The accepted wisdom seems to be the the British soldier was poorly trained, had a musket that was totally inaccurate and were told not to aim.
'Pon digging further into regimental histories and contemporary accounts it seems to me that the contrary was in fact true, the average British soldier was pretty well trained and disciplined and most of the soldiers serving in the colony would have had at least 5 years under arms, there are contemporary accounts of companies and battalions practising aiming at marks and even records of a light company where its soldiers were told to find the best "load" for their muskets and then to replicate it by making their own cartridges.
I have always found smooth bores to be pretty accurate within the limitations of the projectile the round ball, provided the ball was centred in the barrel with a patch, wad or cartridge covering and driven hard to over come the ballistic limitations of a round ball then half man size accuracy was easily achievable out to 100yrds.
Over the past couple of weeks I have been revisiting smooth bore musket shooting with and early Pedersoli "Brown Bess" are a reproduction the Pedersoli offering leaves quiet a bit to be desired in the accuracy department being a sort of hybrid 'tween long and short pattern models with a stock the looks at best period, however it is a well made and fitted gun that functions flawlessly and is a fine shooter.
I have been working with two loadings the first is my rendition of the issue cartridge of the day, a 0.690" ball over 130 gns of Swiss 2f Powder wrapped up in a lining paper cartridge bound together with linen thread. The second loading is 125 gns of Swiss 2f Powder, a tow wad, a 0.732" ball and another tow wad to hold in place. 2f powder from the cartridge was used to prime the pan in the first instance and a pinch of Swiss Nothing B powder in the wadded load
'Pon shooting there was very little tween the two loads with the cartridge load at 4" at 50 yrds and the wad load a bit larger at just under 5" at 50 yards. It took a couple of round for the barrel to settle down when being shot from clean after that you would get 10-12 rounds into the group before the fouling started building up enough to interfere with a consistent load column and the shots started to move out of the group but still well on target.
The main drawback for shooting for accuracy and group with these guns it the lack of sights especially a rear sight as the bayonet lugs works as a fore sight. This combined with a shiny reflective barrel makes getting repeatable sight pictures a real challenge.
With a proper load, and I think the issue cartridge was most likely a proper load, then the idea of a well undersized bare round ball bouncing down the bore is a myth. The paper acts as an all round wad centring the ball in the barrel combine that with a stout charge to get its velocity up to keep it going over distance and the results are surprisingly good and consistent.
Anyway the proof of the pudding is in the shooting, here is todays first target shot at 50 yrds rested, seated, from the bench the highest shot is the first from a clean barrel, the next highest is the second shot and then the rest just settled down into the group of five, this particular target was shot with the tow wad load.
Here are some of the musket in action.
The made cartridges.
Now obviously standing in the line of battle, facing a live enemy with round shot, canister and ball whistling round your ears, comrades falling right and left, clouds of blinding white smoke interspersed with bright flashes and an over powering, pervasive, deafening noise combined with gut wrenching, trouser filling fear is not conducive to accurate shooting. However the British soldier was renowned for his stoicism and steadiness under fire, no doubt from his thorough training and was able to deliver devastating volleys at close range, combining the qualities of the British soldier, the Brown Bess musket and loaded with properly constructed issue cartridges and we have a formidable weapon when properly led, that works because of its training, skill and courage of its soldiers and the quality of its equipment, rather than what a lot of experts would tell was an affair of death by luck or lack of it.
There is far more to the smooth bore musket than smoke, flame and noise.
But then what would I know? I don't have a youtube channel.
"Thank you both Ross and Joe for the photographs"
