[Sean Flynt]

Peterson and the Jamestown Rediscovery Journals also reveal that the colonists were pulling out of retirement some ideas long since out-of-date on Europe's battlefields--jacks, bucklers, targets, bills, longbows, aketons, etc. as they adapted to guerilla warfare in the New World. But it also seems they were adopting new firearms technology faster than the militaries of the Old World. Fascinating stuff, and, as far as I can tell, there's just TONS of research left to be done on early colonial firearms.

[Gordon Frye]

Sean;

I love the early colonial period, what with wheellocks, swords, armour, you name it, and here on these shores as well. I can't get enough of that stuff! And tracking one's family to such things is a hoot, too, as you are WELL aware! I leads to a lot of new insights into just what these items we play with meant to people of another day and age when you ponder your own progenetors using them for survival. Had their weapons not worked out, I guess we wouldn't either!

But the period that absolutely fascinates me is actually just a few years earlier, and on the other side of the continent (well, most of the way, at least), and that is the colonization of New Mexico. Don Juan de Onate (I can't get the cool little inya over the "n" unfortunately, but the name is pronounced "ONYATAY") led his colonizing expedition North to the Pueblo villages along the Rio Grande in 1598, and the muster rolls take prior to his start are (as with most records from the Spanish Colonial Bureaucracy) still extant and have been published in the book "Don Juan de Onate, Colonizer of New Mexico" by George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey of University of New Mexico Press. LOTS of cool stuff in there, with armour, weapons, food, clothing, you name it, everything needed to start a new life on the frontier. A lot of wheellocks, some matchlocks, even some flint-ignited arms as well. VERY cool stuff! Too bad it's long out of print, but most university libraries have copies, and it's worth looking into just to see the nifty stuff available even out on the furthest reaches of the European frontiers.

Cheers,

Gordon

[Sean Flynt]

Funny...I'd never even heard of Oñate until I read Peterson. That wouldn't be any great surprise except that I actually considered graduate study of the contact period in SE Native America--Soto, De Vaca, et al.! I wound up studying Removal-period SE Native America instead. The west just doesn't quite register on this side of the continent. I guess all folks interested in the SW study and teach in the SW. I should know more....
Wow. From 16th c. rapiers to the provincial nature of American graduate education. I kind of led us off-topic, no? Now THAT's a hijack.

[Adam Lloyd]

Gordon thank you for your description of the firing method of the wheel locks. Can you run down the same on the match lock? I assume its a shorter process but probably by not much
thank you

[Gordon Frye]

Adam;

Happy to! I go with the drill of Maurice of Nassau, as shown in the engravings by Jacob de Gheyn published in 1607. The actual drill was in place by the 1590's, and it followed a lot of the general practices from much earlier, but as far as I know this was the first codified, literally "by the numbers" drill written down for matchlocks, both the full Musket as well as the lighter "Caliver", which was pretty much the older arquebus with a common caliber, thus the name.

The first move in loading, in this drill, is to prime the pan. A shooter of flintlocks would tend to recoil at this, as flintlocks made the famous remark "Going off half-cocked" into an English language standard, but since matchlocks don't have any ignition system per se, it's not a problem. So holding the piece in your left hand, you swing open the pan-cover, blow out any debris (or worse yet, if you've been shooting, a spark!), and then carefully prime the pan with a fair amount of fine black powder (today usually sold as "Four-F" or "FFFFG" powder) from your small priming flask. You then close the pan, tip the piece over to it's side to let any exess powder fall off, and then lift the weapon to your face (keeping the muzzle down-range... it's still parallel to the ground at this point too) and carefully blowing off any remaining grains of powder that may be laying on the pan-cover. It shall become apparent later why this is important.

Next, to load: Although many of the soldiers of the period were happy to load powder directly from the flask, it's a REALLY bad idea, as you are basically pouring powder from a container holding upwards of a pound of gunpowder directly into a tube which, if you've fired recently, may well be alive with sparks, thus turning your powder flask into a major sized grenade. The unit I am in insisits that you load from the Bandolier bottles, sometimes referred to as the Twelve Apostles. This ensures that should you actually have a spark in your barrel, then only the charge for that shot will ignite, and though not fun, and you might well get a burn from it, you aren't going to be killed (nor will anyone in the area, either!)

So... after having successfully charged our piece with powder, we reach into our ball pouch (the one on your belt, rock!) and withdraw a suitably sized lead round ball (in the period, yet another practice which OSHA would find fault with, the nimble musketeer or arquebusier would often carry the immediate supply of ball in his mouth...) After gaining said projectile, the shooter draws his rammer (aka "Scowring stick") from under the barrel, "Shortens rammers" against his hip (since you have to reach a ways up with a full-length musket to actually get to the muzzle, you push the rammer against yourself until you get the front end close to your hand), drops the ball into the muzzle, inserts the rammer, rams the charge down to the chamber, withdraws the rammer, shortens it again against his hip, and returns it to it's groove in the stock under the barrel. (Again throwing caution to the winds, sometimes they would just drop the ball down the barrel, smack the butt on the ground and call it good...)

Now your loaded and ready to go... almost!

Now, assuming that you are starting with a fully loaded weapon on your eft shoulder, you bring the piece off of your shoulder with your right hand, gripping it behind the barrel but ahead of the thumb-notch. In the Scottish-language version (it was printed originally with orders in Dutch, German, English and Scottish, interestingly enough. Note that I found ca 1600 Scottish to be MUCH more understandable to read than the English!) it says to "Grasp your piece by the grete screw", i.e. the screw holding the barrel to the stock.

From there you bring the piece forward in front of you, then place it in your left hand "and let it sink". All this time of course, you've had your matchcord, smouldering at both ends, held between the last two fingers of your left hand, rather like a pair of cigarettes.

You remove one of them, blow off the ash and re-energize the coal, and place it carefully in the jaws of the Dog (somewhere around this time they start referring to this part as the "Cock", what we today might want to call the "Hammer") and then "Try your match" by GENTLY pushing the Dog, match included, towards the closed (!) pan-cover.

After ensuring that your match is in the right place, you then await the order of your Officer to make ready. On his command (after having constantly adjusted the match of course) you bring the piece up to your face just like when blowing out the pan (the barrel this time hopefully being between your face and the pan!) and you blow across the match to ensure that it's burning good and hot. At the command "Present", you open the pan-cover, bring the piece to your shoulder, and at the command "Give Fire" you then GENTLY squeeze up on the sear-bar, or trigger (depending on which style you have) and quite literally "give fire" to your pan. IF you've done everything right, AND you have good quality powder and match, it OUGHT to ignite "With speedy and thunderous discharge", sending death-dealing lead projectiles in the general direction of your target.

Although there has been LOTS of disparity about the accuracy of such things, personally I've found a smooth-bore matchlock to be rather accurate. They're not "tack drivers" of course, but heck, with a tightly fitted ball, they can easily hit a man-sized target at 100 yards, though of course you're not likely to use a tight ball in combat, especially when you try loading by smacking the butt on the ground! The usual trade-offs between speed and accuracy became apparent early on.

Here's a website that shows the basic drill (in 48 steps!) with engravings from the English Civil War era. Note that they, like all of the drillbooks of the time, assume that you are starting with a loaded weapon. I started with the unloaded weapon for clarity's sake. http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Campground/8551/drill.html

BTW, the normal difference in bore size was this: a Caliver was usually of 20-bore (approximately .62") and pretty light, maybe 8 pounds, an Arquebus was of somewhere around 16-bore (about .66") while the full Musket in English service was of 10-bore (.77"), weighing in at around 14-16 pounds. Some of the continental Muskets were bigger, around .85", weighing in the neighborhood of 18 pounds. No wonder the beasts needed a forked stick to rest them on!

As far as rate of fire, Sir Roger Williams stated that with full-on Muskets, a rate of fire of 40 rounds in an hour was possible... but I think that with the lighter Calivers that between one and two rounds per minute were probably about right. That's pretty nimble, to be sure, but do-able.

I hope this answers your questions on the matchlocks. I guess we're a far cry from Dresden Rapiers here, but what the heck!

Cheers,

Gordon

[Gordon Frye]

[Gordon Frye]

I just wanted to add an addendum to my comments about the Dresden (yes, coming back full circle to actually discuss the main topic of this thread), and that is, the more I work and play with this sword and the better I get to know it, the more I like it. I started out liking it for a lot of reasons, but even with that, it has really grown on me. The look, the size, the heft and feel of it in my hand, or on my hip... I just like it more and more every day. It's one heck of a cool sword.

So again Nathan, I REALLY appreciate your having let go of it in my direction! Thank you.

Cheers,

Gordon

[James Holczer]

[Gordon Frye]

James;

Thanks! When I'm at the range, you can BET that I'm a total stickler for wiping the bore between shots. Not only is it just a smart thing to do, but you get better accuracy from it too! And my friends wonder why I win most of the matches...go figure! I've been shooting muzzle loaders for better than 30 years, and though I'm sometimes pretty slow on the uptake of some things, eventually this stuff got pounded into me by those old guys in overalls and straw hats who say things like "What in the #&%% were you thinking???" or similar pithy observations on the frailty of mankind.

BTW, I also shoot cannons for the State of California (kind of a nifty job description, eh?) and there again, being a stickler for safety is paramount to the health and safety of not only you, but your crew as well. Better to be a tad slow than sorry!

Thanks again, and Cheers!

Gordon

[Nate C.]

As long as we've wandered.......


Cannons?

[Gordon Frye]

Well, yeah, I work as an Historical Interpereter during the summers at Sutter's Fort State Historic Park in Sacramento, CA., and part of our daily routine is to fire off our little Russian 3-pounder Howitzer at noon. (We used to fire off the 12 pounder Carronades sometimes too, but powder got expensive, and the bugdet got tighter, so we don't make a habit of that much any more, sad to relate). It's fun, we get to tell the visitors the history of the gun itself (which is pretty impressive, actually) and a little history of artillery at the same time. Then we go through the loading drill with our combined staff of interpereters and fire her off. It's pretty cool, really.

Anyway, it's fun to fire off artillery in the middle of Sacramento, only about a mile or so from Der Governator's office, rattling windows and setting off car alarms. Needless to say, we keep the iron round shot in the display, rather than ramming it down the bore...things would go poorly for us otherwise, I would suspect. Oh, just as an aside, Dale Shinn, who made my cool toys shown above, also works with me there at Sutter's Fort, so if you want to visit him (or me, I guess) just drop by some summer's day, we're usually there!

So I brought it back around to at least include the maker of the wheellocks! How's that for keeping it on track, Nathan?

Cheers,

Gordon

[Michael G. Myers]

Well, this thread has been highly entertaining and informative! A genuine thanks to all the contributors for sharing their thoughts on the forum, but an especial tip-o-the-hat to Gordon for taking the time and to Sean for providing the impetus to coax Gordon's run down of the wheellock manual of loading in modern lingo!

Congrats on the Dresden acquisition, Gordon.


Mike

[Gordon Frye]

Well thank you, Mike! Good to hear from you, you've been absent from the forum for a while! Happy to have you back.

Glad you found the thread amusing, too, LOL! Always happy to oblige... And yes, I'm pleased as punch with that big sword. Took it out again today to do some work off the horse with it, but he was being a pill so we just galloped around the arena for what seemed like an hour instead, then went out on the trail to cool him off. But that sword rode well, which is always a nice thing to discover, rather than banging the hell out of me as we canter around! We did find that he can still canter with his nose against my knee, though... the knucklehead.

Cheers,

Gordon

[Nathan Robinson]

Hey Gordon, with Rod Walker's Topic showing him on horse in kit, I must ask: When do we get to see photos of you with the new Dresden and the rest of your stuff?

[Gordon Frye]

[Jean Thibodeau]

O.K. Gordon one faked picture comming up.

[Gordon Frye]

Jean;

Yikes! Ask and ye shall receive, eh? That's pretty funny though!

But my poor horse had best be careful with that bare blade smacking him in the flanks! Somehow I don't think that THAT particular pony would have put up with it for long! In the Rodeo of Wills, he was known to win on occasion...

Thanks! And Cheers!

Gordon

[Gideon Money]

So how does one find this Master Craftsman? I have wanted a puffer for years!

[Gordon Frye]

Gideon;

PM me, I'll forward you Dale's contact information, as well as that of a Wheellock maker in Texas, Taylor Anderson.

Cheers!

Gordon

[Alina Boyden]

To go off topic about cannon, do you happen to shoot at that contest in Michigan I saw on the history channel, Gordon? It is a black powder antique cannon competition where they compete in 4 divisions: Rifled, smoothbore, mortar, and mountain gun. There was a really cool show about this contest on a couple of hours ago on the History Channel.