In 1862, Georgia dentist, builder, and mechanic John Gilleland raised money from a coterie of Confederate citizens in Athens, Georgia to build the chain-shot gun for a cost of $350. Cast in one piece, the gun featured side-by-side bores, each a little over 3 inches in diameter and splayed slightly outward so the shots would diverge and stretch the chain taut. The two barrels have a divergence of 3 degrees, and the cannon was designed to shoot simultaneously two cannonballs connected with a chain to “mow down the enemy somewhat as a scythe cuts wheat”. During tests, the Gilleland cannon effectively mowed down trees, tore up a cornfield, knocked down a chimney, and killed a cow. These experiments took place along Newton Bridge Road northwest of downtown Athens. None of the previously mentioned items were anywhere near the gun’s intended target.
r*ddit
The down side of grape / canister shot is that the firing pattern is a circle. That means when shooting at a line of enemy soldiers a lot of the stuff is going to miss high or miss low.
The idea behind this invention was good – basically turn a field gun into something that fired a line of death rather than a single point or a circle. If it had worked, it could have been much more devastating than a solid ball or a bunch of smaller balls with a circular firing pattern. But, I don’t think 1800s tech was up to building a device that could reliably do what they wanted.