General discussion > Black Powder Shooting
Colonial Myths
Steamingspud:
Hey guys,
Not sure if this was covered, I'm still looking through the forum archives.
I belong to a frontiersman reenactment group, and we love black powder shooting. Being a camping group, we have camp fire talk of shooters of the age, involving tall tales and myths that we don't get around with ever testing.
SO, first myth I'm sure a lot of you have heard of, the 400 yard shot. This was apparently done with a caliber larger than .50, and I even heard talks of knocking a mason jar off a fence post. Whether the shot hit the post and not the jar is another small argument.
Second, a legendary 2.00 caliber rifle. This was built by a legend in himself, Bofox. A short bald guy dressed in deerskins and apparently flosses his teeth with a flaming bistle whip. I have a picture of him, but the rifle isn't as clear as I wish it was. The story goes he loaded his rifle while running toward the range on a Seneca run, a myth in itself.
Third is the 9 second load. I know guys who load rifles reeeeaally fast, especially smooth bores. Personally I haven't tried to load fast besides out the back of a golf cart on the way to a range. The original revolutionary backwoodsmen claimed to be able to fire their first shot and within nine seconds fire a second shot. I don't think I have ever or will ever see one that fast, but maybe some of you out there have.
Fourth, a book that we received on joining the group I'm in tells of how a frontiersman lost the flint off his rifle while hunting and used the flash coming from the pan in his flintlock pistol to set off the rifle and killed his game.
Fifth and last I'm gonna bother with, this is a two part debate. One guy said this was a true story. Back when civil war reenactments weren't as safe as they should be, an infantryman loaded his rifle on the field realizing he had not loaded at camp, but because people were shooting pictures, he rushed the load and left his ramrod in the barrel. Shooting up into the air and not remembering that he left his rod loaded, his rod went across the field and hit another member in the shoulder. He was knocked to the ground and someone stopped the entire fight because they thought he had been hit critically. Not sure of all the details of the recognition of the hit, but apparently he got up and walked away without a scratch.
The second part of that myth was at my first black powder shooters safety course. The instructor mentioned that you should 1 always check for your ramrod after loading and 2 never use a too short ramrod for the mistake of leaving the rod in the barrel and forgetting it as it isn't sticking out. One instance that was said was that a ramrod was shot and lodged so far into a sandpile that only a few inches stuck out. 'Smart talk' by the younger ones was made of if you could kill two men with one ramrod since the redcoats were in such close columns.
I'd like to reassure you, all of these are myths. Most of the stories, even of modern myths, went from ear to ear before being told to myself. So if you doubt any of this, yea. It probably didn't happen exactly that way. But I'm asking which of these do you think is possible?
Just have fun, maybe I'll test a few someday.
SCLoyalist:
Okay, I'll bite:
1. The 400 yd shot. Possible. A 50 cal roundball has a max theoretical range of around 1100 yds. The bullet's got to go somewhere. How often could such a shot be repeated? Not often.
2. A 2 caliber rifle - Dunno. How big were wall guns and swivel mounted guns meant for carrying away ship's rigging? If my math is right, a 2.00 cal rifle would throw a 12000 gr ball. The biggest bore I ever heard of for carrying and shooting offhand was a 4-bore, used against elephants, and it hurt the shooter about as bad as the pachyderm.
3. Nine second reload? Maybe for a smoothbore if you dumped the load (with undersized ball) down the barrel, didn't take time to ram, and had the vent enlarged where a little powder from the main charge would spill out into the pan for priming. I've heard the Brits used to do that.
4. No flint. No way. Why didn't the bozo just take the flint out of pistol and put into the rifle lock?
5. Shooting ramrod-have heard of ramrods getting launched when shooter gets flustered, seen it once. SCL
jmforge:
--- Quote from: SCLoyalist on July 28, 2009, 03:38:17 AM ---Okay, I'll bite:
1. The 400 yd shot. Possible. A 50 cal roundball has a max theoretical range of around 1100 yds. The bullet's got to go somewhere. How often could such a shot be repeated? Not often.
2. A 2 caliber rifle - Dunno. How big were wall guns and swivel mounted guns meant for carrying away ship's rigging? If my math is right, a 2.00 cal rifle would throw a 12000 gr ball. The biggest bore I ever heard of for carrying and shooting offhand was a 4-bore, used against elephants, and it hurt the shooter about as bad as the pachyderm.
3. Nine second reload? Maybe for a smoothbore if you dumped the load (with undersized ball) down the barrel, didn't take time to ram, and had the vent enlarged where a little powder from the main charge would spill out into the pan for priming. I've heard the Brits used to do that.
4. No flint. No way. Why didn't the bozo just take the flint out of pistol and put into the rifle lock?
5. Shooting ramrod-have heard of ramrods getting launched when shooter gets flustered, seen it once. SCL
--- End quote ---
There were 2 bore rifles that were fired from the shoulder for sure. As for the ramrod thing, there is a company that make steel cored wood "unbreakable" ramrods and they have a puicture of the one ramrod that was sent back to them after it broke. It was allegedly recovered 50 yards downrange ;D As for the 9 second reload, I guess that you could have just torn off the end of a paper cartridge and stuff the whole thing down the barrel. Some stuff that I have read recently claims that their were only two grades of powder in the late 1700's so, priming powder and the standard loading drill said you primed from the cartridge and then loaded, so no need to prime maybe if you have a large flash hole. The gun was
Dphariss:
Col Hangers 400 yard dead horse has to be pretty well taken as he wrote it. He was a military officer and a rifleman. He was very familiar with the area. See pages 76 and 77 of "The Frontier Rifleman" By LaCrosse.
In my limited experience in shooting a 50 cal with 75 grains of powder at 300 yards I can say that even with the wind blowing perhaps 10 mph I can hit a man sized target 1 in three shots once the kentucky windage and elevation are found. From the penetration in a tree at that distance I can assure you it will produce a fatal wound.
400 I have never tried but I know a man who was able to hit a 30-36" steel "gong" target at about 500 with some regularity once the hold over was found on the tall rimrock backstop. He wrote it up in an "Buckskin Report" back in the 1970s I could look it up I suppose, or call him, he was using a 54 caliber.
Washington had some very heavy "wall rifles" made that shot very well indeed to what was at the time long range 4-500 yards. These had bores of about 1" and would have used a ball of 2 to 4 to the pound I suspect.
I cannot find a citation right at the moment.
I think a similar rifle is in "Rifles of Colonial America".
Books are downstairs and once down their I am going to bed.
With a paper cartridge I can likely get a reload in 10 seconds and it is pretty accurate.
Dan
Dale Halterman:
I don't see why you couldn't use a pistol to ignite the prime in the pan of a rifle. Just prime the pistol and hold it upside down over the open and primed pan of the rifle.
As the Bevel Brothers demonstrated a few years ago, an upside down flintlock will still fire.
But, as SCL said, why not just take the flint out of the pistol and put it in the rifle?
As far as shooting a ramrod out of a rifle, I have done it. Once. Never did find it.
Oh, yeah. Make sure you aren't confusing a 2.00 caliber gun with a 2 bore (or 2 gauge) gun. Big difference. Not that I have fired either.
Dale H
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