colonial shot sizes

You can learn a lot about our colonial period by looking at what they bought and sold. I pay particular attention to the guns, the accoutrements and supplies offered in the 18th century, and one of the neatest things I’ve run across is the way they described the sizes of shot offered for their smoothbores. My database begins in 1728, and at that time there was apparently no numerical system for categorizing shot. Instead, they named each size according to the game for which it was appropriate. So, in increasing size, shot was offered as mustard seed shot, bird, dove, pidgeon, partridge, duck, high duck, low duck, goose, turkey, swan, small deer, deer and buck shot.

I know that at some point this quaint system was replaced by the more practical but less charming numerical size scheme, but I didn’t, and don’t, have any idea when that happened. It occurred to me that I might get a clue by looking at advertisements for shot in the newspapers of the day, so I searched every offering from 1728 to 1763, several thousand hits, looking for the first numbered shot offered for sale. I was about to give up when I found this:

The Pennsylvania Gazette
Date: December 21, 1758
Imported in the ship Myrtilla, from London, and to be sold by SAMUEL HUDSON,
.... ink powder, cutlary, S.B. No. 1, 2, 3 and 8 shot.

Not quite sure if that was what I was looking for, I kept looking and came to this one:

The Pennsylvania Gazette
Date: July 3, 1760
Title: Just imported in the last vessels from London
.... best long narrow back Pennsylvania scythes, bar lead, mustard seed, pidgeon, duck and swan shot, gun flints, F and FF gunpowder, 4 and an half, 4, 12, 11, and 10 shot , White and lilliken pins, ....

Not sure about that one, but then this one:

The Pennsylvania Gazette
September 30, 1762
Imported in the last Vessels from London, Liverpool and Bristol...
.... frying pans, No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and B shot , sad irons....

And one last one:

Publication: The Pennsylvania Gazette
Date: September 22, 1763
Title: To be SOLD by RICHARD WALN, jun.
.... flat irons, swan, duck, No. 1, 2 and 3 shot, F and FF gunpowder, oil flints , copper tea kettles....

I have no idea how long it took to discard most of the named shot, but Ezekial Baker still used the terms for some British shot as late as 1821:

Shot Name---Pellets/Oz.

Buckshot-------5
Ditto small------7
Grape Musket----9
Swan----------15
Goose---------24
Duck----------34
BB------------50
B-------------72
No.1----------94
2------------120
3------------140
4------------175
5------------240
6------------260
7------------320
8------------622
9------------900
10----------1600
Dust---------4300

Maybe they had used both systems all along, as in the ads which offered both. Don't know how you could ever find that out. Whatever, at least some of the names stuck around for a long time, we still use the term "buck" to describe shot, today.

Spence

Spence: First, thank you for all your fine work.
I think you'll find some of the same descriptions lingering in the Hudson's Bay and other fur company ledgers well into the 19th century. I wonder what the mustard seed size was?

The only thing I have seen French in the first half of he 18th century is the named shot as you decribe Bob, I wonder if the Engish used the numerical terms earlier than the Frogs? as early as about 1701 it is mentiond in French imports records to the Mississippi River mouth area by name not number and at least from Swan shot and larger it was cast by most reports and in the first half of the 18th century the smaller was made by pouring lead thru a colandar of sorts with Mercury about a foot above water and was called "Rupert" shot and had a small dimple in it, Sawn shot did not have a tail like a tadpole this is a reenactorism or at best may have been the result of poor attempts at homemade shot in the past, I suppose that most birds could not be hit with the predominate 44+ inch barrels of the time though :idunno:

Even as late as 1870's different brands had different shot counts in an ounce even though they were all numbered the same.. #7 for instance could very as much as 55 pellets. What was considered as Dust by a hundred or more..
Twice.

Those numbers were for British shot in 1821, but I have a reference from 1767 which says #4 shot, for instance, has 200 pellets per ounce instead of the 175 shown in Baker. Things change. Today, I believe standard British shot sizes are different from American. The same is true of the names for granulations of powder. In mid 1800s, these were the approximations for powder equivalence, British/American:

No.2 = 4F
No.4 = 3F
No.6 = 2F
No.8 = 1F

I don't know if this holds true, today.

Spence

Spence10 said:

Those numbers were for British shot in 1821, but I have a reference from 1767 which says #4 shot, for instance, has 200 pellets per ounce instead of the 175 shown in Baker. Things change. Today, I believe standard British shot sizes are different from American. The same is true of the names for granulations of powder. In mid 1800s, these were the approximations for powder equivalence, British/American:

No.2 = 4F
No.4 = 3F
No.6 = 2F
No.8 = 1F

I don't know if this holds true, today.

Spence

Click to expand...

To day I believe the English seven is closer to our 6 in size than to our seven, or to the old Pigeon load of #7.
My source says the #4 by the Sparks Brand 130 .Tatham 132 Le Roy 121 Baltimore 125 Chicago 146 St Louis 158 English 177 . So as you can see the counts are all over the place. It's also true with Powders. They were graded as common sporting, Fine sporting, Fine Ducking, fine sporting.
One brand called theirs as FFG while the other had it as Fg and yet another at FFG.

Example.. Fine Ducking in Oriental was No.4- Orange as no 5-Hazard as no 5 and DuPont as no 1. Not simple at all,huh.

So you can imagine what was brought in for sale at Colonial times. I guess people made do with what was being sold to them.
Good topic.

Google Gun Smith's Manual by Stelle & Harison. Read pages 269-273 . You might find it interesting.

Twice.

Recently saw an 18th century reference to "beaver shot." Wonder that that size was?

Dunno, but I googled it out of curiosity. Don't go there.

Bob, I'm just now seeing this thread...your access to historical resources and willingness to freely share your findings are a huge plus and a good model for all of us...thank you !
:hatsoff:

Oh my, thats funny. :grin:

Brownie: I feel your pain. I googled cuttoe, as in the Colonial era word for scalping knife, and got all these grisly images of lacerated feet ...

:rotf:

Interesting Spence, thank you. Those 1821 shot sizes seem to run just a bit smaller, ie more pellets per ounce, than our modern standard untill you get to #8 and #9 which are considerably smaller. I don't know how they compare to English standard and for that matter I don't know if our "standard" is really all that precise but whether an ounce of "sixes" contain 235 or 260 pellest probably makes no difference at all.

Can't recall the date, but the Bevel Brothers wrote a very interesting article about making shot several months ago. Seems like the shot tower was first used in 1782 by its inventor,William Watts of Bristol in England. (http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/details/default.aspx?id=458483), shot before that was produced by molding or reshaping cut pieces of lead by tumbling. . I would like to know how shot was produced in large scale before the tower was first used. Anyone know?

I use a site at work for reseach into criminal law from our State Appellate Defender Office. Got to remember it is SADO.org.
sado.com is another of those, "Don't go there" sites.

kbuck said:

I would like to know how shot was produced in large scale before the tower was first used. Anyone know?

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I don't know, but I have a reference from late 1780s, Wm. Cleator, which describes the making of "patent shot" and "patent milled shot":

The patent milled shot is said to be made in the following manner. Sheets of lead, whose thickness corresponds with the size of the shot required, are cut into square stripes by a machine, and thus again into small pieces that are cubes; or of the form of a die. A great quantity of these little cubes are put into a large hollow iron cylinder, which is mounted horizontally and turned by a winch; when by their friction against one another and against the sides of the cylinder, they are rendered perfectly round and very smooth. The other patent shot, is cast in moulds, in the same way as bullets are.

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I haven't been able to get a straight picture of the beginning of the use of shot towers. It is stated that Watt built the first one in 1782 in Bristol, but I keep running across references like these:

The Pennsylvania Gazette
December 11, 1760
Just imported in the ship Rachel, Capt. Rogers,.... striped linsey, FF gunpowder, very large drop shot, high Bristol ditto, silverets,

The Pennsylvania Gazette
Philadelphia, December 16, 1746
... womens best white and colour'd glaz'd lamb gloves and mittens, gunpowder, high Bristol and drop shot , bar lead, buckram....

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I don't know what they meant by 'high Bristol' shot, but the term makes me think of shot towers. Can't be that in 1746 if the process wasn't invented until the 1780s, I guess. Then again, what was the patent process in the 18th century in England?

Spence

I only read the references I quoted, plus a few more that didn't really give any further affirmation of the dates. I would like to dig up the Bevel Brothers column about this. Perhaps, shot had been dropped into water, but only after dropping it from a height did it cool enough to form very spherical shot. That may be the date reference - the first tower that gave the dropped lead sufficient time to air form into spheres before it impacted with water? Looks like more reading to be done. Thanks.

We have a great luxury in regular and round shot sizes. The first shot tower capable of making mostly round shot wasn't built until 1782 (after William Watts had his famous dream of being caught out in a rain of molten lead!). That was in England - and we weren't on the best of terms with them so the technology may not have passed to the U.S. until much later - 1800 in Virginia may have been our first.

Prior to that it was either cut and rolled or poured through a sieve and tumbled. I have read accounts of hunters cutting cubes from sheet and chewing them to get a rounded shape! Don't try this at home!

Lead dropped into water or ashes were called "drops". Swan Drops were what we now call buckshot and had off tear or heart shapes from the process unless tumbled.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/leadertimes/sports/s_563137.html

What was used in the Colonies was likely Rupert Shot - here's some info.


http://www.qaronline.org/artifacts/DropShot.htm
http://www.abbemuseum.org/pages/collections/curator-features/lead-shot.html

For what it is worth, I made some buckshot in an experiment to duplicate shot used by the Voertrekkers against the Zulus at Blood River in 1837.
I poured molten lead into lengths of river cane to make small diameter sticks. These I then chopped into pellets with a hatchet. I put the pellets on a steel plate and ground on them with a flat rock. The result was pretty irregularly rounded shot. The Boers sewed these in small bags of silk or fine leather -small enough to be stuffed down the bores of their large flintlocks.

Stumpkiller said:

Swan Drops were what we now call buckshot and had off tear or heart shapes from the process unless tumbled.

Click to expand...

I haven't run across the term swan drops, but regular swan shot were molded shot, not dropped.

The Pennsylvania Gazette
October 3, 1765
To be sold by the Subscriber, living at the Crown, Cannister
.... bullet and swan shot moulds, quart and pint black jacks,

The South-Carolina Gazette
January 21, 1751
CHARLES-TOWN
Just imported in the last Ships from London... gun-powder, shot of all sizes, French oyl flints, bar-lead and swan shot moulds,...

Bill'nOregan, neat experiment.

Spence

Make that 1838, 16 December, for the battle of Blood River.