@@abergethirty oh bugger off with your "we did it first" nonsense, your the epitome of arrogance, you cant not open your mouth to ruin a joke. edit: when did you change your name from obadiah hakeswill to allen?
Henry Nock apprenticed his nephew Samuel who became a renowned gun maker in his own right. I have a nice Samuel Nock double percussion gun. Henry was succeeded by his son in law James Wilkinson. The company was also famous for it's high quality swords and on Henry's death in 1864 the company name was changed to Wilkinson Sword which is still going today.
A Nock Volley Gun was once discharged in combat at a range of 5 meters. Results were as follows: A total of 14 people were injured or killed in the event. Upon discharge, 3 enemies were directly hit in the torso with a single projectile each and 2 perished. 1 enemy was hit with 3 projectiles; 1projectile in the leg and 2 projectiles in the torso, and perished. 2 of the 7 projectiles penetrated through the initial victim and each struck another enemy, wounding them. The 7th projectile hit an iron cannon barrel, ricocheted and struck the leg of a comrade; who then lost balance, fell overboard and drowned. The muzzle blast ignited the clothing of 3 nearby comrades, who suffered sever burns, but survived. The 11th victim was a comrade who was momentarily blinded and stunned by the large flash and was then impaled and killed by an enemy's sword while in this disoriented state. A nearby comrade was priming the pan on his musket when the large fireball from the volley gun ignited the powder, discharging the musket. Because the musket was not shouldered, it recoiled upward and the barrel struck the face of the user and the musket simultaneously shot and killed an enemy 40 meters away on the deck of the other ship. The final victim was the firer; his shoulder severly bruised by the immense recoil of the gun. Not really
The volley gun was used throughout Bernard Cornwell's 20 book series Sharpe's Rifles taking place during the Napoleonic War in 18th and 19th century Europe.
Ya, so me and my buddy are watching the series right now, and when it first showed up on screen he was like, what is that? and I was like, what you haven't seen a volly gun before. I then had to come back and rewatch this video.
The gun used to hang in Auckland War Memorial Museum when I lived there, I got that from the interp panel under it originally. Crosby's book 'The Musket Wars' is a great history of the Musket Wars and has some of that in it.
i wish it worked more like a pepper box. it looks B.A. but the idea of 7 barrels going off at once, no thanks. came across this when looking for a pepperbox revolver style rifle for a pirate character
I read that in addition to the problems Ian mentioned, another problem (particularly for shipboard use) was its muzzle flash. These things would have been fired from the ship's tops, which had tarred shrouds on either side plus other ropes. Giant muzzle flash + flammable tarred ropes and sails = fire. And fire + wooden ship = a sailor's worst nightmare.
Actually they could have quickly checked each barrel with a 'marked for depth' ram rod before each reloading to ascertain if any had not fired, only takes a few insignificant seconds in comparison to the long reload time. I think the sergeant character in the TV series Sharpe's Rifles carried one of these.
Laird Cummings, I suspect that is exactly what happened in reality. Who has time to re-load these things in a ship to ship engagement? I suspect their main use was last ditch defence upon being borded rather than offence.
@@corinhings177 Unfortunately, it'd be murder on YOUR sails and rigging, since it had a three feet long muzzle flash. Add to that, longer loading time compared to a standard musket, wicked recoil, no provision for a bayonet, and no spread of the shots. The idea was to clear the decks of the enemy, but the spread was more like seven shots on ONE man at the length of a ship.
Maybe the idea was that IF you reload that, you reload only the center barrel. Reloading one barrel alone takes lot of time and you're already fighting much closer than on a land.
Love your videos Ian. -Just one tip with this one. You can easily tell which barrel has or hasn't been fired by running the ram-rod down. If empty it will hit bottom and usually correspond to a marking on the rod itself. Sounds easy but I wouldn't want to be the one playing "one of these things is not like the other" 7x over during a naval battle. Please keep em coming!
Not that they probably did this, Heath and Safety not being known in the late 1700's, but if you are not sure all seven barrels have discharged, you can use the ramrod to check. Holding the barrels away from you and dropping the ramrod down each barrel in turn, would show which (if any) barrels were still loaded, as the ramrod would project further out of any loaded barrel. If you had a hang fire, you would lose the ramrod though so I doubt anyone actually tried this, especially during the heat of battle.
Just the ticket for boarding parties though. Give it a blast with one of these then up and at them with the cutlass. I read somewhere that they were quite useful to threaten a mutinous crew with too.
Another problem would be the aformentioned "heat of battle". People make mistakes when under fire and don't always think as clearly as us keyboard generals do in the safety of our homes. Even supposedly trained soldiers would sometimes double load a single barrel musket, either not realizing it didn't go off (!) or just blindly following orders/procedure while fighting off panic.
Sees Nock gun in the thumbnail, instantly checks comments for Sharpe references. You guys did not disappoint me! Rumor has it, if you do a war cry while firing, it kills extra frogs.
The content of your videos is wonderful, but more than that the consistency of your presentation and tempo is deeply satisfying and comforting on a stressful day.
Stuff like this amazes me, not only because weapons like these actually survived for centuries, but also because the the details of how they came to be and why are actually known.
thank you. that is what a ramrod is for a) to check that all barrels are clear and b) to check after each discharge to check that any barrel is still "loaded" before reloading , only takes a short time before reloading ,please have a good day with this marvelous part of British history, probably more at the bottom of the sea after being thrown overboard than surviving any conflict
You know, this was also in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. When I saw that gun in this movie, I thought it was just a joke... I can't believe it was actually a thing...
Beside being used in the Sharpe Series written by Bernard Cornwell, the gun being carried by Sgt Harper, I saw an original int the Turkish Military Museum in Istanbul, Turkey in 1994. Beautiful condition.
It was in the books, with less magical ability to reload it. It was generally used as basically a blunderbuss, followed by a charge with a bayonet. Main problem was that it (alongside the problems mentioned in the video) is that during testing, it set the sails a bit on fire. Which is generally not a good thing
They were known for their quality, and for their uncommon calibres (18.2 for instance). What's remarkable is that Darne is still in business. After the original family closed the business, some enthusiasts bought the company and revived it. They still make handcrafted, bespoke shotguns and rifles, and will draw from their ample stock of high-quality vintage barrels to make them. They only have two reps - one in France, and another in Texas, of all places.
I just realized the "Knock-Cannon" from Disco Elysium (which is a multi-barreled anti-materiel rifle used by one of the mercenaries at the Tribunal) is a reference to this thing.
I don't know if this has been commented already, but you can tell if a muzzle loading rifle is loaded by checking how deep the ram rod goes into the barrel. You put a mark on the ram rod where the muzzle is while empty, and if it doesn't line up it is loaded.
Matt Twinkletoes no they didnt. When I was based in Sarajevo during the civil war, I had several sharpe videos sent to me to fill the time when off duty and once my american colleagues saw it, they were hooked. I actually gave them all away when i returned to uk otherwise the yanks would have mutinied. Fun memoriies from a very fraught time.
I can't stop loving this kind of ''steampunk'' guns. Shure, it doesn't means that i would enjoy fire the thing more than a few times, but i love how it looks and that raw early fashion of making fireguns... Like Ian often says, i can't live without it! Thank u 4 share it!
I always understood the marking "Tower" was put on guns assembled from parts in the Tower of London, although latterly many of the parts would have been made in Birmingham..
Someone probably already mentioned this but at 4:09 you said there is not a way to tell which barrels are loaded and which are not, that is false. Any muzzle loader worth there weight knows to mark there ramrod at the length of an appropriately charged barrel. That way not only if they drop the rod down the barrel they can tell that it is loaded but also you can tell if a projectile is fully seated or not. You do not want an air pocket between the projectile and powder in a black powder firearm, that is how you blow up a gun.
Couldn't one use the ramrod to check if all the barrels are empty? Put it in a barrel that's sure to be empty, put a marking on the ramrod at the appropriate location, and use that to check if all the barrels are empty when you fired it a couple of times. Or am I thinking too simple?
Regardless if it's a bad gun or not. I think a pretty simple way of checking if a barrel is live or not, is to stick a marker on your ramrod to check how deep it is.
In the event that some barrels misfire, I'd suggest using the ramrod to figure out which barrels were still loaded. It should not go in as far in the loaded barrels as opposed to those barrels that fired successfully.
Lol, GREAT video, but you had a huge oversight and got one thing dead wrong brother. If some barrels didn't detonate, just do what all musketmen did, and still do to this day, take your ram rod which had two cuts or lines in it so when it was inserted as far as it'd go, depending on which line was even with the muzzle, that told you whether the barrel is loaded or not.
Sharpe actually used one himself in the books. Before giving one to Harper. Odd considering he was never said to be hugely strong or anything like that.
Ian not to say your wrong But the word Tower on the lockplates I always believed was the tower of London For most of the flintlock and percussion periods, the Tower of London served as a storehouse for arms, but no arms were actually made there in the usual sense. Contractors made the various parts, and brought them to the Tower for inspection; if they passed inspection, they were accepted and the contractor paid. Locks were delivered assembled but with the lockplate soft and "in the white". The lock would be inspected, then disassembled and the parts inspected. If accepted, the lockplate would be stamped with the broad arrow, then turned over to Tower workers, who engraved it with the royal cypher, the year, and the word "Tower" before hardening it. Once all the parts were finished, the lock was reassembled, inspected again, and placed in stock.
Lots of mentions of use in Sharpe in the comments, the gun also appears briefly in the boarding scene in Master and Commander which I thought was a nice touch.
That is absolutely gorgeous. Absolutely. Gorgeous. I want one in 20 gauge with a Lancaster-style rotating bolt and rifled barrels. Damnit, I'm starting a gun company!
It is easy to determine which barrels had not fired in a partial volley - the ramrod would only go so far as the ball and wadding (sitting in front of the powder charge) i.e. not the full way. You would do this reasonably carefully, as vigorous ramming may cause the powder to explode under compression... anyway, no it is not difficult to determine which barrel had not discharged.
I can only imagine how people would use these "Yes, I have this single shot musket that I can reload in a good minute and is relatively accurate, but I REALLY dont like that guy over there"
If they'd given every redcoat in the line one of these I imagine the French would have died very very quickly. As in the entire front rank down in the first shot.
It really is quite easy to tell which barrels are unfired, just time consuming. Having reenacted three time periods of history, I can share with you that during safety inspections, using flintlock, or percussion muskets, we would drop the ramrod down the barrel and listen for a ping and the inspection officer would check the length of the ramrod protruding from the muzzle. A still loaded breech would make the ramrod stick out too far, savvy?
As seen in Disco Elysium; "HAND/EYE COORDINATION [Medium: Success] - 0.4 seconds remain. There are six little black dots in the tip of the barrel, like a honeycomb. This is a *nock cannon*. It shoots six rounds in one pull of the trigger. CONCEPTUALIZATION [Challenging: Success] - Absolute destruction."
The Tower of London was the main British armoury where guns were assembled from parts made elsewhere, got nothing to do with Birmingham, although parts may have been made there. Birmingham proof house opened in the early 1800's.
As with all muzzle loading firearms, the ramrod would seat to a particular depth. Dropping it down each barrel would tell you if any were obstructed by unfired rounds. A minimum procedure for reloading one would likely include swabbing each barrel before adding any powder charge, at which point, unfired rounds should reveal themselves.
@@johnpotter4750 A muzzleloading shotgun uses a wad over the powder, and another thinner wad over the shot. So, you'd load the powder charge, then a thick wad, then your shot, and a thin wad over the shot. Like building a modern shotshell in the gun, one shot at a time.
If it was used in the crows nest... If they added a lug/pin on the bottom of the barrel that can hook into a bracket to help with recoil...... Nah, just load up one big pipe with shot and let it rip ! ! ! hehehe (^_^)
