Black muskets

[Swashbuckler 1700]

Just for fun I have studied early 1700s naval weaponry and I have constantly come across "Queen Anne muskets" with dog-locks or flintlocks but what I found interesting is that many of these RN suplied guns were painted black back then. Why? was there any real reason for that or did some one just think that it looks cool?

Like this early 1700s naval musket.

Edited September 8, 2012 by Swashbuckler 1700

[Cascabel]

The black paint was for protection from rust, which was quite a problem because of the salt air at sea.

[Fox]

The black paint was for protection from rust, which was quite a problem because of the salt air at sea.

On the stock?

[Captain Jim]

I would imagine that the paint would have been applied uniformly, as anyone taking any real care would keep the metal clean in the first place. Basically these were "community" guns, kept for use when needed. Just a supposition on my part, as I can't find any reference for painting guns to begin with.

[Red John]

Not having the source handy on a Sunday morning over coffee, I'll gladly stand corrected. That said, I have noted accounts regarding RN vessels that stressed that the 'japanned' or black or asphaltum painted muskets were kept in the common for the sailors' use (deck boxes or common stowage below, brought out as needed and not personally-issued to individual sailors), while among any Royal Marine contingent on board, they carefully maintained their "armory bright" finishes, even under the duress of sea service, as a mark of distinction of their status and 'separateness' from the common crew. I have to think that also because as Marines and not full-time sailors, they had quite a bit more spare time for such maintenance that your average sailor would never have, what with having to actually sail the ship and all, and likely would not care to invest his dear off-time in polishing a weapon not personally his own. Me, while intellectually enthusiastic about having a PC 'japanned' musket as part of my kit . . . everytime I pick up the brush and then look at me musket . . . I just can't face it . . .I just can't . . . the horror . . . the horror . . .

[Captain Jim]

I've always wanted to do a black pistol, ebonizing the stock and deep rust bluing the lock and barrel, but that's a whole different effect.

[Guest]

There was something posted in the Muzzleloading forum ( http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/ ) a long time ago about how Kit Ravenshare (I know I horrably butchered the spelling of his name) painted a musket.(and how butt ugly it looked) but if I remember correctly it was after our time period, so I never painted mine.

[Swashbuckler 1700]

http://rockislandauc...aid/54/lid/3037

There is 1711 musket what is painted black

" British Sea Service musket with 1711 dated lock plate...... The stock is the early 1703 Pattern .... The stock retains a substantial portion of the black paint used on the stocks of Sea Service muskets.... This is a good, apparently original, example of a rare British Dog-Lock Sea Service Musket." Some sentences from there an if they hold true there we have a typical example of early 1700s musket with black paint.

Edited September 9, 2012 by Swashbuckler 1700

[hitman]

I asked a similar question many years ago about why guns brought up from wrecks like the Whydah all had black stocks and was told this was (if I remember correctly) due to the iron in sea water. Obviously these refrences are all together different but fun to know none the less. As an aside I originally asked cause I was going to write up a short story character who's armament consisted of a brass barreled blunderbuss with a Japaned stock. Personally I still think that would look cool though even now I'd doubt it's historic accuracy.

[Hawkyns]

There was something posted in the Muzzleloading forum ( http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/ ) a long time ago about how Kit Ravenshare (I know I horrably butchered the spelling of his name) painted a musket.(and how butt ugly it looked) but if I remember correctly it was after our time period, so I never painted mine.

I saw that musket and talked to Kit about it. Butt ugly doesn't cover the half of it. Stock was carved out of what was effectlively a 2x6 and it was painted with deck paint. Crude in the extreme. But, as always, Kit had the documentation and could justify everything that he'd done. As I recall, it was a mid 17th century piece that I saw.

I have a musket with a blackened stock and barrel. Actually a Littlecote Carbine from John Buck. I refinished the stock with black oil leather dye, and the barrel is blackened with barrel black.

Hawkyns

[Cascabel]

I had the opportunity to examine an India Pattern Brown Bess quite a few years back that was crudely painted black without bothering to do a dissassembly. The thick black paint was just applied all over the thing. Very obviously done in period. The underside of the barrel, and inside of the lock seemed to have a coating of dried grease on it, rather than paint. It was in pretty rough shape, but other than a broken mainspring appeared functional. Perhaps when the order came down to paint the muskets, they took the easy way out ?

[Hawkyns]

Entirely possible. I've also seen references to tar being used in place of paint;

Hawkyns

Master Gunner

[Dutchman]

well i'll be jiggered. just found these descriptions-

Blacking guns, shot, &c.

Coal tar alone, or mixed with a little salt water, is a good thing for blacking guns and shot. It should be laid on quite warm, and if the day be cold, a hot shot may with advantage be put into the guns to warm the metal, and make it take the blacking better, due attention being previously paid to unloading.

Lay the stuff on as thin as possible, with paint-brushes, using hot loggerheads or bolts to keep it warm.

If well laid on, and wiped afterwards with an oil-cloth occasionally, this process will prevent rust and preserve the good look of the guns for a length of time, without having recourse to washing with water.

French recipe for blacking guns, &c.

To one gallon of vinegar put ten ounces of lamp black, and one pound and a half of clear sifted iron-rust and mix them well together. Lay them on the guns after a good coat of black paint, and rub it occasionally with a soft oil-cloth.

[Swashbuckler 1700]

I will soon get "Pirate: The Golden Age" For Christmas.... Yeah the book is not completely for my liking (i know I have read many parts of it) but it has still some nice info and pictures are quite OK. I had time to look some weapon pages in it and there the dock lock musket (painted black) was said to be standard for the navy and it was only example of period musket in book's huge weapons page. I truly wonder was the black dog lock muskets indeed so standard weapons Gaop or is it one of the numerous generalizations in that book I wonder how much ship even had weapons like muskets meaning trade ships not pirates or navy... at least pirates might get their hands on some African trade guns etc.

.

[Brit.Privateer]

When I get some time a few days from now, I'll get out my notes on musket blacking.

As for civilian ships having weapons, from what I've read, most every ship had its small cash of arms for basic defense. On small vessels, the whole ship's armament could be contained within one arms chest and kept in the captain's cabin. One surviving example of a merchant arms chest from about 1800 held something like 8 muskets, 8 pistols, and 8 stirrup-hilt cutlasses (I will get more details on this specific one when I post again a few days from now). This chest actually was designed to be slid under the captain's bed and the edge of the box to be used as a step.

Any vessel engaging in the slave trade would definately have a sizable crew armament since they had to contend with possible slave revolts. For any merchant vessel during this time, carrying some weapons on board was the norm, and for one not to carry some weapons would be extremely exceptional. While it is understandable that a merchant might be cheap in investing into carriaged guns, for a merchant to not invest in at least a few muskets would be insane for that time. Gentlemen traveling on country roads during this era felt that it was necessary to arm themselves and the couple of servants/men going with them - why wouldn't they do the same at sea with a large cargo of goods that they just invested much money into? The one questionable area may be with small boats, such as fishermen and watermen.

As for the kind of weaponry, that might vary from ship to ship. Muskets are your base line since not only can they be used to hunt in a survival situation, but from a strategic standpoint they give the crew a chance to hit a target from a distance (and if worse comes to worse, it becomes a club). Pistols and cutlass on the other hand, lets just say there would be more muskets to either pistols or cutlasses in ratio. Not even the British Navy at the time issued many more muskets to pistols.

In 1684, the allowance on English Royal Navy ships was 40 muskets and 6 musketoons to 6 pistols on a 32-gun English Royal Navy warship (the overall regulations had roughly one musket for each cannon). The 1677 a Royal Navy Ordnance decreed that the ratio of naval swords was to be one for every roughly five to six men. As time progressed, the numbers of weapons generally doubled (having to do with a combination of growing navy size and growing production of naval weapons - the late seventeenth century marked pretty much the first large boom in naval specific armament, especially for pistols). Generally, a lot of the numbers here doubled by 1800 (so two muskets per cannon instead of one for example). Does that mean that Navy Ship possibly carried more (either through requests or a captain's personal purchase), yes. But the regulations at least tell us a lot about the mindset of the period.

Back to the civilians. From what I've seen, since cutlass and pistol are more specialized for boarding, fewer of them are purchased as a result compared to muskets. Another consideration for the cutlass, not many men are trained in how to use cutlasses at sea. I suspect that cutlasses became a permanent part of naval armament at sea because if combat did happen sea, the confining environment a ship is makes a cutlass quite usefull - otherwise the cutlass would have went the same way as hangers did for infantry during the eighteenth century.

More to come a few days from now.

[Swashbuckler 1700]

Well not about black muskets but about the other subject discussed here, so about that what weaponry would be kept aboard merchant ships.

Our fried Snelgrave gives a hint about ship weaponry when he is telling about the slave mutinies and how one was repelled, This hints what kind of weaponry was used aboard Slavers of the period

"This Mutiny having been plotted amongst all the grown Negroes on board, they run to the forepart of the Ship in a body, and endeavoured to force the Barricado on the Quarter-Deck, not regarding the Musquets or Half Pikes, that were presented to their Breasts by the white Men, through the Loop-holes. So that at last the chief Mate was obliged to order one of the Quarter-deck Guns laden with Partridge-Shot, to be fired amongst them; which Occasioned a terrible Destruction: For there were near eighty Negroes kill'd and drowned, many jumping overboard when the Gun was fired."

From William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea, and the Slave Trade.London, 1734, pp. 162-91.

Muskets and half-pikes. So rather common naval weaponry

But "Partridge-Shot" means by the way.

[Swashbuckler 1700]

I cannot edit this so I clear my last sentence of my last reply

I meant to ask "but what "Partridge-Shot"is ?"

Edited December 27, 2012 by Swashbuckler 1700

[Red John]

Aye, "partridge shot" is essentially a bunch of balls fired in a mass, to take out lots of personnel at close range, much like a shotgun is used to take out a bunch of birds - hence the name 'partidge shot'.

That name is pretty archaic, the name 'grapeshot' was used for a similar type of round, mostly in later periods, that consisted of a bunch of balls usually around 1" to 1 1/2" diameter and bound together like grapes. Another similar round was known in later periods as 'canister' (a can full of smaller balls, usually musket-size, or what-have-you bits of metal and so on, that spread out once fired). One could also do without the can, and just load the balls, etc.,, if you wadded them properly so they wouldn't roll out and would hold together long enough to exit the muzzle, much like a black-powder/muzzle-loading shotgun is loaded without modern cartridges. Both rounds were very effective on personnel formations, and used by land armies for that purpose; at sea they were used for the similar purpose of 'deck sweeping' of enemy personnel as well as to take out rigging, sails, etc.

That kind of shot basically turns a cannon into a large shotgun - very effective and used all the way up through the late 1800's/early 1900's when artillery finally shifted from having a direct fire function on the battlefield (that is, shooting straight at something the gunner could see, like an advancing infantry line) to being pretty much exclusively an indirect fire weapon like today (that is, shooting in a higher arc over a longer distance at something that the gunner could not see directly but that forward observers told him was there, like enemy trenches or positions on the far side of hills and so on) that relied on 'shrapnel' and similar rounds for the anti-personnel effect.

A similar type of shot in use today is known as 'buckshot' in modern shotgun terminology. Modern buckshot is usually a bunch of balls usually about an 1/8" to 1/4" diameter being used in a shotgun to take out deer or large-ish game instead of birds. This size of load, or a little larger, is likely very similar to the 'partridge shot' fired from cannon-sized guns back in the day, but more likely is they were just using a bunch of musket balls they had handy, and loading the cannon like a big shotgun.

All the Best, Mate!

yours, aye--

[Swashbuckler 1700]

Aye, "partridge shot" is essentially a bunch of balls fired in a mass, to take out lots of personnel at close range, much like a shotgun is used to take out a bunch of birds - hence the name 'partidge shot'.

That name is pretty archaic, the name 'grapeshot' was used for a similar type of round, mostly in later periods, that consisted of a bunch of balls usually around 1" to 1 1/2" diameter and bound together like grapes. Another similar round was known in later periods as 'canister' (a can full of smaller balls, usually musket-size, or what-have-you bits of metal and so on, that spread out once fired). One could also do without the can, and just load the balls, etc.,, if you wadded them properly so they wouldn't roll out and would hold together long enough to exit the muzzle, much like a black-powder/muzzle-loading shotgun is loaded without modern cartridges. Both rounds were very effective on personnel formations, and used by land armies for that purpose; at sea they were used for the similar purpose of 'deck sweeping' of enemy personnel as well as to take out rigging, sails, etc.

That kind of shot basically turns a cannon into a large shotgun - very effective and used all the way up through the late 1800's/early 1900's when artillery finally shifted from having a direct fire function on the battlefield (that is, shooting straight at something the gunner could see, like an advancing infantry line) to being pretty much exclusively an indirect fire weapon like today (that is, shooting in a higher arc over a longer distance at something that the gunner could not see directly but that forward observers told him was there, like enemy trenches or positions on the far side of hills and so on) that relied on 'shrapnel' and similar rounds for the anti-personnel effect.

A similar type of shot in use today is known as 'buckshot' in modern shotgun terminology. Modern buckshot is usually a bunch of balls usually about an 1/8" to 1/4" diameter being used in a shotgun to take out deer or large-ish game instead of birds. This size of load, or a little larger, is likely very similar to the 'partridge shot' fired from cannon-sized guns back in the day, but more likely is they were just using a bunch of musket balls they had handy, and loading the cannon like a big shotgun.

All the Best, Mate!

yours, aye--

Okay

Thanks that was interesting.

so it is cannon ammo

Oh of course Snelgrave was speaking about cannons not small arm when he said that that kind of shot was fired... I noticed it only now...

[Red John]

Aye, in his case, the passage said it was shot from a cannon, so it was a cannon round, and I discussed it in that context.

Normally 'partridge shot' would be just another name for 'bird shot' shot from a fowler or modern shotgun, that is, shot that was used to hunt partridges or other birds. If you say' partridge shot' people will think you are talking about a regular shotgun load because normally that's what it is.

In his case it was the same type of 'scatter shot' just from a bigger gun, so I think that's why he called it that. Technically, if you name the round by what it was shot at, like you do with 'birdshot' or 'buckshot', I guess in his case it would be "human shot"! But 'scatter shot' sounds a lot better . . .

Fair Seas to ye Mate,

Aye-

[Swashbuckler 1700]

Actually Snelgrave mentions pistols and Cutlasses as well as muskets and half-pikes. Now I am thinking the weaponry of traders and slavers alike. The mention of a couch makes me wonder the casual decor of captain's cabins of the time..... but that does not belong in this topic...

"-- Men Negroes take hold of the chief Mate, in order to throw him over board, he laid on them so heartily with the flat fide of his Cutlace, that they soon quitted the Mate, who escaped from them, and run on the Quarter Deck to get Arms. I was then sick with an Ague, and lying on a Couch in the great Cabbin, the Fit being just come on. However, I no sooner heard the Outcry, That the Slaves were mutinying, but I took two Pistols, and run on the Deck with them; where meeting with my Father and the chief Mate, I delivered a Pistol to each of them -- My Father seeing this stout Man in so much Danger, ventured amongst the Negroes, to save him; and fired his Pistol over their Heads, thinking to frighten them...."

Too bad that not the whole book is online... anyway that was from the same book than the earlier quote.....

Now a decline what it comes to reliability of sources. In a ( little inaccurate) documentary that was actually in special feature dvd of the first potc David Cordingly said "usually only the captain and the quarter master had a pistol but not all individual pirates" I think this might refer to the buccaneer era when small fire-arms were rarer than in Gaop. There is many records of pirates not only captains or officer having many pistols E.G four or even more. Also in the Whydah finds there is parts for more than just two or three pistols or I am I wrong? Of course not all individual pirate would be carrying a pistol or two and there were crew like Worley's that were likely so poorly equipped that they had no pistols at all.

Snellgrave told that he owned at least a pair of pistols and if a merchant captain owns a pair think how many pistols there would be when pirates rob lets say dozen merchants. Of course Snelgrave owned a rather large ship and was likely a wealthier man than the average slaver captain.

Also the pistol is commonly referred in pirate articles like in Robert's where it was said that men must keep their pistols, and cutlass clean and fit for service. This gives a impression that pistols were rather common in his crew.

Edited January 14, 2013 by Swashbuckler 1700

[Coastie04]

So that at last the chief Mate was obliged to order one of the Quarter-deck Guns laden with Partridge-Shot, to be fired amongst them; which Occasioned a terrible Destruction: For there were near eighty Negroes kill'd and drowned, many jumping overboard when the Gun was fired.

It is possible that they fired the quarterdeck gun (possibly a carriage style gun, possibly even just a swivel gun?) with partridge-shot instead of musket balls. Being a slaver, they would have wanted to possibly injure and deter the slaves instead of killing them, since that would eat in to their profit. It specifically mentions that there were many negroes drowned from jumping overboard when the gun was fired. So it's hard to know how many were killed from the gun itself and how many jumped. They may have tried to use smaller diameter balls to limit the long term damage to the cargo, but infection still can be a nasty thing, especially on a packed slaver.

As for only the captain and quartermaster having pistols, could this possibly be referring to normal, non-battle circumstances? During battle they may have had access to pistols from a communal arms chest, and possibly even had their own personal weapons of choice. But, while sailing with no enemy threat, maybe some crews at least chose to restrict people from just carrying around pistols? The captain and quartermaster might have been allowed to carry for personal protection in case there was dissent among the crew when giving an order. Besides, it's impractical to always wearing a pistol or sword when actively sailing a vessel. The captain and quartermaster aren't doing grunt work or going aloft, so it would not hinder their duties. Just conjecture on both of these accounts, but something to think of nonetheless.

Coastie