American Rifle - Alexander Rose [10]
Many Europeans believed that a large bullet was a more effective killer than a slighter one and refused on principle to “trade down” to a rifle. Intuitively, size would matter, but any projectile’s lethality hinges on multiple factors, not least of which is the proportion of gunpowder a shooter uses relative to the size of the bullet. George Hanger, a British colonel regarded as one of the world’s finest shots and who fought in America during the Revolution, observed that riflemen here “never put in more powder than is contained in a woman’s thimble.” Even so, owing to the bullet’s smallness, “they will carry [i.e., load] more than half the weight of the ball in powder.” By contrast, sportsmen in London used a quarter of their bullets’ weight in powder. By this measure, an American ball weighing, say, 200 grains (a gram equals 15.43 grains) would be boosted by 100 grains of powder, and a British ball of 400, by an identical amount. Thus, a British shooter would load the same amount of powder as an American, but because the ball was much heavier, each grain would be forced to do more work. The projectile’s velocity and kinetic energy consequently suffered. In Hanger’s words, “what the smaller ball loses by its want of weight, is most astonishingly compensated for, by the triple velocity given to it, from the great increase of the powder.”62
Hanger was convinced that the American method and style of shooting was distinct from anything found in Europe. He was right. Nowhere else was the cult of accuracy so rigorously worshiped as in colonial America. Stretching the barrel, for instance, increased the distance between the rear and front sights, allowing the shooter to take a more precise bead on his target.63 Some riflemen even purchased a long, narrow brass or iron tube about half an inch in diameter that could be screwed into the top of the barrel to function as a rudimentary “telescopic” sight. (The accessory lacked a magnifying glass but certainly aided concentration.)64
Only American riflemen refused to “guess” how much powder to use for their personalized weapon. When they purchased a new rifle, they would rest its muzzle on the snow or on a bleached cloth and fire it. If it spat out unburned residue, they gradually reduced the powder load until none stained the white background. Then they would fashion a powder flask or charger that would dispense exactly the right amount down the barrel.65 For “tricky” shots, they would rely on long experience and a skilled eye to calculate whether to use extra or skim a little off. For longer ranges, where the ball would be buffeted by the wind and retarded by air resistance, they would add more powder for higher muzzle velocity and a flatter ballistic arc; to increase accuracy by reducing recoil at shorter distances, they would use less. In order to hit enemies laboring under the misapprehension that they were out of range, Davy Crockett occasionally inflated the muzzle velocity of a .40-caliber flint-lock nicknamed “Old Betsey” (one of at least three rifles he owned) up to a remarkable 2,500 feet per second (normally, it was 1,600 fps) by loading it with six fingers of gunpowder. During hard times Crockett conserved his ammunition and powder by sawing bullets in two and halving his charge.66
In Europe hunting with guns was a pursuit reserved for the nobility, but in America, where gun ownership on the frontier was more common if not universal, even children were introduced to firearms from an early age. When a boy was twelve or thirteen years old, wrote Joseph Doddridge of the typical eighteenth-century Virginian and Pennsylvanian, he “was furnished with a small rifle and