July 15th, 1809. After our success at Carlton House it would be tempting to expect offers from impresarios of the leading London theatres eager to stage our performance. But we have been – bears and [more…]
June 25th, 1809. We are returned to London. Our journey from Portsmouth was necessarily a slow one, as no stagecoach driver will countenance adding eight bears to his passengers. In any case, Fred deemed it [more…]
May 20th, 1809. We are at sea again – on a merchant ship, Pride of Scunthorpe, under the command of Jonas Swigger, a jovial captain who was more than happy to take us bears and [more…]
Introduction By inducing a projectile to spin around its own axis its flight is stabilised and accuracy and range are vastly improved. Rifling a barrel by cutting spiral grooves in a variety of forms and [more…]
Introduction Every month my gun club holds a guest day when members can bring along friends and family to ‘have a go’ with their firearms. Maybe it’s because we were raised on a diet of [more…]
May 6th, 1809 We are part of a regular army again, pressing on to confront the French. I must confess that my old bones are aching from the furious pace of our advance. Jem is [more…]
Introduction Although the flintlock ignition system was technically advanced for its time, it wasn’t without its shortcomings. Flintlocks require careful setting-up and constant maintenance and adjustment to be reliable. They also have a relatively slow [more…]
March 2nd, 1809. We are back in Portugal at last. It has been a circuitous journey across ridges and valleys, avoiding the French troops on the lower ground, but we have managed it without any [more…]
In my introductory article we saw that by the beginning of the 19th century the flintlock was firmly established as the state-of-the-art means of ignition in military and sporting firearms. In this article, we will [more…]
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