Thats Berdans Sharpshooters and they were armed with the Sharps rifle. The uniforms and rifles were purchased by Col. Berdan.

The Brits with the Bakers were well before that.

Originally Posted by 03USMC

Thats Berdans Sharpshooters and they were armed with the Sharps rifle. The uniforms and rifles were purchased by Col. Berdan.

The Brits with the Bakers were well before that.

Well yes exactly

The only Regiment I'm know off the top of my head was the 95th (Rifle) Regiment of Foot (light company) that used the Baker. Although I'm sure the Light company of many other regiments used the Baker.



Brown Bess Smoothbore (top)
Baker Rifle (Bottom)

Because the Baker was rifled it didn't require such a long barrel for accuracy, hence it was a much shorter and handier weapon.

This is my first post on this forum. I'm a bit of a historian, and have studied the napoleonic wars in detail. here's a few thoughts on things discussed in this thread, in no particular order.

Firstly, percussion caps were in use at this time. They had the benefit of being more reliable, as primed pans were likely to become useless in heavy rain and not fire. P/Caps were not standard issue (in the british army anyway), and were expensive, but were sometimes used by wealthier officers.

At the time of the Nep. Wars, the british army had two rifle regiments, the 95th and the 60th (also known as Royal American Rifles). The 60th were something of a 'foreign legion', with a particularly large number of germans serving. The regiments did not really serve together, but were attached in companies to other regmiments to augment their light companies (skirmishers).

The Baker rifle was slower to load than the brown bess musket, and the general thinking of the day favored weight of fire over accuracy, hence the realitvely small number of riflemen. The idea of a line of musketry was to literally put up a wall of lead. Effective range was up to about 50 paces, whereas baker rifles had ranges in the hundresds of paces.
The powder horn had finer ground powder for greater accuracy.

The rifled barrels were indeed shorter. as a result the baker had a longer bayonet (which could also be used as a short sword) This was to give a similar overall length to the brown bess musket when stood in line or square.

Dont know about using silk as wadding, but the baker was used with a patch of greased leather. It was this leather which gripped the rifle grooves, thus giving the bullet its spin.

I could add lots more, but this post has rambled enough.

In the early part of the 19th Century the cartridges was the cause of the Indian Mutiny. Now to keep them dry they were covered in Bees Wax, now you would bite of one end and pour the powder down the barrel then ram the ball down the barrel with your ram rod with the paper still around the ball to make it a better fit and stop the gases escaping from around the edges. Now there was rumour started that the cartridge cases had been treated with pigs fat, and this caused the Sepoy Regiments to mutiny as they were mainly Muslim

Originally Posted by AussieNick

Brown Bess Smoothbore (top)
Baker Rifle (Bottom)

now thats what I call a hottie 8)

wish they were for sale...

Originally Posted by 03USMC

The standard issue to regular troops was the Brown Bess. The Baker was issued to units of sharp shooters. I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the preimere unit although I do know they were outfitted in Green Uniforms and used their Shako's as rest when firing in the prone position. Maybe Aussienick can help you out with that.

I believe the unit that you are referring to is the 5th Battalion of the 60th foot regiment. It was formed in 1798 and was comprised mainly of foreigners (mainly Germans) that were familiar with Rifles. The unit was disbanded in 1818 having served in the Pennisular War.

In 1824 the 60th Regiment was reconstituted (basically they ceased being a colonial unit) and adopted the green uniforms of the former 5th battalion. They became known as the "Duke of York's Own Rifle Corps and Light Infantry".

Here are a couple of links:

http://www.regiments.org/regiments/uk/inf/060KRRC.htm

http://www.personal.usyd.edu.au/~sla...Page/baker.htm

I might interject here that there has been some misused terminology in this thread. One poster mentioned applying a small amount of power to the frizzen to prime the musket. The frizzenis not the part to be primed when loading such a weapon. The pan, a small receptacle beneath a hinged cover attached to the frizzen receives the priming charge. The frizzen is the part of the flintlock mechanism which generates sparks when struck by the flint. The pan is connected to the interior of the barrel by a small tube called the touchhole or vent. Sometimes the vent would become clogged with power residue or dirt, thus preventing the hot gases created from the ignition of the primer from reaching and igniting the main charge. This situation is memorialized in the phrase "a flash in the pan", meaning a dramatic but ineffectual event.

With that clarified I'll now add my two-cents worth. By their very nature firelocks were quite as dangerous to the shooter as to the shot at. A misfire in a modern weapon usually produces a jam, thus compelling countermeasures such as fieldstripping. However, a misfired musket is bomb waiting to explode. Because of the hazards associated with uniformed use all armies in the age of the muzzle-loader practiced their musket drill as a kind of pantomime that went through all the motions of loading and firing but introduced no actual ball or powder into the weapon. Flawless execution of the drill, ideally at the rate of three full cycles per minute, was required of the recruit before he was allowed to actually load and fire his weapon at a target.

To facilitate and standardized the training sergeants were issued with a manual that featured a series of drawings that illustrated the entire sequence of loading and firing a musket. Each drawing was also accompanied with a specific command the sergeant was to use with each step. One particular Manual of Arms I have seen comes from England and was widely used with revisions from 1630 to the beginning of the reign of William III. This manual is for training the use of the matchlock musket and illustrates 45 specific actions needed to load and fire the weapon. Granted that many steps, especially the ones concerned with the match and the musket rest, were not applicable to the flintlock of the 18th century, it is nonetheless true that dozens of individuals motions would need to be learned before a recruit could safely load and fire.

In neuropsychological terms the training of the 18th century infantryman resembled a martial arts exercise, especially Tai Chi, or Chinese shadow boxing. Tai Chi is essentially slow-motion Kung Fu and is used today chiefly as a kind of physical exercise and mediation technique. However, it is also used by serious martial arts students to train their muscles and joints to exactly perform a series of complex motions so that various punches, kicks, parries, etc. become true reflex actions that can be executed without conscious thought. In just this same way the incessant repetition of the stages of loading and firing gradually created a conditioned reflex that could be invoked without the conscious thought of the soldier.