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The Best Muzzleloading Movies

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Mutiny on the Bounty (the 1962 version). Not much ML'er action, but they're in it.
Excellent non-fiction movie IMO, Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson did some great acting. There are Indigenous Polynesians to this day on the Pitcairn Island that have Blue Eye's from the Caucasian Crewmen. A cool part of the movie was when the Crewman were getting tattoo's from the Polynesian tattoo artist. I won't say anymore, don't want to spoil the movie for those who have not seen it yet.
 
Thats hard to believe IME, I've an Army background and was a Small Arms Coach; our Sniper teams with their Parker Hale 7.62mm Rifles and Kahls Helier Scopes coudnt replicate off hand what you've described.
Well, we did it regularly there, and us old farts still do 500 yard off hand matches, and shoot the same rifles in our winter league sporting rifle matches. Just because you can't do it, doesn't mean others can't, and don't. Heck, my buddy used his 18# double 10 bore rifle at a shoot and cleaned the targets.
Here's one of the guys working on a 500 yard target.
You guys must not do any schutzen matches, where the rifles are 12-15#
 

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Coinneach, I was invited to be an extra but couldn't get off work. At the La Veta rendezvous Victoria said that the original script called for her to kill another Indian who was fighting with Heston's character by throwing a tomahawk, but she didn't know how to throw one and there was nobody there to show her so they had her shoot the varmint instead. She wanted to learn to throw `hawk and asked me to teach her. I did so, and when she finally got the feel for it and started sticking them, she was as happy and excited as a kid - jumping up and down and laughing. Somebody took a snapshot of the two of us while she was deciding if she wanted to throw my big ol' throwing Bowie and the photo ended up on the back page of the Buckskin Report the next month. I used to write for them and John Baird was there too but he's gone now. And no, Coinneach, I can't write an article on experiences on the set. Sorry. I would if I could.

Kip, you got that right. I'm three days older than dirt. I'm 81 now and closing in on that next b'day. There's some other folks I know well who were there and are still pumping air besides yourself. One is my buddy Mike Hughes, aka: Two Bears, who lives over near Houston, and another is Cathy Smith who is Curator of a museum at the Nambe Trading Post near Santa Fe and a recent recipient of membership in the Cowgirl Hall Of Fame in Dallas. A third is my friend Joe DeLaRonde, proprietor and head hammer at the DeLaRonde Forge in Colorado, maker of some of the finest knives and tomahawks I know. Of course, Eric Bye is above ground as far as I know, and he was there too.

Those are the only ones I know of that are still on the green side, but there may be others besides Kip that I don't know about.
 
Movies aren't history, but dramatizations of historical events or periods. While I know of no incidents of civilians being rounded up and burned in churches, the British Army, Loyalist auxiliaries and Germanic mercenaries behaved abominably during the war. Rape and pillage were routine and the British frequently gave no quarter, and those prisoners they did take were horribly mistreated.

The historical Banastre Tarleton was at least as villainous as the Patriot's fictional Colonel Tavington. Banastre Tarleton came from a family of slavers and purchased his commission after having squandered most of his inheritance on the usual vices of women and gambling. He was less introspective than the Biblical prodigal son, thus having no father to return home to, he joined the army of the original "evil empire." Tarlton's conduct so alienated the colonial population they flocked to the patriot cause. His massacre of Americans at the Waxhaws enraged the patriots and contributed directly to reprisals against loyalists. It's worth noting that the patriots executed the loyalists who surrendered at King's Mountain because of "Tarleton"s Quarter".

The British occupation of New York City and the New Jersey campaign were designed to unleash as much terror as possible on the colonial population. Thousands of American soldiers were intentionally mistreated to encourage them to enlist in Royal service. Lord Rawdon wrote to his uncle on September 23, 1776, “We should (whenever we get further into the country) give free liberty to the soldiers to ravage at will, that these infatuated wretches may feel what a calamity war is.” Writing of American women living under British "protection" in New York he stated: “The fair nymphs of this isle are in wonderful tribulation as the fresh meat our men have got here has made them as riotous as satyrs. Should a young woman innocently step into the bushes to pluck a rose, she ran the most imminent risk of being ravished and they are so little accustomed to these vigorous methods that they don’t bear them with the proper resignation and of consequence we have most entertaining courts-martial every day." In other words, a British aristocrat, a "stakeholder" in the imperial oligarchy found the resistance of women to being raped as laughable as it was futile.

The behavior of British forces encouraged Americans to fight against, rather than submit to Royal authority. The murder of Jane McRae perfectly illustrated the meaninglessness of British "protection." If a good girl like Jane McRae who was betrothed to a loyalist officer in Burgoyne's army could be slaughtered, and her murderer's unpunished, what sane or decent person would wish to swear fealty to a tyrant or seek protection from such terrorists.

Whatever the "historical" shortcomings of Mel Gibson's movie the Patriot are, it memorably portrayed the brutality of a British army of occupation that encouraged the population to resist and assert their independence.
Thank you for this criticism; it sent me -- as I said, I am a near lifelong student of history -- back to the books for a bit of a refresher; I last studied the American Revolution in the '70s and had forgotten about Jane McRae, about whom there are so many conflicting stories it is impossible to know the identity of her murderers, though her case makes it clear the revolutionaries were as skilled at propaganda as their descendants are today. Whatever the truth of McRae's murder, I cannot shed my aversion to The Patriot; though there were horrific atrocities on both sides, there was never the mass incineration of civilians like that routinely perpetrated by the Germans and their allies in WWII, which means -- and I say this with all due respect -- that in this instance, the "dramatization" of which you speak is true neither to the American Revolution nor to the period in which it was fought. In terms of the 18th Century, including dramatization of some of the issues that led from the French and Indian War directly to the Revolution, I regard the 1992 variant of The Last of the Mohicans as far more historically accurate despite its silk-patched-ball exaggerations. As to my preference for Master and Commander, I believe it -- better than any other such film I have seen -- is true both to the era's naval warfare and the conditions of the period it dramatizes, including the splintered-oak horrors of the warfare itself. Again my thanks; at my age, 82, I appreciate anything that sets me to genuinely thinking, whether contrarily or complimentary. (Slightly revised 17/12/22, to correct for distraction by an important phone call during the original writing.)
 
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I am beginning to think that you and I are the only two on this thread that were at the 1980 Joint in La Veta. You must be as old as I am! I am about to turn 80.
I wasn't there but have a picture from our group album.
The booshways were Al Fleming and Mike Branson, members of our Flathead Freetrapper group. In the back row, not sure who the first on the left is, but after that was John Arrasmith, John Taylor, Tony Lageose, and Bob Lange.
The other picture has Al, I think John Baird, couple strangers in the middle, and Mike on the right.
 

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Thats hard to believe IME, I've an Army background and was a Small Arms Coach; our Sniper teams with their Parker Hale 7.62mm Rifles and Kahls Helier Scopes coudnt replicate off hand what you've described.
How about someone shooting from the shoulder at 1000 yards?
From the American vs Irish shooting match of 1874.

1671264878452.jpeg
 
How about someone shooting from the shoulder at 1000 yards?
From the American vs Irish shooting match of 1874.

View attachment 183382

Lets get back to the Rifle in question, A Sharps full length barrel rifle; now if you've ever hefted one try and convince they arent heavy when held unsupported (Off Hand) for long range shooting.
And I'm not including large white painted Gongs out to range.
As I mentioned earlier a fella would have to have the build of a Gorilla to do the Quigley Long range shooting with any consistent accuracy.
 
Well, we did it regularly there, and us old farts still do 500 yard off hand matches, and shoot the same rifles in our winter league sporting rifle matches. Just because you can't do it, doesn't mean others can't, and don't. Heck, my buddy used his 18# double 10 bore rifle at a shoot and cleaned the targets.
Here's one of the guys working on a 500 yard target.
You guys must not do any schutzen matches, where the rifles are 12-15#

OK, now tell me about your target sizes.
 
I wasn't there but have a picture from our group album.
The booshways were Al Fleming and Mike Branson, members of our Flathead Freetrapper group. In the back row, not sure who the first on the left is, but after that was John Arrasmith, John Taylor, Tony Lageose, and Bob Lange.
The other picture has Al, I think John Baird, couple strangers in the middle, and Mike on the right.

Great images thank you sir.
 
OK, now tell me about your target sizes.
Tell me about the target size being used at long range for a scoped rifle. I bet the relative size between a target size through a magnified scope and a target size for a naked eye aren't much different. The "large" target size has more to do with being able to actually see the target with the naked eye (and line it up with iron sights) than improving the score just by having a larger target. No different than asking a shooter with a modern sniper scope to use a target smaller than be seen through his scope.

I don't think anyone's arguing that the string of movie shots at the bucket is realistic (that's pure Hollywood). But, muzzleloaders and BP cartridge rifles can indeed be accurate at long ranges (where the shooter can see the target with the naked eye). The British proved that at Crimea against the Russians. The biggest and obvious issue is dealing with the massive arc of the trajectory of the bullet. As to the heft of the rifle, a shooter would overcome that with training - no different than English archers training to shoot bows with draw weights much heavier than bows used by current archers.
 
Movies aren't history, but dramatizations of historical events or periods. While I know of no incidents of civilians being rounded up and burned in churches, the British Army, Loyalist auxiliaries and Germanic mercenaries behaved abominably during the war. Rape and pillage were routine and the British frequently gave no quarter, and those prisoners they did take were horribly mistreated.

The historical Banastre Tarleton was at least as villainous as the Patriot's fictional Colonel Tavington. Banastre Tarleton came from a family of slavers and purchased his commission after having squandered most of his inheritance on the usual vices of women and gambling. He was less introspective than the Biblical prodigal son, thus having no father to return home to, he joined the army of the original "evil empire." Tarlton's conduct so alienated the colonial population they flocked to the patriot cause. His massacre of Americans at the Waxhaws enraged the patriots and contributed directly to reprisals against loyalists. It's worth noting that the patriots executed the loyalists who surrendered at King's Mountain because of "Tarleton"s Quarter".

The British occupation of New York City and the New Jersey campaign were designed to unleash as much terror as possible on the colonial population. Thousands of American soldiers were intentionally mistreated to encourage them to enlist in Royal service. Lord Rawdon wrote to his uncle on September 23, 1776, “We should (whenever we get further into the country) give free liberty to the soldiers to ravage at will, that these infatuated wretches may feel what a calamity war is.” Writing of American women living under British "protection" in New York he stated: “The fair nymphs of this isle are in wonderful tribulation as the fresh meat our men have got here has made them as riotous as satyrs. Should a young woman innocently step into the bushes to pluck a rose, she ran the most imminent risk of being ravished and they are so little accustomed to these vigorous methods that they don’t bear them with the proper resignation and of consequence we have most entertaining courts-martial every day." In other words, a British aristocrat, a "stakeholder" in the imperial oligarchy found the resistance of women to being raped as laughable as it was futile.

The behavior of British forces encouraged Americans to fight against, rather than submit to Royal authority. The murder of Jane McRae perfectly illustrated the meaninglessness of British "protection." If a good girl like Jane McRae who was betrothed to a loyalist officer in Burgoyne's army could be slaughtered, and her murderer's unpunished, what sane or decent person would wish to swear fealty to a tyrant or seek protection from such terrorists.

Whatever the "historical" shortcomings of Mel Gibson's movie the Patriot are, it memorably portrayed the brutality of a British army of occupation that encouraged the population to resist and assert their independence.
History is about to repeat!
 
You folks mentioned just about every movie that I enjoyed about the 1700's-1800's. Some had very poor acting and that was just part of that time and lack of production money, but still enjoyable. Like one friend said on this thread, they really weren't for factual history, they were for a dramatization of the time to show us a somewhat view of the past. Watch and enjoy.
 
Meanwhile, in San Diego, The Maritime Museum is trying to get Surprise back into sailing condition. If you're ever in the area, drop by and see it. There is also a replica 16thc ship, The San Salvador and a replica 1847 Revenue Cutter, The Californian. You can sail as a guest on the last two. I was fortunate enough to volunteer on these ships for a short period of time & was on the gonne crew too. Here's a video of the San Salvador's breech loading gonnes: San Salvador 4 gonne salute.
 

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While I wasn't at the Old LaVeta Pass shindig, I did get to spend a few minutes chatting with Mr. Heston when he had lunch at The Covered Wagon restaurant in LV. Because of the screen blowing down during the attempted premiere of The Mountain Men during the rendezvous, it was moved to the Trail Drive-In outside of Walsenburg. Frank Piazza (the owner) graciously opened it for the event.
When the screen blew down and we couldn't rig it back up, Heston took the microphone and told us that "He knew that he should have brought the stick with him that he parted the Red Sea with " !!
 
I wasn't there but have a picture from our group album.
The booshways were Al Fleming and Mike Branson, members of our Flathead Freetrapper group. In the back row, not sure who the first on the left is, but after that was John Arrasmith, John Taylor, Tony Lageose, and Bob Lange.
The other picture has Al, I think John Baird, couple strangers in the middle, and Mike on the right.
Most of these guys have gone on. Is Al Fleming still alive?
 
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