In the days of duels with old flintlock pistols, I suppose the effective range was comparable to the distance the duelists stood apart (20m?). But how far would a ball that missed travel?
(Yes, I’m nitpicking a tv show.)
Heck, as a contemporary pistol shooter, I want to know how accurate they were. 20 meters / yards is a challenging shot with a modern handgun requiring good sight picture and trigger technique.
Still wouldn’t like to be in a duel with them, though, especially before anesthesia and antibiotics were around…
I think the standard was 10 paces (which would be about 20 yards I suppose). A lot of 19th century dueling pistols were, IIRC, rifled and used fine grain powder, so while it wouldn’t be an easy shot it wouldn’t be all that hard either. Of course, turning and firing when someone else is doing the same to you would make it a deal tougher, plus the vagaries of black powder weapons would complicate things as well.
You weren’t necessarily supposed to kill the other guy in such a duel (in fact, in many cases the duelists would just fire into the air), merely show up and stand up to the other guys fire, and then ‘honor’ would be fulfilled.
-XT
You should have watched the entire show before asking. It was covered.
It was discovered that the duel was designed so that the guns would have practically no chance of hitting the target – twenty paces instead of the usual ten indicates this, among other things. They did miss, too
Rifled dueling pistols were considered to be unsporting, and a bit of a cheat. Some people had their honor and reputation smeared a bit for using rifled pistols. Sometimes you even got your honor dinged a bit just for taking slow and careful aim.
That said, some of them were rifled though. Some people thought it was cheating, but other folks used them anyways.
A smooth bore pistol pretty much always fires a curve ball. The round ball is going to randomly contact the barrel somewhere as it travels along its length, and that is going to impart a spin to the ball. The ball will go straight for a bit (10 to 20 yards maybe, depending on the length of the barrel) and after that where it goes is anyone’s guess. Smooth bore muskets suffered from the same problem, though they were accurate out to about 50 to maybe 75 yards due to their longer barrels. They used to say that you could stand 200 yards away from a single musketeer and not worry about getting shot by him.
A rifled pistol will be a lot more accurate. The short barrel and poor aerodynamics of a round ball are still going to limit the accuracy, but you’ll probably get double the accurate range out of a rifled pistol. Flintlock rifles could hit a man at 300 yards (or more if using a bullet shaped round instead of a ball). A pistol would have much less of an effective range than that, of course.
I don’t think 20 paces is far enough away to guarantee that someone can’t shoot you, even with a smooth bore. You are starting to get into the inaccurate range there, but you aren’t to the point where a shot hitting you would just be dumb luck.
The OP does bring up a good point though. Even though the ball is curving fairly badly, it still is going to end up somewhere. I know that a ball fired from a musket is going to go several hundred yards. A pistol uses the same lead ball but much less powder (otherwise the pistol kicks back and smacks you very hard in the face). If the ball happens to curve down, it’s going to take a nose dive into the weeds at maybe 30 or 40 yards. If it curves to the side or more upward though, it can travel a pretty fair distance. Even considering the poor aerodynamics of the round ball, it’s still going to be quite deadly if someone is unlucky enough to be hit by it at 100+ yards (maybe even a couple hundred yards).
I don’t know what the percentages are, but all of the dueling pistol sets I’ve seen (maybe, oh, a dozen or so) had spiral cut grooves for rifling. Some even had patches to improve the fit and seal of the ball (some were even cap locks instead of flint locks, and I saw one rifled wheel lock set as well). I know that there were a lot of smooth bore dueling pistol sets, mind, I just haven’t seen any personally, while I have seen many with rifling.
Do you have a cite that your honor was dinged? I’d be interested in seeing why that would be, since a non-zero percentage of duels of honor were certainly with the intent of killing or seriously wounding the opponent.
Even with rifling, as you say, it’s going to be a chancy shot anyway…certainly not a sure thing.
-XT
I shoot rifles and long muskets, so I poked around on the net for a bit to try to get you some accurate numbers.
In the 1985 Black Powder Olympics in Madrid, a reproduction of an early 1800s smooth bore flintlock won the event with all 10 shots inside the black 7 inch circle at the center of the target. The range was 25 yards.
I also found an article where one guy was complaining about the sights, since they were rather crude by modern standards. Other than that, he said that flintlock pistols shoot very accurately at 25 yards.
Both of these quotes are from “British Duelling Pistols” by John A. Atkinson.
ETA: The book does go on to say that percussion locks became standard on dueling pistols as percussion locks replaced flintlocks in general. Rifling also became more acceptable in later years.
I’ve seen a few with “Scratch Rifling”; namely very faint rifling (no doubt intended to be impercitable to an inspection early in the morning or evening in the circumstances they were intended to be used).
Having said that, I’ve generally been of the opinion that the vast, vast majority of “Duelling Pistols” were, in fact, presentation pieces (in much the same way that you can get presentation or “limited/commerative edition” guns even nowadays), which were generally expected to sit in their case and look nice, but never be fired.
Sporting? Honor? If I had to fight a duel, and if I could get away with it, my dueling pistol would have laser sights, the bullets would explode and have proximity fuses.
Minor nitpick here. Actually, if one puts more powder than required down the barrel of a blackpowder pistol, most of it will be just spit out the barrel - evidently it doesn’t burn fast enough to explode in the barrel.
If anyone here is really interested in this sort of stuff, get yourself a flintlock pistol kit, and build your own. These things are a lot of fun, and no, I wouldn’t want somebody using one of these to shoot at me from 20 yards. Nothankyouvery much.
[QUOTE=engineer_comp_geek;13014997In the 1985 Black Powder Olympics in Madrid, a reproduction of an early 1800s smooth bore flintlock won the event with all 10 shots inside the black 7 inch circle at the center of the target. The range was 25 yards.[/QUOTE]
Minor nitpic. There will be a world of difference between the precision milled barrels and lead shot of today compared to the hand forged barrels and balls hand cast from dirty lead in the 1700s.
A 7" group in 1800 would literally require divine intervention.
The idea of a duel with pistols was not to try to kill the other guy but rather to show up and prove to the world, i.e your mates and the ladies, that you were willing to put your balls on the chopping block in order to protect your honor.
The pistols used were therefore not as accurate as was techlogically possible but were rather “sporting”. As both parties used matching pistols neither had an advantage unless one party was a “cad” and used underhand means.
Often both parties would deliberatly miss and everyone would go away happy.
I’d settle for brickbats at half a mile.
My favorite was the old one shot paint ball guns at 20 paces. Hell of a lot of fun…
-XT
No one “had” to fight a duel. If you didn’t mind everyone thinking you were a dishonorable coward, you just didn’t show up.
You cad!
Regards,
Shodan
Does the same hold true for duels with swords? Did you just fight until someone got a cool looking scaar?
Sometimes, but it had to be agreed upon in advance. That’s where the term “first blood” originates from.
Hey, just what you see here, pal.
As Telperion says, a lot of times a swords duel (European style) would be to first blood. Even in more serious duels a lot of them ended when one combatant was simply unable to continue, not necessarily in death. There were all sorts of elaborate rituals and rules, and the biggest thing was simply the gumption to show up and defend your ‘honor’, to trade blows and show that you weren’t a coward.
-XT