Percussion Revolvers by Mike Cumpston

Author:Mike Cumpston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2014-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Precursors and Peers

ACCURATE SINGLESHOT PISTOLS

The Pedersoli replica of the .44 caliber LePage target pistol has a single-phase set trigger. The group was fired from one hand at 25yd.

History records that Prince Rupert of Bohemia, 1619–1682 AD, used his screw-barrel flintlock pistol to shoot a hole in a rooster weather vane on top of a church 60yd. distant. Observers who might have objected to his cavalier treatment of holy ground instead accused him of benefiting from pure luck. Rupert then recharged the pistol and ventilated the chanticleer again. Assuming that this story is true, it necessarily supposed the presence of rifling in the bore and almost certainly some sort of sighting equipment. This is not too far-fetched, as rifled firearms predate the flintlock era. Pistols with usable sights, rifled barrels, and tuned actions coexisted with the clunky and crude lead-lobbers throughout the history of firearms. By the late 18th Century, finely accurate martial, sporting, and dueling pistols were commonplace if not so widely distributed as the more utilitarian, sightless, smoothbore arms.

James Serven wrote “Dueling Pistols” for Gun Digest in 1965. He said that dueling pistols arose from the general run of martial pistols, usually retaining smoothbores and no sights, while evolving more reliable lockwork and ignition. The English, according to Serven, favored smoothbore pistols of large caliber, while those on the European continent often used smallbore rifled arms with target sights. This was at odds with both the Irish dueling code of 1777 and the French code. Only the French code made any reference to the type of pistol to be used and specified that smoothbores were preferable. Set triggers that enabled a light trigger pull are unmentioned in the codes, but some experienced duelists recommended avoiding them because of the likelihood of accidental discharge. The LePage family hedged their bets by creating cased sets containing both rifled and smoothbore barrels. The rifled barrels became more popular as dueling declined and recreational parlor shooting gained in popularity.

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