[Boats]

Here's another

WEAPONS


Weapons were an important part of the Revolutionary War. From the clubs and stones of the cavemen to the atomic bombs and machine guns of World War II they always have been and always will be.

The weapons of the Revolutionary War were not as big or as clumsy as the first cannons and guns. Although some were clumsy, slow and couldn't hope to hit an elephant at three hundred feet they were the best of their day and some of them won us our freedom!

Smoothbores

Most of guns of the Revolutionary War were smoothbore muskets. Smoothbore meant that the barrel or bore was smooth unlike the modern twenty-twos of today. Because they were muzzleloaders (they were loaded from the front end) they were slow to load. The average solider could load and fire once in twenty seconds. The British who trained with live ammunition (at that time no one else did) were able to get a shot in every fifteen seconds. The smoothbore muskets were also heavy compared to today's rifles. They weighed about twenty-five pounds. Accuracy was not something they were known for, at two hundred forty feet one shot didn't have a prayer of hitting a single target. Also one shot in six didn't fire off anyway.

Volley Tactics

There were only two ways of dealing with the problems of smoothbore muskets. The first way was something called Volley Tactics. Volley Tactics was a way of continuous hailing fire at the enemy. The armies used rows of men up to one hundred wide, they had one row fire and allowed the rows behind them to reload. They followed this procedure back to the fourth or fifth row and then looped through it. In theory this allowed the army performing this greater odds of hitting things.

Riffles And Riffling

Riffling was the only other way to deal with the problems of smoothbore muskets. Riffling is a series of spiral grooves cut into the inside of the barrel. Riffling put a spin on the ball being fired out which made it so gravity and other forces wouldn't affect it as much and make it bounce around in the air. Riffles got their name from the riffling grooves that made then so accurate. At around five hundred feet away riffles could still hit a chosen man-sized target. Riffles were still muzzleloaders so they were as slow as the smoothbore muskets. The main thing riffles were for would be to take a small group of men with riffles and go to a camp or battlefield where they would be out of range for the British Brown Bess to fire back. They would pick off the officers until there was total chaos among the British troops. Then everybody else would come in and kill off the rest of the army.

Cannons

Cannons weren't as important as the muskets but they were useful. They were the largest and slowest weapons of the Revolutionary War. They came in all different sizes. The sizes themselves were and still are weight measurements. The size is actually the weight of the cannon ball used. Cannons were smoothbore, they were so because riffling wouldn't grip an iron ball of such size and lead was too heavy, expensive, and impractical. Mainly cannons were on ships due to their size and weight. Some were used on the battlefield and they took about two minutes to clean and reload. After about forty shots the cannons needed at least an hour to cool down or it would only be good melted down into ammunition.

These weapons won us our freedom as much as the men who used them.