heard of Edmund Gaines, and presumed he was just some minor officer.
Far from it, turns out Edmund Pendleton Gaines was one of the great unsung heroes of our country, involved in pretty much all of our major national events in his nearly sixty year-long career...
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fga03
GAINES, EDMUND PENDLETON (1777”“1849). Edmund Pendleton Gaines, United States soldier, was born in Culpeper County, Virginia, on March 20, 1777, the son of James and Elizabeth (Strother) Gaines. The family moved to North Carolina at the end of the American Revolution and soon thereafter to Tennessee. After service as a lieutenant in a local militia company, Gaines was commissioned as an ensign in the Sixth United States Infantry (Tennessee) on January 10, 1799.
In March of that year he was promoted to second lieutenant; he was honorably discharged on June 15, 1800. He rejoined the army as a second lieutenant in the Fourth United States Infantry on February 16, 1801, and transferred to the Second Infantry in April 1802.
He was promoted to first lieutenant that month and to captain on February 28, 1807. During this period he surveyed a road from Nashville to Natchez, served as military collector of Mobile, and commanded the garrison at Fort Stoddert. He was involved in the arrest of Aaron Burr and presented testimony for the prosecution at his trial. Gaines subsequently took an extended leave of absence and began practicing law in Mississippi Territory but returned to the army at the beginning of the War of 1812.
On March 24, 1812, he was appointed major of the Eighth Infantry and on July 6, 1812, lieutenant colonel of the Twenty-fourth Infantry. From March 1813 until March 1814 he was colonel of the Twenty-fifth Infantry. His regiment especially distinguished itself at the battle of Chrysler's Field in 1813. He served as adjutant general of the army from September 1, 1813, through March 9, 1814, and at the same time was commander of Fort Erie, Upper Canada
Specific to the Battle of Fort Erie, wherein approximately half of the 2,500 man defending American force were killed, wounded or missing before it was over. Gaines was disabled during the fight by an exploding shell...
In the fort, General Gaines ordered his men to stand to. This produced rumblings from the troops forced to stand in their positions in heavy rain but would prove invaluable in the coming battle. He also ordered that the charges in all guns were to be drawn and replaced, ensuring the guns would not misfire through damp powder...
Of the nature of the fighting..
The attackers twice charged through a gap 7 feet wide between the two barrack buildings into the parade ground, but were unable to break into the barrack buildings and mess hall. The defenders in turn tried to recapture the northeast bastion but were driven back. General Drummond sent only two companies of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Scots to reinforce the attackers; they lost half their men and very few of them even reached the fort. After fighting swayed back and forth for nearly an hour, some Americans turned around an 18-pounder cannon on the rear redan and began to fire into the bastion less than 50 yards away. The British responded by turning one of the captured cannons around and knocking the American 18-pounder off its carriage.
With respect to his conduct during the Texas War for Independence; a skillfull political tightrope. Many US regulars were allowed to slip away to fight on the Texian side, and sources suggest that Houston had been intending to retreat clear to Nacodoches when Santa Anna by chance presented himself with a fraction of his army at San Jacinto.
Had Houston retreated to Nacodoches as planned, theory has it that the US military would have intervened.
Gaines commanded the southwest military division of the United States in 1836. His sympathies were with Texas, although he was prevented by his position from helping with the Texas Revolution. In accordance with neutrality laws, Secretary of War Lewis Cass ordered Gaines to post the Sixth Infantry at Fort Jesup, Louisiana, to prevent armed volunteers from the United States from entering Texas as volunteers for Sam Houston's army. A number of volunteer units crossed the Sabine River at Gaines Ferry, the property of his cousin James Gaines, despite the presence of the army.
Gaines's instructions forbade him to cross into Texas unless armed belligerents should threaten to violate United States territorial sovereignty. He was given discretion, however, to cross the Sabine River if Indian depredations should disturb the tranquility of the border. From Fort Jesup, therefore, he detached a regiment of dragoons to the east bank of the Sabine River with the implicit threat to the Cherokees that the tribe's interference with the Texas bid for political independence from Mexico would not be tolerated. He then dispatched Lt. Joseph Bonnell to the Caddo villages of east Texas to persuade them to remain at peace.
It was Bonnell who discovered the plot of Manuel Flores to incite the tribes to war against Texas. Gaines further strengthened the frontier by ordering the Sixth United States Infantry to Fort Jesup from Jefferson Barracks. He was absolutely forbidden to join cause directly with the Texas revolutionaries.
Having been falsely informed that 1,500 Indians and 1,000 Mexican cavalrymen were concentrated near Nacogdoches on the Old San Antonio Road, he advanced fourteen of his companies to the Louisiana-Texas frontier and called for a brigade of volunteers each from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi as well as a battalion from Alabama.
After the battle of San Jacinto, Gaines pulled back to Fort Jesup to await developments. Both Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston urged him to cross the border and establish his headquarters at Nacogdoches. Gaines demurred, but called up an additional requisition of volunteers in the light of a rumored second Mexican invasion of Texas.
Of his conduct re: the Indian Removal issue while NOT sucking up....
http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-3063
Gaines often expressed in private correspondence and in letters to his commanders in Washington the view that the U.S. government should deal with Native Americans fairly and humanely. He opposed removal and war and instead advocated converting them to Christianity and allowing them to join the military.
Throughout his career, Gaines supplied starving Native Americans with food, thoroughly investigated accusations of Native American violence rather than retaliating rashly, and refused to protect the rights of white squatters who settled on lands still held by Native Americans.
His views were contrary to Andrew Jackson's policies, however, creating animosity between the two. Gaines also quarreled publicly with General Winfield Scott about U.S. Native American policy, and as a result Gaines was denied promotion to major general despite aggressively campaigning for the position. Instead, Gaines shared command of the U.S. military's Eastern and Western Departments with Scott from 1821 to 1836.
Early 1836, at age
fifty-nine, Gaines personally leads a 1,000 man expedition into the Florida boonies and cleans up the sad and decomposing remains of the Dade Fight ("massacre" seems a bit much).
Then, short of supplies, he purposefully takes the long way back with the express purpose of drawing contact with the hostiles.
He does, and engages them in place for the next eight days, staying in command despite the loss of two front teeth early to a ricocheting rifle ball (a thing which would have us rushing to the emergency room and an oral surgeon).
His plan was that another US force close by could also engage and decisively defeat the hostiles. The reason they do not is because of political infighting by his rival Gen. Winfield Scott.
When they DO arrive on the field, Gaines' chief complaint is that they had ruined the negotiations developing between himself and the Seminole leaders. Believable, given Gaines' prior history of even handed justice.
Scott removes Gaines from command and sends him to Louisiana where he brilliantly walks that particular Texian tightrope.
Gaines remained in service until his death in 1849 of cholera in New Orleans; a tough, honest SOB, and a brilliant one.
Anyhoo.... THIS is the guy that claimed those 400 shots were made.
I think he was in the habit of speaking the truth.
YMMV,
Birdwatcher
