Friday Video: Loretta's Musket Training

Loretta reports:

I’d never fired a weapon in my life. The closest I’d come was holding Baron de Berenger’s unloaded musket at the Kensington Central Library.

Last November, I found out from author Caroline Linden that one could fire a black powder weapon at Colonial Williamsburg. Susan Holloway Scott—aka the other Nerdy History Girl—sent me photos of her family's experience not long thereafter. I was sold. There's lots of history one can only read in books. I am not going to turn down a chance to experience it firsthand.

The video is very short. What I learned is very long. I fired two weapons, a musket and a fowler. What you don’t see in the video is Loretta trying to heft either of them. The musket weighs ten pounds, the fowler is a little bit lighter, and they're both looong. My arms shook, lifting the gun. Then I had to hold it and aim at the same time. Also, you don’t see how hard it is to draw back the cock. I had to use two hands. (I really need to work on my upper body strength.) Meanwhile, there's the loading process, with which I received a great deal of assistance. Otherwise, I could have been there for half an hour for each shot. Soldiers could load their weapons in 15 seconds.

These are far from accurate weapons. Even when you know how to aim, you can’t be sure the ball will go where it should. But yes, I did badly wound a couple of paper bottles.




Video: Loretta Shoots!!
On my YouTube Channel
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Dueling Pistols and How They Work

Loretta reports:

A duel figures prominently in A Duke in Shining Armor. I’ve posted about dueling practices (here and here), and will again. Today, though, I thought you might want to take a look at some actual weapons.

The elaborately fitted-out case from the Museum of London features a pair of Flintlock Dueling Pistols of about 1810. (By the time of my story, the men would be using percussion lock pistols. However, the conversion didn’t demand a whole redesign of the pistol. Many flintlocks were easily converted to percussion, as you will discover if you click on the links above.)

According to the entry on the museum website:

“In the case with these pistols are the necessary accessories for cleaning and loading them. These include a brush, a powder flask, a ram rod, a bullet mould and a ladle for pouring the molten lead to make the bullets…The barrels of the pistols are double-stamped with the mark of two crossed sceptres beneath a crown. This records that they were made privately and proofed (test-fired) at the Board of Ordnance proofing house in the Tower of London. The pistols are fitted with rain-proof flash pans, an innovation that kept the powder dry in bad weather. The name on the lockplate 'Toms' is likely to be an engraving error. The pistols were probably made by William Tomes, a gunsmith with a workshop on Whitechapel Road. Tomes was a military contractor who supplied guns to the East India Company."

In my investigations online, however, most of the cases are a little simpler. Preparing, loading, and firing a a gun in the early 1800s was, however, a complicated business. But a video is worth thousands of words: Please watch for a demonstration on Friday's video.

Readers of Georgette Heyer, not to mention numerous other Regency-era authors, will have come upon the name Manton. You can get several close-up views of a Regency era pair of these highly regarded dueling pistols here.

Photographs copyright 2018 Walter M. Henritze III.