I’ve recently been reminded of C. S. Forester’s Hornblower books. They were books about a British naval officer during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815). I read them all as a kid. He routinely described in detail the operation of the black powder muzzle loading cannon aboard ships. He even described the procedure used by a shore battery they captured as to using heated shot, red hot cannon balls, to set the target ships on fire.
I was really struck by one book where Hornblower is setting off to war and his wife, unbeknownst to him, includes a pair of pistols in his luggage. They are, of course, muzzle loading, black powder guns but Hornblower is pleasantly taken aback that they are double barreled, rifled, percussion pistols. Apparently gun makers back then didn’t include instruction manuals or stamp stuff on the barrel of the guns. Hornblower has to figure out on his own how they work and is delighted with them. With flintlocks he figured he’d have one or two misfires out of his four shots. With the percussion guns he thought even in rain or salt water spray, which would probably totally disable the flintlocks, his new percussion pistols would almost always fire.
I liked the firearms detail C. S. Forester provided in the book.
I was really struck by one book where Hornblower is setting off to war and his wife, unbeknownst to him, includes a pair of pistols in his luggage. They are, of course, muzzle loading, black powder guns but Hornblower is pleasantly taken aback that they are double barreled, rifled, percussion pistols. Apparently gun makers back then didn’t include instruction manuals or stamp stuff on the barrel of the guns. Hornblower has to figure out on his own how they work and is delighted with them. With flintlocks he figured he’d have one or two misfires out of his four shots. With the percussion guns he thought even in rain or salt water spray, which would probably totally disable the flintlocks, his new percussion pistols would almost always fire.
I liked the firearms detail C. S. Forester provided in the book.