In some of the scenes, Hawkeye is seen firing both of his long rifles in close time, but we never see him reloading them. (Or did I just miss that?) Did those rifles take bullets, or did they have the multi-step loading process using gunpowder that the old muskets had? Thanks for any info!
shareI watched a programme on British tv about a year ago on this very subject. Can't recall the seconds it took to load but under a minute, for sure.
shareYou had to dump the powder, add the ball, pack it down. At the end you see Natty doing some of this while running. A soldier at the time, based on their methods of shooting and reloading in unison, would be easier to do but take time. Given that Natty was a man of the earth who was easily found running through the woods with his rifle after a deer, you can conclude that he had much practice reloading quickly while running.
One thing should be noted that since he was such a good shot, he could kill a man before that man had a chance to fire his gun. That's why at the end he is able to pick up unfired guns and use them without loading them. That was a pretty awesome aspect of those scenes.
A really experienced shooter might be able to load on a musket on the run like that, but I really don't think it would be remotely possible with a rifle. Rifles took much longer to load, as the ball, wrapped in a lubricated patch, had to be a tight fit in the bore in order to engage the rifling and shoot accurately. Consequently the balls were much harder to ram down, and while a musketeer could fire of three rounds a minute, and a good one, could just manage four, a rifle like the ones used in this movie were limited to no more than two shots a minute because of the more difficult reloading. That's the main reason the smoothbore musket was the preferred military weapon: it actually allowed greater firepower in massed volleys because of the faster rate of fire, that and rifles would become much harder, or even impossible to load after several shots from steadily accumulating black powder fouling in the barrel.
This problem wasn't solved until the invention of the Minié ball in the 19th century, which had a hollow base. The Minié ball could be made a loose fit in the bore, just like a musket ball, but the hollow base would obturate on firing -- the gas pressure expanding the hollow "skirt" to engage the rifling. The rifled musket displaced the smoothbore one, and soldiers could now shoot accurately to over 300 yards, instead of 100 tops. That's why the US Civil Wars casualties were so horrific. They started out still using Napoleonic War tactics, but the weapons were 3-4 times more accurate.
The rifles took much longer to load than the muskets used by the soldiers.
Muskets were smooth bore guns designed for quick reliable loading using a prepackaged "cartridge" that contained premeasured powder and a round ball all wrapped in paper. The soldier bit open the cartridge, poured the powder down the bore and then dropped the ball in over it followed by a quick stroke of the ram rod. The ball was significantly smaller than the bore diameter so it dropped in quickly. A trained soldier could get off 3 shots a minute, but the muskets were not accurate by today's standards. In fact, they did not even have sites. The soldiers fired volleys as a unit sending hundreds of bullets down range in a kind of lead storm.
The rifle that Hawkeye used had a rifled bore, meaning that spiral grooves were cut into the bore that would spin stabilize the bullet and that's what made it so much more accurate than a musket. The ball, or bullet, had to tightly engage those spiraled grooves so a lubricated cloth patch was wrapped around the ball to ensure a tight fit. The riflemen did not use cartridges, so they had to measure the powder charge for each shot before dropping it in. Because the ball and patch was such a tight fit it had to actually be rammed down the bore rather than just dropped and tamped like a musket load. That whole process takes about a minute to do, maybe a bit less.
When Hawkeye was providing cover for the runners leaving the fort we could see men handing him one preloaded rifle after another so that he could fire fast enough to be effective.
Thanks so much, sparker21, for that detailed reply!
Great post sparker21. I just wanted to add that powder horns often were designed so when you inverted them into the barrel they released only enough to load it. Kinda a self sealing design. This improved reload times significantly. I'm pretty sure Hawkeye was using that type of horn.
shareAs you may already know, a lot of revolutionary war soldiers were offered rifles, but refused them because it was so slow and complicated. Most preferred the musket. The Morgan's Rifles unit was a notable exception.
sharemoosish-628-965954 --
"...Hawkeye is seen firing both of his long rifles in close time, but we never see them reloading them..."Generally, during a fire-fight at a fort, a firing line would hand off the spent rifle to a loading line standing just behind him and collect freshly fed pieces from the same individuals