Short stories and tall tales

Malcolm Plant gauges the different fashions in barrel lengths over the years and in different historical eras, and how a good Shot would apply them

The Long Land Pattern Musket was the British Army’s standard long-barrelled flintlock musket from the middle of the 1700s for almost 100 years. With the nickname Brown Bess, the muzzle-loaded musket had a barrel 46in long, although towards the end of the 1700s this model was being supplemented and succeeded by the Short Land Pattern, which had only 42in barrels. Why were the barrels so long? Simply to allow the gunpowder, or blackpowder, sufficient time to burn as the ¾in round shot was propelled along the barrel. The diameter of the barrel was not far off that of today’s 12-bore barrel at 0.729in, but the gun weighed about 10½lb compared with a modern shotgun weighing in at about 7lb or 8lb. In the first half of the 1800s the India…

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Sporting Gun (Digital) - 1 Issue, January 2021

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