Many people think that the
advent of repeating firearms was a thing of the 19th century—a time dominated,
at least in the Americas, by the U.S. Civil War and battles between cowboys and
lawmen in the Wild West. While the 19th century was, indeed, a time
skyrocketing popularity for repeating weapons, it may be surprising to learn
that multi-shot firearms had already been around for hundreds of years.
Before the 19th century,
repeating firearms were available for purchase, but were often ignored, as they
were expensive to manufacture, difficult to repair and provided little
advantage in accuracy over other muskets. The low demand for pre-19th century
repeating firearms, however, did not stop ambitious gunsmiths from inventing
primitive semi-automatic and automatic weapons. The mechanisms used in these
interesting weapons could vary greatly, with some relying on swiveling gun
barrels, while others used something akin to a Roman candle design, or even
magazines of musket balls that could be individually loaded into a firearm
through a contraption similar to those found in later lever-action repeating
rifles.
Here are just a few of the
bizarre repeating firearms that were in existence during the heyday of
muzzle-loaded weaponry. In the 16th century, the 16-shot wheel-lock was one of
the first firearms to use the Roman candle design, where one shot ignited the
charge of the next, repeating until the ammunition was expended. In the early
17th century, two separate gunsmiths, named Lorenzoni and Kalthoff, created
some of the first magazine-loaded flintlock rifles. During the 18th century, at
least three more notable repeating firearms were produced. These included the Joseph
Belton 8-Shot Repeating Musket, the Cookson Volitional Repeating Flintlock and
the Girandoni Air Rifle. The latter of these weapons was actually carried by
Merriwether Lewis during the famous Lewis and Clark surveying expedition into
the American West.
Written by C. Keith Hansely.
Picture Attribute: (Battle of
Bunker Hill by Howard Pyle (1853–1911),
[Public Domain] via Creative Commons).
Sources:
- The Book of the Continental Soldier, by Harold L. Peterson. Pennsylvania: Stackpole Company, 1968.
- https://www.britannica.com/technology/repeating-rifle#ref264878
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