Period-correct, documented stupidity

Hello, my name is Pete, I'm a book addict.

Lots of books here. Gotta be a thousand, no exaggeration. I'm usually in the process of reading a dozen at once, and have a good sized stack of books with bookmarks hanging out of them all over the shop, my desk, and the house. One of the books I am currently reading is "A British Soldier's Story - Roger Lamb's Narrative of the American Revolution" as edited by Don N. Hagist. It can be ordered here.

Lamb was a Redcoat from Dublin who served in North America for 8 years, was captured twice, escaped captivity twice, and was witness to events such as the capture of Ticonderoga, Crown Point, the battles of Hubbardton and Saratoga, and even the southern campaign. We can look at artifacts today and make our guesses about what they are and how they were used but there is no way for us to recapture the original thoughts and feelings. Period journals are required reading for anyone calling themselves reenactors. I'll talk about journals another time though, today I want to talk about one particular paragraph in Lamb's journal.

Here it is:

“In fighting in the woods the battalion manoeuvring and excellency of exercise were found of little value. To prime, load, fire and charge with the bayonet expeditiously were the chief points worthy of attention.

It was our custom after loading and priming, instead of ramming down cartridge, to strike the breech of the firelock to the ground, and bring it to the present and fire.

In this usage much care was necessary, lest the cartridge might remain undischarged, as sometimes happened, when, from the confusion of the moment of action, the end of the cartridge being unbitten it might not catch fire from the burnt priming.

In this way several cartridges have been discovered together in the piece unexploded, which, in the bursting of his firelock from an overcharge, could not fail to be very perilous and sometimes destructive to the soldier himself, and even some of those around him.”

I find this fascinating, as this loading style nearly mimics the way we are required to load our muskets when in the field at any reenactment. Prime, load, fire. Many, I dare say most, reenactors have never fired a ball out of their musket. Ever. That means they have no idea about how the gun really works, how it behaves under "normal" circumstances, and how to be safe with it. Some of us shoot on a regular basis, but most do not.

I have seen the exact same situation Lamb described repeated at many events in the modern day. Because people don't shoot, they don't really grasp the physics of what is going on when the pull the trigger. I've seen many people close their eyes or even turn their head away when pulling the trigger. The people who do this have no idea whether or not their gun has gone off. Sometimes, on a muggy day or in a dirty gun, you just get a flash in the pan and the main propellant charge doesn't go off. Since the "shooter" doesn't know it didn't go off, he just primes and loads again...and again...and again.

Next thing you know, there are 300, 400, 500 grains in the gun...then all of a sudden the next shot sets off the charge and the shooter finds himself sitting on his butt because the massive charge knocked him over. I saw a dude do this at Ft. William Henry last fall. The guy literally knocked himself down with the recoil. It happened a couple of years ago at a Canadian event too, the guy had 4 or 5 charges in the gun; in that case the guy managed to break the stock.

In the old days, gun barrels were made with a seam up the bottom, sometimes they would fail along the seam. Henry Knox, the bookseller turned General of RevWar fame lost a few fingers when his old worn out fowling piece blew out at the breech. Modern day muzzleloader barrels are made of seamless tubing or drilled out billet steel and have no seams to be weak points. With the exception on certain CVA inline rifles with pressed in breeches, research has not turned up a single instance of a black powder gun failing that could not be traced back to user error.

I have often made excuses for the dumb people who make mistakes with muzzleloaders because they are on the fringe of the gun world. People just don't grow up around them. I didn't. My early years of muzzleloading were very much a solo experience. If there is no one to teach the right and wrong way to load a muzzleloader, you gotta learn somehow. Anyone who is a reenacting group doesn't have any excuse because they are surrounded with folks who have been doing it a while.

The guys Lamb talks about seeing with multiple loads stuck in their muskets had even less of an excuse. The flintlock smoothbore was the current technology, all of their gun experience was with them, they were not the obscure novelties that they are today.

Simply put, they were stupid people with guns, loading them in an unsafe manner. It is interesting to note that the people who overload their muskets, attempt to use smokeless powder, short-ram the ball, shut their eyes when pulling the trigger, and take the field as a reenactor without ever actually having fired a round out of the gun are just continuing the habits of those guys who were blowing up their muskets and hurting bystanders back in 1777.

Lamb's paragraph describing the habits of not seating the ball or opening the cartridge properly actually documents stupidity. Unfortunately, we allow documented practices to be recreated at events, and stupidity is one of them.

There are ways to keep accidents from happening. The first thing that can and should be done is to require reenactors to qualify with their muskets with ball. There are a lot of guys out there who have absolutely no respect for the fact that it is a real, honest-to-God firearm in their hands. If they could see what it is capable of, perhaps they be a little more muzzle-conscious.

The drills that are used to try and look so sharp out there don't take into account the fact that sometimes flintlocks misfire. For a while there, at the Battle Road event, the powers-that-be were teaching a drill that included the tipping downward of the muzzle to spill out any unfired powder that may be in the bore. Sure it is less than authentic, but if the alternative is allowing stupid people to overload their guns and endanger themselves, the people in ranks around them, bystanders, and indeed the entire hobby of living history because they don't have the sense enough to keep track of whether or not their guns have gone off, is an authentic drill really all that important?

Guns and powder are not dangerous all by themselves, they are inanimate objects. When these things become a problem is when stupid people are allowed to handle them. At least in Lamb's day, he recognised that the danger came from the half-assed loading practices that were adopted in the field to keep up with American tactics.

In today's world, stupid people perform an unsafe act, damage themselves, the gun, and the people around them and the first response is that it is someone else's fault. It must have been the gunmaker's fault that Private Dumbass put six or seven charges in his musket and pulled the trigger, right? Maybe it was the powder manufacturer's fault, or the event organizer. It certainly couldn't have been the fault of the guy who overloaded his gun in complete disregard for accepted load standards, the manufacturer's instructions, the safety rules they were taught when they joined the unit (assuming they were taught, if not, the unit certainly shares responsibility) and just plain common sense.

I've been reenacting for nearly two decades. People would mock me if they knew the historical details I have spent time obsessing about. The authenticity I can achieve pales in comparison to the level of the guys who are willing to injure themselves and their friends by correctly reenacting period correct stupidity.