double barrel blunderbus?

[4V50 Gary]

The following is from the Diary of Captain Hinrichs republished as part of The Siege of Charleston, Bernhard A. Unlendorf, ed. See pages 270-1. As you know, Charleston was besieged and captured by the Crown forces during the American War of Independence.

Ich verlohr einen Arbeiter von 42. der mit einem Doppel Hacken aus einem Hausse in der Stadt erschossen wurde, denn so gar hinter ihren Sandsacken auf dem Wallen, hatten wir sie weg gejagd.

Can someone confirmed the translation into English?

I lost only one workman from the 42nd, who was killed with a double barreled blunderbuss from a house in the city, for we had chased the enemy away even from behind their sandbags on the rampart.

Doppel is double and hacken is to hack. I think double barrel blundebuss is a poor translation.

 

[Boogershooter]

Double charged?

 

[Hawg]

Somebody probably translated shotgun into blunderbuss.

 

[Ozzieman]

http://www.icollector.com/Rare-and-...enter-mounted-spring-bayonet-iron-ca_i9858780

No they did make them just the end of the barrel was not that large

http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/116575
This is an over under blunderbuss

 

[Model12Win]

Pedersoli needs to come out with a repro!!

 

[SIGSHR]

"Hacken" also means to chop. Poor translation IMHO, and when one is describing totally unfamiliar and misunderstood things-cf the Japanese "knee mortar" of WWII.

 

[FrankenMauser]

My German is rusty, but...
Bad translation, in my opinion.

I don't see anything there to support a blunderbuss, at all.

A blunderbuss is typically referred to with "büchse" as the word root.
Generally, 'Donnerbüchse' or simply 'Büchsen' if plural. The word carried on and was applied to later technologies, which is why, if you look it up, most German dictionaries will define the word as "rifle" (along with Gewehr).

There's no shotgun.
...Not even an actual mention of firearm, at all.


All I see that is relevant is a 'double hit/chop' ... 'shot and killed from a house in the city'.


But the syntax and spelling aren't all that great, to begin with. There are some derivations and variations of words used that make everything somewhat questionable. Verlohr, for example, is assumed to be a lazy, non-standard conjugation of verlieren (to lose); where verloren (lost) should have been used, but doing so would have required a longer sentence. ...But if verlieren was not, in fact, the writer's intention or original text (possible transcription error?), then the true meaning is anyone's guess.