TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog

Tag: Whitworth rifle

  • A Look at Some Period Firearms

    Very nice article by Bill Adams, one of the foremost CW-era firearms authorities, on the Kerr (pronounced “Carr”) rifle, second only to the fabled Whitworth as a sharpshooter’s rifle. Also info on modern attempts to make a shootable reproductions. (PDF file) And a compendium of videos from CapAndBall, a Hungarian web site (it’s in English […]

  • Some Nice Period Rifles On The Block

    Three very nice Civil War era rifles up for auction, but you’d better have some extra cash as I think all their estimates are rather low. Nevertheless these are fine examples of the British arms used by both sides but the more so by the Confederacy. However, none of these have any actual connection to […]

  • Short Takes

    Professor J. David Hacker takes and new look at Civil War dead and concludes there was a major undercount, especially in the South. Even as Civil War history has gone through several cycles of revision, one thing has remained fixed: the number of dead. Since about 1900, historians and the general public have assumed that […]

  • Short Takes

    I came across this representation of a target shot a 500 yards by a .577 Enfield and a .451 Whitworth, which shows pretty clearly why the Whitworth made a better sharpshooter’s rifle. Source: W.W. Greener, The Gun and Its Development (1910) Google Books now has Life magazine in their collection, and among the issues is […]

  • John West—Hero or Blowhard?

    Every war produces heroes, but also a number of blowhards, who somehow always seem to outnumber the heroes. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s who. One such case is John West, who claimed to be a “noted sharpshooter” in Virginia armed with a Whitworth rifle. I first ran across West’s account in John Morrow’s The […]

  • Muskets, rifles, and rifling

    I found several emails from Bill Adams, who is kind enough to provide me with a lot of information about black powder period arms. As for the higher muzzle velocity for the smoothbore musket, he points out three factors: Many musket cartridges came with a paper patch, which helped sealing somewhat The round ball upset […]

  • Long Range Shooting

    I was watching Future Weapons last night on the Discovery Channel, which had a segment on the Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle. I’ve handled these in the military (but have not actually fired one) and they are quite impressive. Depending on whose figures you use, they have an effective range of 1500-2400 yards. The one […]