Gunmakers preferred to provide arms to the East India Company, where inspection standards were lower, rather than have much of their work rejected by the Board of Ordnance as being sub-standard.ĭuring times of war, often the Board of Ordnance initially had too few arms in store, and had to scrabble around to find sufficient arms to meet the increased demand and therefore had to accept sub-standard weapons before getting their act in gear. Outside of wartime production, the quality of the Brown Bess was second to none. The conversation often leads into the subject of the quality of these arms, or which was the best musket of the era. The linked article is a strange mixture of facts and inaccurate clichés. Decades after it was officially retired, cast offs were still being traded to indigenous populations in Africa and Asia…" Its recoil was so ferocious, rankers frequently suffered bruised shoulders during battles. Even the shortest version of the musket was just a foot under the five-foot, seven-inch height of the average soldier of the era. Even then, vast numbers were upgraded from flintlock to percussion cap firing systems during the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny of 1857. In various patterns, it served as the principal long arm of the British military until the introduction of the Enfield rifled musket in 1853. The forerunner of the Brown Bess made its first large scale appearance at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704, though it wasn't standardized until the 1730s. Officially designated the Long Land Service Musket, history remembers it best by its nickname: the Brown Bess.
Nevertheless, this rudimentary, single-shot weapon enabled Britain to build and defend an empire. It lacked rifling, used powder that was susceptible to dampness and it required a new flint every 20 shots. It took 18 separate motions to load and misfired one out of nine times the trigger was pulled. It has no sight with which to aim only a bayonet nub.
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