Ferguson Rifle

[Battlegrinder]

A few seconds becomes a moment. Carefully aiming becomes "in the right direction" which he absolutely was. God your arguments are shooting around so fast from place to place hows anyone supposed to keep up it's like a magic trick. Reloading and firing is literally a measure of dexterity which you very commonly lose as you get older what are you even talking about.

Yes, you will at least need to take a moment to aim, but a few seconds is far from unheard of. Drill manuals of the period are extremely clear on this point, soldiers are always to load, present (read: aim), and then fire. The practice you're using, where the guy whips the gun into the air and fires off a round as soon as he possibly can is not how these weapons were used.

And I didn't say "careful aiming". I said you have to at least get it pointed in the correct direction. These weapons already have poor accuracy, if you have a barrel pointed a few degrees in the wrong direction you will not hot anything. The point of all these musket drills is not just to make the guns fire as fast as possible, it's to produce as much accurate, effective fire as possible.

As for age related dexterity, I'm actually going to drop that point because in my attempt to check how old that guy is, I actually found more about his background that makes the age thing irrelevant (also, he looks like he's in his early 50s or so, that's not exactly old and decript). He's not just some ramdom old guy. He's a massive fan of Ferguson and his rifle and literally wrotethe book about both, is a former member of the international muzzle loading team and has more that 40 years experience with this sort of thing. A trained competive shooter with decades of practice is in no way a representative example of what the average person, or even the average trained soldier, could pull off.

 

[absenceofmalice]

Yes, you will at least need to take a moment to aim, but a few seconds is far from unheard of. Drill manuals of the period are extremely clear on this point, soldiers are always to load, present (read: aim), and then fire. The practice you're using, where the guy whips the gun into the air and fires off a round as soon as he possibly can is not how these weapons were used.

If you're spending a few seconds aiming through opaque smoke you're not getting four shots per minute and that still sucks compared to six.

And I didn't say "careful aiming". I said you have to at least get it pointed in the correct direction. These weapons already have poor accuracy, if you have a barrel pointed a few degrees in the wrong direction you will not hot anything. The point of all these musket drills is not just to make the guns fire as fast as possible, it's to produce as much accurate, effective fire as possible.

He had it pointed in the right direction and wouldn't be using undersized balls in a smoothbore which would suffer terrible accuracy.

As for age related dexterity, I'm actually going to drop that point because in my attempt to check how old that guy is, I actually found more about his background that makes the age thing irrelevant (also, he looks like he's in his early 50s or so, that's not exactly old and decript). He's not just some ramdom old guy. He's a massive fan of Ferguson and his rifle and literally wrotethe book about both, is a former member of the international muzzle loading team and has more that 40 years experience with this sort of thing. A trained competive shooter with decades of practice is in no way a representative example of what the average person, or even the average trained soldier, could pull off.

It's not magic he's doing nothing his hands are doing is anything that a soldier couldn't replicate with practice. You throw 40 years of expirience out there like he's been shooting 1000 rounds a week since he was ten which is hilarious. Keep backpedalling away from "its slower than a musket" as fast as you can go ahead.

 

[JagerIV]

As the two videos show though, its not meaningfully different: a musket.can be shot every 10-20 seconds, counting the seconds between shots, the Ferguson rifle can be shot in about 10-15 seconds.

Now, I don't doubt it's better fire rate than front loading rifles, but the question there then is how much practical use you get out of that.

It's not really useful for one of the preferred British tactics of a volley at close range then bayonet charge.

It's really not a big increase in practical capacity, especially given its cost.

 

[Battlegrinder]

If you're spending a few seconds aiming through opaque smoke you're not getting four shots per minute and that still sucks compared to six.

That's a British drill manual, for an army that was able to regularly get off 4 aimed shots a minute, so....I'm sorry, but you're just wrong.

He had it pointed in the right direction and wouldn't be using undersized balls in a smoothbore which would suffer terrible accuracy.

Whipping it up into the air away from the crowd is not "the right direction". You cannot properly aim a rifle swinging it around like that.

Also, It doesn't say what sort of ammo he used. When Ian from forgotten weapons was testing the rifle, he had a special tool to make sure the bullet was properly seated in the bore, a tool that Ricky was not using, so Ricky very well may have been using undersized rounds for faster loading.

It's not magic he's doing nothing his hands are doing is anything that a soldier couldn't replicate with practice. You throw 40 years of expirience out there like he's been shooting 1000 rounds a week since he was ten which is hilarious.

He's been doing this since the 70s, and looks to be in his 50s or so at the time the video was shot, so yes, he very well may have been doing this since he was ten. And no, it's not magic, but it is a level of training and experience that a contemporary soldier would not reach. There is a reason that competitive shooters are mostly civilian, if it was as easy to get that good via regular practice, soldiers would always win those contests, it'd be easy money for them to just get some leave, show up to the competition, ace it, grab the prize money, and then go back to their regular job. That this doesn't happen, and instead the soldiers that do win this are either from a military marksmanship team or special forces, underscores exactly how hard it is to get that good. This was just as true in era of the Ferguson rifle as it is today.

Furthermore, the fact that the symposium sheet that mentioned him firing 6 rounds in a minute with this rifle sounds to me like that level of performance with this rifle is not typical, that's notable he managed to fire it so quickly. Otherwise, they wouldn't bother bringing it up, if that's the sort of shooting you'd expect from any halfway competent shooter.

Keep backpedalling away from "its slower than a musket" as fast as you can go ahead.

I'm not the one that said that, I've readily admitted the Ferguson is faster than a conventional muzzleloader, I've just said it is not as fast as you claim it is.

 

[absenceofmalice]

As the two videos show though, its not meaningfully different: a musket.can be shot every 10-20 seconds, counting the seconds between shots, the Ferguson rifle can be shot in about 10-15 seconds.

Now, I don't doubt it's better fire rate than front loading rifles, but the question there then is how much practical use you get out of that.

It's not really useful for one of the preferred British tactics of a volley at close range then bayonet charge.

It's really not a big increase in practical capacity, especially given its cost.

Four is considered great with a muzzle loading musket with sub optimal low accuracy ammunition and a huge advantage over three. With the Fergusson six is very achievable in volley fire with full bore ammunition and you can begin firing at further ranges. Even one extra volley completely throws off the very critical timing of a charge based around three or four. The Fergusson can be loaded kneeling prone or behind low cover just as easily. There are plenty of reasons the Fergusson wasnt revolutionary and wasn't adopted wide scale and it's tactical differences from the weapons of the time make up exactly none of them.

 

[S'task]

(I think he might have slightly overstated the speed at which you can load a smoothbore as well, though I'm not familar with pre-civil war black powder weapons so I can't be sure. But if it was as easy as just dropping the ball down the barrel, then why do muskets of the period come with a ramrod to push the bullet down into position?).

I'm not really?

As to why they still have a ramrod you still needed to smack the ball once or twice with it to make sure it was set against the powder and to make sure there's no air pockets in the powder. Further it is a necessary tool for cleaning and swabbing the barrel.

Note here how fast and quick the cartrige and with how little effort the ramrod goes down the barrel:


Note, in comparison the difficulty in setting and then ramming with a rifle of the time:

 

[stevep]

All

An interesting thread and the primary objects to the Ferguson rifle seem to be:
a) Its fragile and prone to breakdown.
b) Aiming is of relatively little use when smoke from firing obscures both you and the target.
c) - which I have seen mentioned elsewhere in the past - that it couldn't mount a bayonet. This may seem unimportant but it was vital for line troops that had to fight in melee or even more importantly to protect against cavalry attack.

As such I would agree its not a suitable weapon to equip your entire army with. However what about using it for well trained sharp-shooters/skirmishers? If their fighting in loose formation in front of the main line then how much of a problem would the smoke they produce be? With them ready to retreat behind the main line if an enemy gets close. This is basically the role of skirmishers in the Napoleonic wars as I understand it.

However using a rifle and being trained to use it properly - such as with Moore's Rifle's in the Napoleonic wars - they could use the longer range to fire targeted shots beyond the range of enemy counter fire. It would need open terrain rather than closed but could be pretty damning to the enemy. Especially if your able to pick off enemy officers or artillery units for instance. Plus with a breach loader rather than a muzzle loader like the Baker rifle you would still have a faster rate of fire.

Of course over time a well organised enemy would adapt. Although how easily it would be to produce their local version of the Ferguson and change their armies doctrines accordingly I don't know. Or some other alternative.

I know from my reading on a USCW site that the vast bulk of the forces involved still used basic Napoleonic tactics, of firing in line at close range without individual aiming, in part because when training masses of raw recruits very, very quickly there was neither the time or the experience troops to train the new men. This was despite many having modern rifles, especially during the latter stages of the war. At the same time, as a Trent War scenario comes up in their AH section, its been mentioned that by the 1860's all the British regulars were trained for aimed rifle fire, at up to ~600 yards. As such, if only for a small force it should be practical to produce similar such men in the 1780's say, albeit expensive in the training. A couple of brigades say which could give a hell of an additional option for an army in this period.

Steve

 

[Buba]

Not possible to mount bayonet? I'm curious - why?

Going back to barrel fouling - I've remembered reading somewhere (in the very, very dim past) that the Baker Rifle during combat had its grooves so fouled up that from a certain point onward the riflemen switched from their tight-fitting, swaddled ammo i.e. rifled to loose fitting balls i.e. became smoothbores.
Urban legend or true or false? My memory playing tricks on me?

 

[stevep]

Not possible to mount bayonet? I'm curious - why?

Going back to barrel fouling - I've remembered reading somewhere (in the very, very dim past) that the Baker Rifle during combat had its grooves so fouled up that from a certain point onward the riflemen switched from their tight-fitting, swaddled ammo i.e. rifled to loose fitting balls i.e. became smoothbores.
Urban legend or true or false? My memory playing tricks on me?

Don't know. Something I read 20-30 years or so back. There was the suggestion that George III rejected it because of that and that this was stupid but as I say there's a very valid reason for the capacity among the bulk of the infantry to fight in melee and protect against cavalry. It may be that its an urban myth for all I know.

What you say about the Baker could be a problem for the Ferguson as well. Which might not matter if only a small elite/skirmish force as they could retreat behind the main line and spend time cleaning the barrels or as with the Baker simply act as muskets with smaller balls for the rest of the current battle.

 

[Buba]

@stevep - well, I hope I remembered the bit about fouling correctly and that it is not an urban legend.

So, the Ferguson Rifle is too expensive (and possibly innapropriate if lack of bayonet true) for mass use, narrowing down application to skirmishing sharpshooters. Now the question is how much more expensive is it than the Baker Rifle used in expressly that role.

The OP asked about Marines - well, considering that the Marines were sitting in "nests" on the masts the lack of bayonet here would be irrelevant - maybe indeed this could had been a niche role for the Ferguson?

Well, something must had happened between c.1775 and c.1840 for breech loaders to become adopted by militaries at that later date. I know about cap locks. What else? Advances in steelmaking? Obduration?

EDIT:
I finally looked at the wiki - if true, the Ferguson Rifle was a dog which needed much refinement to be transformed into a good/reasonable weapon. The Navy would take one look at it and throw it overboard.
TBH, it's historical use was a sort of field trials.
Had Ferguson not died - maybe he could had refined it into a skirmisher's weapon and there would had been no Baker's Rifle.
However, it is possible that there would had been little or none impact on progress - the French Revolutionary Wars required mass production of muskets, no army could aford to pay 3x or 4x for same number of firearms as in OTL, and after 1815 there were so many smoothbores around that replacing them would called for a decade or two of wastage.
In the meantime the percussion cap is invented.
And thus we end up c.1840 ...

 

[S'task]

Well, something must had happened between c.1775 and c.1840 for breech loaders to become adopted by militaries at that later date. I know about cap locks. What else? Advances in steelmaking? Obduration?

Mass production.

Something you also have to remember is that when the Ferigison rifle first came out the way things were mass produced was not by assemble line with a lot of specific tolerances. Rather they were made by a bunch of different small shops by hand (remember, we're still not ACTUALLY in the Industrial Revolution, just on the edge). Quality between those workshops could vary considerably based on their own supply chains and the skill of the crafters involved.

For smoothbore muskets, this wasn't a big problem. They had very loose tolerances and didn't require much precise manufacture at all. Muzzle loading Rifles took a bit more effort and had tighter tolerances, but due to their lower rate of fire they were predominately a civilian weapon (for hunting) and saw more limited military use mainly among militias due to people bringing their own weapons from home or among elite units, so they never had to be manufactured in bulk in the same way as muskets did. A breech loading rifle meant for mass deployment though? You need very tight tolerances not just on the barrel rifling but also on the breech, this added an entire layer of complexity to the manufacture of the weapon that muzzleloaders simply did not have (which means that even if you scaled up production, they'd still be more expensive per weapon since they inherently took more and higher quality work to produce). Thus in the 1770s, manufacture of the Ferguson would have been difficult and expensive to scale up for limited application on the battlefield of the day.

By 1840 though? You're now well into the Industrial Revolution and so standardized mass production of machined weapons is much easier and cheaper. Further, the rifled musket is now, if not the standard weapon, rapidly becoming the standard and the minie ball has been developed, which makes loading rifles much faster and easier (as you no longer have to have tight wadding), you're actually very close to the smoothbore musket "drop the ball down the barrel and tap with the ramrod to settle things" speed at reloading. As such, breech loading becomes advantageous as it offers an increased rate of fire over prior designs while still supporting the standards of battlefield tactics.

 

[stevep]

@stevep - well, I hope I remembered the bit about fouling correctly and that it is not an urban legend.

So, the Ferguson Rifle is too expensive (and possibly innapropriate if lack of bayonet true) for mass use, narrowing down application to skirmishing sharpshooters. Now the question is how much more expensive is it than the Baker Rifle used in expressly that role.

The OP asked about Marines - well, considering that the Marines were sitting in "nests" on the masts the lack of bayonet here would be irrelevant - maybe indeed this could had been a niche role for the Ferguson?

Well, something must had happened between c.1775 and c.1840 for breech loaders to become adopted by militaries at that later date. I know about cap locks. What else? Advances in steelmaking? Obduration?

Not sure how the Ferguson compared to the Baker. Checking the wiki pages for Ferguson_rifle and Baker_rifle the following points seem to be noted.
a) The Ferguson was a breech loader which made it more complex and prone to break down. This also made it a lot more expensive to produce and only a relatively small number were made. "the four gunsmiths making Ferguson's Ordnance Rifle could not make 100 in 6 months at four times the cost per arm of a musket. "
b) Also "The guns broke down easily in combat, especially in the wood of the stock around the lock mortise. The lock mechanism and breech were larger than the stock could withstand with rough use. All surviving military Fergusons feature a horseshoe-shaped iron repair under the lock to hold the stock together where it repeatedly broke around the weak, over-drilled out mortise. "
c) The Baker was a muzzle loader, which made it easily to manufacture and simplified the breech mechanism. "Although Infantry Muskets were not issued with cleaning kits, the Baker rifle had a cleaning kit, greased linen patches and tools, stored in the "butt-trap" or patch_box; the lid of this was brass, and hinged at the rear so it could be flipped up. It was needed because, without regular cleaning, gunpowder fouling built up in the rifling grooves, and the weapon became much slower to load and less accurate. "
d) As well as being a muzzle loaded the sheer size of the production during the 1791-1815 conflicts with France with probably hundreds of thousands if not millions of guns being produced for British and allied forces probably meant more development of the gun industry so that probably gave an economy of scale as well. Not to mention the Baker was in service for ~30 years while if I read it correctly only ~100 Ferguson's were ever produced.
e) Just noticed this - "Since the weapon was loaded from the breech, rather than from the muzzle, it had an amazingly high rate of fire for its day, and in capable hands, it fired six to ten rounds per minute. "

By the early 19thC technology was getting more organised. IIRC during the 1851 Great Expedition an American producer displayed a gun that was machines to tight enough standards that parts were interchangeable. This was quickly adopted by British and other manufacturers and hence enabled very large numbers of rifles to be produced in the following decades. Also ways were designed so that a rifle could be loaded quickly enough it was comparative enough in terms of rate of fire with muskets but of course, with training of the men, much greater range and accuracy.

As such it might be that the Ferguson was too expensive to mass produce in the sort of numbers for even elite use in the 1780s. Or possibly it simply needed some more political backing?

In terms of marine use at sea a Ferguson could be effective there although if its that fragile operating at sea, coupled with exposure to salt air and damp could be a problem.

Anyway that's my best guess

 

[stevep]

Mass production.

Something you also have to remember is that when the Ferigison rifle first came out the way things were mass produced was not by assemble line with a lot of specific tolerances. Rather they were made by a bunch of different small shops by hand (remember, we're still not ACTUALLY in the Industrial Revolution, just on the edge). Quality between those workshops could vary considerably based on their own supply chains and the skill of the crafters involved.

For smoothbore muskets, this wasn't a big problem. They had very loose tolerances and didn't require much precise manufacture at all. Muzzle loading Rifles took a bit more effort and had tighter tolerances, but due to their lower rate of fire they were predominately a civilian weapon (for hunting) and saw more limited military use mainly among militias due to people bringing their own weapons from home or among elite units, so they never had to be manufactured in bulk in the same way as muskets did. A breech loading rifle meant for mass deployment though? You need very tight tolerances not just on the barrel rifling but also on the breech, this added an entire layer of complexity to the manufacture of the weapon that muzzleloaders simply did not have (which means that even if you scaled up production, they'd still be more expensive per weapon since they inherently took more and higher quality work to produce). Thus in the 1770s, manufacture of the Ferguson would have been difficult and expensive to scale up for limited application on the battlefield of the day.

By 1840 though? You're now well into the Industrial Revolution and so standardized mass production of machined weapons is much easier and cheaper. Further, the rifled musket is now, if not the standard weapon, rapidly becoming the standard and the minie ball has been developed, which makes loading rifles much faster and easier (as you no longer have to have tight wadding), you're actually very close to the smoothbore musket "drop the ball down the barrel and tap with the ramrod to settle things" speed at reloading. As such, breech loading becomes advantageous as it offers an increased rate of fire over prior designs while still supporting the standards of battlefield tactics.

Well that covers in more detail a number of the points I was thinking of. Thanks.

Steve

 

[ShadowArxxy]

The issue with the Ferguson Rifle stocks breaking can be relatively easily addressed by introducing a larger and thicker stock, but the "too slow and expensive to produce" issue means it would never be even remotely viable as a general issue weapon.