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military musket velocity?

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Benjamin Robins measured velocities with a ballistic pendulum - allowing for the probable (small) errors in construction of the suspension system, accurate weighing of the pendulum and measurement of the movement when struck by the projectile, and considering that his mathematical calculations, while painstaking and slow, were correct, his calculations of velocities are quite accurate.
Robins was one of the first scientific ballisticians, and his work is (rightly) highly regarded.
mhb - Mike
 
At the battle of traflgar Nelson was on the Victorys quarter deck with the flag captian Hardy.Victory had just passed astern of Redoutable and fell in broadside to broadside with Buccanator.The ships gave fire at "pistol shot"maybe 25 yards.A French marine in the mizzen top shot Nelson while he was about 60 feet high.All and all about 30 yards or so from
nelson.The shot went through his back and stuck in Nelsons spine droping him to the deck.He died about 2 hours later.With far smaller charges then was used in muskets I've sent fusil balls through more then 2 feet busting ribs and shoulder blades.I have to wonder if lots of times lots of powder was spilled and guns were way under charged.In 1985or6 I was at the midwest muket frolic in st charles mo and saw Ted Spring load and shoot 7 shots a min for 3min and 45 sec.I tried to shoot like that and could not pull it off and a spilled lots of powder.I have never been shot at but can imagine that in the horror smoke and fear balls ended up with 1/2 chargess or less spilled out of the pan or fumbled with while butting the gun.I would think a .75 ball could kill 4,5 or 600 yards if it didn't ground,but a half charge may not penetrate at 200 yards :idunno:
 
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Basically the person is assuming the ball was "spent" as it didn't enter his body. As mentioned, it could've bounced off the ground, gone through a person or two, been fired with damaged powder (thus giving a low initial velocity) or the soldier loading the musket under fire might've been ham-fisted when loading and missed the bore with half the powder (again giving a low iniitial velocity).

LD
 
I do get it I have had personal experience with a couple of modern spent rounds several years ago :)
 
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