Queen Anne Pistols

In today's post, we will look at a type of pistol that was around in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the Queen Anne pistols (otherwise called turn-off pistols). These were generally in use from around 1650 to 1780 AD.

First, we will investigate the origin of the name. The first models of this type of pistol date back to around 1650 or 1660 AD in England, but they really started becoming popular during the reign of Queen Anne of England (she was born in 1665 AD and ruled England from 1702 to 1714 AD). This is why they are popularly called as Queen Anne pistols.

So what makes these pistols different from other pistols of the era? There were several features unique to these pistols which we will study:

1. The breech and lock of a Queen Anne pistol were forged together as a single piece, a feature that did not become common in firearms until the middle of the nineteenth century.
2. Unlike most weapons of this era which were loaded from the muzzle, most Queen Anne pistols were loaded from the breech.
3. The barrel of a Queen Anne pistol was screwed on to the chamber. This was one of the key distinguishing features of a Queen Anne pistol.
4. The barrel was tapered from the breech to the muzzle.
5. The caliber of the bullet ball was made larger than the bore of the barrel. Since these pistols were loaded from the breech, there was no need to use a ramrod or wadding, unlike most other firearms of the era.
6. Though early model barrels were smoothbores, later models featured rifled barrels for better accuracy.

Like most firearms of that era, these pistols used flintlock firing mechanisms. The barrels of most models of Queen Anne pistols were shaped like miniature cannon barrels. 

A Queen Anne Pistol. Click on the image to enlarge.

Image is  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license by Trulock at Wikipedia

Queen Anne type pistol made by Galliard in Lausanne, Switzerland around 1760. Click on the image to enlarge.

Image is  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 France license.

To load this type of pistol, the user would first unscrew the barrel from the chamber (this is why they are also called turn-off pistols). The chamber is designed to be long and narrow, with a cup on top. After unscrewing the barrel, the user would load some black powder into the chamber and then place a bullet ball on to the cup. Then the user would screw the barrel back in place and tighten it with a key. Notice that the barrel is tapered from the breech to the muzzle. This is a deliberate feature. The diameter of the bullet is larger than the diameter of the barrel at the breech, therefore it cannot roll out through the barrel. The bullet stays in place on the cup and holds the black powder in the chamber, without using any wadding.

When the user pulls the trigger, the flintlock mechanism ignites the black powder in the chamber, which burns and produces high-pressure gas in the chamber. The hot gases push the bullet out of the cup and through the barrel. Since the barrel is tapered from the breech to the muzzle, the bullet is deformed as it is pushed out of the barrel. The bullet forms such a tight seal within the barrel that the high pressure gas gives the bullet much more velocity than muzzle loaders of that era.

In some early models, the barrels were smoothbore, but later models began to feature rifling in the barrel, in order to improve accuracy. This meant that they had higher velocity and better accuracy than most other pistols of that era. Although some infantry officers carried them for close range fighting, these were not used much as military weapons, because they took longer to load than muzzle loaders and could not be easily re-loaded in the middle of combat. Therefore, the majority of purchases were by civilians. 

These pistols originated in England, but also spread to France, Switzerland etc. Several of them were used by Americans during the American Revolution. It is thought that most of these came into American hands after the Siege of Boston. 

The nice thing about such pistols was that most of them were made in sizes that could be easily stowed in a coat pocket, or tucked into a belt, thereby allowing them to be easily concealed. This is why they became popular among civilians as a self-defense weapon. Many were owned by rich people and therefore, quite a few examples are highly decorated with silver and gold engravings.

These pistols were also popular with pirates, The infamous pirate, Edward Teach, better known to the world as "Blackbeard", has been depicted in several portraits, carrying a number of these pistols around his body.

The pirate captain Edward Teach, alias "Blackbeard". Notice the pistols tucked into his belt.

The character, Jack Sparrow, in the Pirates of the Caribbean series of movies, also carries a Queen Anne type pistol and hands it to Angelica in the movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

Now, we present a small movie showing the features of this pistol:

Happy viewing!

Rifling: Breechloaders

In all the previous posts in this section, all the weapons have been muzzleloaders. We will now move on to discussing breechloading rifles. All muzzleloading weapons, by their very nature, require a user to stand up to load the weapon; and also require more steps to complete the loading procedure. This is where breechloaders have an advantage because the user can shoot much faster with a breechloader weapon.

The main problem with adopting breechloading technology was how to make the breech gas tight, so that it would not leak gases out of the sealed end of the barrel. One of the early breechloading weapons was actually a rifle -- The Ferguson Rifle, which we already discussed in the breechloading article linked above. However, it was not until the mid 19th century, when manufacturing technologies were sufficiently advanced, that the breechloader was considered again. We've also seen some of the 19th century breechloaders while discussing the needle gun cartridge. Both the Dreyse Needle Gun and the Chassepot were also rifled arms.

In breechloading weapons (including modern pistols, rifles etc.), the cartridge is loaded into a chamber at the breech (i.e.) close to the end of the barrel near the trigger. The chamber is somewhat larger than the bullet, so that the cartridge can be easily loaded into it. The chamber then narrows down to a throat which connects to the barrel. Normally, the diameter of the throat is roughly around the same diameter of the barrel with the grooves. The bullet is usually slightly larger in diameter than the diameter of the barrel with the grooves. When the weapon is fired, the bullet gets slightly deformed as it moves through the throat and enters the barrel. The deformation makes the bullet engage the grooves of the barrel and it starts to spin as it makes its way out of the barrel.

As black powder gave way to more powerful explosives such as cordite, the velocity of bullets increased and so it was no longer possible to manufacture them out of soft lead. Hence, we now have harder lead and copper jacketed bullets. These are made to prevent the bullet from being stripped by the grooves as it makes its way through the barrel.

As the bullets make their way out of the barrel, they tend to wear out the rifling. The maximum wear is usually around the chamber throat area where the chamber transits into the rifled barrel, as the pressure is highest in this area. Because heat can also wear out and deform the rifling, many light, medium and heavy machine guns have quick-change barrels, so that one barrel can be given sufficient time to cool down while another is used to fire the bullets.

Loading Mechanisms: Breechloader

In the previous post of this series, we've discussed the development of the muzzleloader . Now we will consider the other loading mechanism: the breechloader. To recap, a muzzleloader is loaded via the open end of the barrel (or muzzle). A breechloader is loaded near the closed end of the barrel (i.e.) near the trigger. The barrel is usually opened via a hinge or a plug, the gunpowder and bullet are put in and then the hinge is closed. One of the main advantages of breechloading weapons over muzzleloaders is that they are much quicker to reload. Another advantage is that the shooter doesn't need to expose himself to enemy fire to reload the weapon. With a muzzle loader, one must stand the weapon up vertically, put the safety on, stand up and pour the powder down the barrel and then use the ramrod to shove the bullet home into the base of the barrel. With a breechloader, one simply breaks open the breech, loads in the cartridge and then closes the breech and fires. The figure below shows a 16th century breechloading weapon that opens via a hinge.

Public domain image courtesy of wikipedia.com

The breechloader mechanism was known in the early history of firearms, but didn't really become popular until around the mid 19th century, because breech loading weapons need more precision manufacturing than muzzleloaders to actually work. After the 19th century, when manufacturing techniques reached the required standards, virtually all modern weapons made since then are breechloading.

The main challenge of breechloading weapons is to find a good way to seal the breech so that the expanding gases don't escape out that way. One of the early ways was by using a screw plug, as in the case of the Ferguson rifle, which will be studied below. The later development of metallic cartridges contributed much more to modern breechloader development.

The Ferguson rifle was invented by one Major Patrick Ferguson of the British Army in 1776.

Public domain image courtesy of wikipedia.com

It consisted of a screw plug at the breech, which could be unscrewed by turning the trigger guard. The user would tilt it forward and initially load in a lead ball of a slightly larger diameter than the barrel. The lead ball would roll forward and get stopped by the start of the barrel threads. Unlike most muzzleloaders, the ball did not need to be wrapped in a cloth or paper patch to provide a tight seal, since it was a slightly larger diameter than the barrel. Then the user would pour in some gunpowder to fill the loading chamber and then turn the trigger guard the other way to screw the plug back in. Excess gunpowder in the breech would be sheared off by the screw plug rising back up. Then the user could cock the weapon and be ready to fire. The firing mechanism itself was a flintlock, which was the height of firing mechanism technology at that time. Upon firing, the lead ball would slightly deform and keep the tight seal as it made its way through the barrel.

Such a loading mechanism was already known in Ferguson's time. In fact, one John Warsop had invented a similar mechanism and received a patent back in 1720. However, Warsop's design had a single threaded screw and needed 4 to 12 complete turns to open the breech for reloading. It was also loaded from the bottom and therefore more cumbersome to load. The innovative features of Ferguson's design were:

1. Use of a twelve start thread screw plug instead of a single start thread like the Warsop design (i.e.) the screw had 12 separate threads spiralling from the top to the bottom. Hence, instead of turning the screw plug 12 times to unscrew it like the Warsop design, it was only necessary to turn the screw plug once in a Ferguson rifle to unscrew the plug.
2. Top loading mechanism, so the user could drop the ball and gunpowder from the top.
   
3. The screw threads were interrupted by vertical slots cut into them Some excess powder would fall into these gap between the screw threads when the plug was screwed back in, and the remaining excess fouling could simply be wiped off.
4. The top of the screw plug was of a slightly larger diameter than the screw hole. What this meant was that the screw plug could not be removed from the rifle even if it was fully unscrewed. This was done so that it is not possible to drop the screw plug even in the heat of combat.

A good rifleman using a Ferguson rifle could load and shoot up to 6 rounds per minute. Major Ferguson himself demonstrated the rifle to senior officers on a very rainy summer day of 1776 and got their approval. To quote a newspaper of that time,

"Length 50 in.; weight 71/2 lbs.; bayonet 25 in. long and 11/2 in. wide, and being of fine temper and razor edge was called a sword bayonet; folding rear sight with leaves of 100 to 500 yds. The rotating breechblock has 12 threads to the inch, and opens or closes with one complete whirl of the guard. When open, the top of the screw is level with the breech bottom, a ball dropped in slides forward into a chamber slightly larger than the rifled diameter, the muzzle is tipped downward, powder put in to fill the chamber back of the ball, the guard is turned and the screw rises to the top and removes any surplus powder, while making the breech gas tight. When fired, the ball takes the rifling."

Unfortunately, there is a big difference between getting approval and gaining widespread acceptance and orders were initially placed for 300 weapons, of which only 200 were made and these were delivered to Ferguson's own unit (and were withdrawn from service shortly after, in spite of their success in the Battle of Brandywine).

There were a couple of reasons for the failure of this innovative weapon. The first was that the senior military officials didn't think it was manly at that time for soldiers to reload and fire while lying under cover in a prone position. Standard tactics of that era called for soldiers of opposing sides to meet face to face and shoot each other standing up.

The second reason for failure was the cost of manufacturing. It cost approximately 4 pounds to manufacture a Ferguson rifle, whereas a muzzle loading "Brown Bess" musket cost only 2 pounds at that time. It also took a skilled gunmaker more time to make a Ferguson rifle than a Brown Bess. Manufacturing a twelve-start thread screw plug required very specialized skills and not all gunmakers at that time could make those. At a time when the British Army would need to manufacture 50,000 rifles to replace their existing Brown Bess muskets, the total capacity of skilled gunmakers in England who could make the twelve-start thread screw plug was approximately 1000 per year. While mass production technologies for manufacturing were being pioneered during the time that the Ferguson rifle was being developed, no one in England thought to apply them to gun manufacture. It was left to the Americans, specifically Eli Whitney, to do this in 1790.

So despite the success of the weapon in the Battle of Brandywine, Ferguson's superior ordered the rifles to be locked up in a New York warehouse and his own unit was re-equipped with Brown Bess muskets. The remaining orders were also cancelled and thus the Ferguson faded into obscurity. It was not until a century later that breechloaders became popular again.