History through the barrel of a gun
By JC
Every night on the Bendigo goldfields of the 1850s and 1860s there came the evening volley. As darkness advanced across the valley, almost every digger with a gun, and almost every digger had a gun of some kind, pointed it skyward and loosed off a shot or two. One observer of the nightly practice wrote that “It seemed the strangest of customs in the strangest of places. As night fell the volley began. A ragged, crackling of discharges at first, quickly deepening into a deafening roar. Then, tapering off to a few late shots and rebel yells from those who had already sipped more than they had supped.
“After the volley the encampment echoed to the sound of music and revelry until the early hours of the morning. As the camp settled down there often came the sound of shots and screams as thieves were discovered and discouraged. Or their victims murdered and dropped down a handy shaft. Life was cheap on the Australian goldfields where every man went armed and in fear of his life.”
RELICS OF A BYGONE ERA
Anyone who has used a metal detector on the goldfields can testify how easy it is to find relics of the bygone era. Hundreds of thousands of old musket balls have been dug from every field in Australia. Many times they have been mistaken for a gold nugget – until the dirt was wiped off. They have been found miles from the nearest sign of diggings or human habitation. Our diggers were a wild lot in a wild and almost lawless land. Few Australians know anything about the American gold rushes other than what they have read in books or seen as a result of a Hollywood movie director’s fantasy. The fact is, our gold rushes were so wild, so full of excesses of violence and adventure that they made the American rush of the 1840s look like a bit of a kindergarten outing. It was in answer to that violence that every digger went armed. The resulting demand created a huge shortage of firearms and many weapons that had not had a shot through them for generations, started to appear on the diggings. Smooth-bore flintlocks were common in the early days of the rushes. No doubt there were even some examples of the earlier wheellock pistols and hunting muskets. But it was the cheap and popular flintlock firearm that was carried by most diggers when they flocked to Ophir and shortly after to the diggings in the colony of Victoria.
WILDLY INNACURATE
The flintlock came in myriad shapes and sizes. As a pistol it was wildly inaccurate but that didn’t deter people carrying it for self-defence. There was the Flintlock Box Lock pistol with a screw-off barrel that had to be removed to load the weapon. There were Pocket Pistols that looked as if their protruding mechanisms would catch on everything as it was drawn from the pocket. There were Muff Pistols that were designed to be secreted in ladies’ muffs. There were double-barrel pistols with spring bayonets fitted under the barrels. Triple-barrel and even seven-barrel pistols. Military pistols of the Flintlock Blunderbuss type were probably in the greatest supply as they had been manufactured in great numbers during the many wars just prior to, and during the early part of the 1800s. In the early 1820s copper percussion caps were designed and applied to single shot firearms, both pistols and muskets. These caps are commonly found with a detector along with the balls themselves. They are easy to recognise – small, not much bigger than a match head and made from thin-ribbed copper. They sound very much like a small nugget when detected. In 1838 the British army adopted this type of weapon and it started to be produced in large numbers. This was the end of the more complex and expensive flintlock that had served so well for so long.
A BEWILDERING ARRAY
Like the flintlock, the percussion pistol and musket soon started to be produced in a bewildering array of shapes and sizes. Single and two-shot pistols often retained the spring bayonet in case the bullets missed their mark. Before the advent of the single-barrel revolving cylinder firearm, anyone wishing to have more than a couple of shots up their sleeve purchased a “pepperbox” pistol that carried up to six barrels, each of which acted as its own chamber and carried a percussion cap on each. These were extremely heavy and cumbersome weapons that appeared around the 1850s. But despite the drawbacks of the pepperbox, they were still being manufactured and used long after Samuel Colt started manufacturing his new type of revolver. By the mid-1850s the percussion revolver was being made in large numbers by Samuel Colt, Robert Adam, H. Holland and many others. Quickly gaining preference amongst those who could afford it was the new percussion revolver. Some of these looked remarkably like a modern revolver. As newfound wealth began to flow, there came a call for more and better weapons. The well-known Navy Colt, a single-action percussion revolver, was soon a firm favourite on the diggings as was the .44 calibre Army Colt.
FIRST LOCALLY PRODUCED REVOLVER
As the call for more firearms went out, the Tranter company started making revolvers in a factory in Melbourne. This was the first locally-produced revolver in Australia and possibly the only brand of revolver produced locally during the 1800s. Of the more curious types of pistol was the “Horsman’s” Percussion Knife Pistol that looks for all the world like an early Swiss army knife with a square tube attached along the spine. A great many firearms have been found with detectors on our goldfields. Very few, if any, would be in working order but they make marvellous keepsakes of those wild gold rush days. Found more often are the lead balls fired from smooth bore flintlocks and early percussion pistols. Some .44 and .45 calibre balls showing distinct rifling marks are also found. As the Victorian gold rushes petered out, prospectors looked further afield. The Palmer River Goldfield in far-north Queensland was opened up with the aid of the Snider breech-loading rifle. A good and reliable firearm was essential to survival around the Palmer where the fierce and warlike Merkin aboriginal tribe fought desperately to stem the flow of prospectors. Here you can find many rifled balls from the now plentiful percussion weapons, including the enormous lump of lead from the Snider. It was about this time (1870s) that the famous Martini-Henry rile and the Lee-Metford rifle began to appear, followed closely by the famous Lee-Enfield .303 rifle.
RELENTLESS SEARCH FOR GOLD
As the ever-industrious 19th century prospector moved across the top of Australia in his relentless search for gold, the evolution of the firearm continued. By the time the Western Australian goldfields were opened up, centre-fire cartridges had appeared and had been universally accepted. The Lee-Enfield was joined by the Winchester, the gun that had won the American west. The Colt Peacemaker and many other famous American weapons soon found their way across the Pacific. But the times, and the type of weapons needed, were changing. At the turn of the century in Western Australia, a good, light-weight, accurate rifle that could supply food for the pot as well as protection was more important than a pistol. The Western Australian gold rushes were the last of the great rushes that had originated on the east coast of Australia and continued almost unabated in an anticlockwise direction around the coast to the south west corner of the continent. In the 50 years following Ophir, the handgun, the musket, and the rifle, had evolved from crude muzzle-loading weapons to breechloading centre-fire and rimfire firearms of great accuracy and workmanship. This evolution can be easily traced through the projectiles fired by these weapons on the goldfields around Australia.
DIFFERENT MUSKET BALLS
Every detectorist finds them. I have found the remains of an old pepperbox pistol and thousands of different musket balls from smooth-bore flintlocks and percussion weapons to the rifled ball and bullets from percussion and breechloading centre-fire handguns and rifles. Whenever I dig one of these seemingly common and worthless lumps of lead, I wonder about it. Was it fired in anger? Was it fired in self-defence? Was it fired while hunting for meat for the pot? I will never know. But the thought that it may have been fired by some gold miner desperately defending his gold from merciless bushrangers is part of the romance of history when viewed down the barrel of a gun.