Brown Bess
| Brown Bess | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| general information | |
| Military designation: | Short Land Pattern Musket / Brown Bess |
| Country of operation: | British Empire , Various Indian Tribes, United States of America , Kingdom of Sweden , United Mexican States , Empire of Brazil , Kingdom of Zululand |
| Developer / Manufacturer: | ? |
| Development year: | 1722 |
| Manufacturer country: | Kingdom of Great Britain |
| Production time: | 1722 to 186x |
| Model variants: | Long Land Pattern, Short Land Pattern, Sea Service Pattern, India Pattern, New Land Pattern, New Light Infantry Land Pattern, Cavalry Carbine |
| Weapon Category: | musket |
| Furnishing | |
| Overall length: | 1480 to 1590 mm |
| Weight: (unloaded) | 4.8 kg |
| Barrel length : | 660 to 1200 mm |
| Technical specifications | |
| Caliber : | .75, undersized musket ball (.69) |
| Ammunition supply : | Flintlock |
| Cadence : | User dependent; usually 3 to 4 rounds / min |
| Fire types: | Single loader |
| Number of trains : | Smooth tube |
| Visor : | grain |
| Charging principle: | Muzzle loader |
| Lists on the subject | |
Brown Bess is the popular name of the flintlock - infantry - gun (also: musket ), which the British military of about 1,722 by the end of the Napoleonic wars - so over a period of a century - served.
description
It is a muzzle loader with a smooth barrel pinned to the stock in caliber .75 (19.05 mm). The weapon was supplied with paper cartridges that contained slightly under-caliber round balls (.69 / 17.526 mm) in order to reduce contamination from powder residues. To load, the soldier had to bite off the folded end of the cartridge with his teeth and first fill the powder pan of the battery lock . The rest of the powder was poured into the barrel and the bullet and paper were pushed down firmly to the powder charge using the ramrod . Then the cock could be cocked from the loading rest to the fire rest and the weapon could be fired.
Versions
There are several models of the Brown Bess: First the King's Pattern was created in 1722 with a length of about 157 cm, then the Long Land Pattern Musket with a total length of 159 cm (from 1730). In 1768 the Short Land Musket (New Pattern) was introduced with a length of 148 cm. An equally long version for the Navy was introduced in 1756. In 1790 the East India Company introduced the Indian Pattern. Compared to the Short Land Musket , the barrel was again shortened by 7.6 cm. From 1802 the New Land Pattern was produced with a length of 148.5 cm.
use
Prussia had already introduced the steel ramrod in 1704, but England and later Great Britain only did so in 1756. The Navy received its own (shorter) versions: the 1738 Sea Service Musket , the 1757 Sea Service Musket and the 1778 Sea Service Musket . The enormous length of time in which the Brown-Bess was the standard military rifle of the British armed forces is difficult to understand by today's standards. The weapon was involved in virtually all fighting from the post- War of the Spanish Succession to the Battle of Waterloo , including the Seven Years' War , the American War of Independence, and fateful moments such as Clive's final conquest of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey (which led to the acquisition of British India led).
During the Napoleonic Wars , the Brown-Bess was the British counterpart to the musket model 1777 on the French side. Great Britain secretly supplied the defeated Prussia with several hundred thousand Brown Bess muskets (a total of 150,000 on October 12, 1812 alone), many of which were later given to the Landwehr , so that they were still used in the turmoil of 1848 .
The importance of this musket also lies in the fact that this was the first time that a product was manufactured in large quantities with simultaneous dimensional accuracy, as all parts were interchangeable. In this respect, the Board of Ordnance (BO) made an important contribution to the industrialization of England. There were a myriad of manufacturers, but the BO gave exact dimensions so that, unlike in the past, all parts were almost the same.
It is hardly surprising that Brown-Bess became a household word in the Anglo-Saxon language. Also Kipling dedicated a ballad whose last verse is reproduced below:
- Where old weapons are shown with their names writ beneath,
- You will find her, upstanding, her back to the wall,
- As stiff as a ramrod, the flint in her teeth.
- And if ever we English had reason to bless
- Any arm save our mothers', that arm is Brown Bess!
Muskets of this type were not ordinarily adapted to percussion , since the Board of Ordnance ordered the introduction of the Baker Rifle for sniper regiments as early as 1800. To rifle = with rifles, i.e. a rifle with a rifled barrel. This was followed by the Brunswick Rifle and this in turn by the 1838 Percussion Musket , both in .75 caliber. Muskets were not adapted to percussion in Europe until around 1840, so at that time there was no need for an adaptation in England , as a completely new type of rifle was introduced. Prussia, on the other hand (to name just one example), initially (for reasons of economy, of course, which England was not forced to) adopted the M / 1809 infantry rifle , which was then fitted with shallow Minié rifles after the Crimean War . The successor to the 1838 Percussion Musket was the Enfield Rifled Musket in 1852 , which received a Snider breech loading system from 1861 and was in turn replaced in 1871 by the Martini-Henry rifle , whose successor, the Martini-Enfield rifle, was introduced in 1885 and thus the was the last gunpowder rifle in the British Army. In 71 years, a total of eight types of rifle have served in the British Army (if you count the Enfield Rifled Muskets modified after Snider), a variety that is second to none. The fact that the Brown Bess was still being produced at a time when another type of rifle had already been introduced shows how successful its design was.
literature
- George C. Neumann and David Th. Schiller: per mare, per terram. The story of Brown Bess , in: Visier 11 (2003) pp. 132–142.
- Anthony D. Darling: Red Coat and Brown Bess , 1971
