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The ‘Patched Ball’ As used in the Baker Rifle By Richard Rutherford-Moore
The North York Militia had a reputation of being a ‘crack’ unit and most of their exploits can be traced in the Napoleonic period through The Museum of The Green Howards in Richmond, Yorkshire (the noted 95th Rifles memorist Captain John Kincaid joined the green jackets of the 95th at Hythe, arranging his own transfer to the regulars in the spring of 1810). The illustration on the left (dated to 1814) depicts a dapper-looking Rifleman of the Light Company of The North York Militia loading a Baker rifle. Of particular interest to students is the size of the ‘ball-bag’ on the waist-belt and supported by a cross-belt and the associated suggestion by looking at the rifleman in the background is that these particular riflemen did not wear a cartridge-box containing paper cartridges. A ‘powder-flask’ fitted with an English charger-measure is depicted carried not on a shoulder-slung cord but in a breast pocket of the jacket supported by a cord around the rifleman’s neck. The white cord shown descending from the belt-buckle is taken to be holding the rifleman’s ‘brush and pricker’.
It is possible that The North York Militia in forming a green-jacketed light company armed with Baker rifles were influenced by Mark Beaufoy in his book Scloppetaria published in 1808. Beaufoy favoured and advocated a far more accurate rifle-system than Ezekiel Baker and promoted the introduction of this into the British Army to complement or even replace the existing rifle system based on the use and deployment of the Baker rifle - with riflemen carrying no paper cartridges and using patched ball in aimed fire only. Though mobilised and disbanded several times, The North York Militia was an active unit, today having an association by heritage with several Regiments. The time spent by them in the Napoleonic period in association with The Percy Tenantry (another famous volunteer corps comprising infantry, cavalry and artillery) at Alnwick Castle led to the discovery during an archaeology project there in 1989 of twelve patched lead bullets from the site of an old artificers’ store. Somewhat unique, they came into my possession with a view of undertaking research as to possible use with the Baker rifles held at the time by both of these corps. As little is known of the ammunition of the 95th Rifles this was deemed worthwhile. Using a university laboratory facility to undertake the examinations, the following facts turned up : the bullets were cast from pure lead and averaged .60 inch calibre (and suit a 20 bore calibre rifle), most of the leather patches were pigskin - two were from bovine skin and probably cut from a stillborn calf - and the remaining lubrication was a mixture of lard and tallow, the patches were different in size but were in a form of cross-shape cut out by scissors rather than a knife or a wad-cutter. The patches still fitted the bullets very snugly but due to their great age, all the patches had become dry and stiff - through careful lifting, nothing could be seen of any form of adhesive used so it was taken that the patches were wrapped around the bullets after lubrication and adhered to them due to the lard-tallow mix. The bullets were later reconstructed in facsimile and in an experiment when fired from an original Baker rifle, served very well in terms of both loading and accuracy.
Cloth is far handier and easier to use as patch for rifle-balls than leather : Ezekiel Baker mentions calico and rag in his book and seems to have favoured a wad-punch for the cutting of patches. A development of a wad-punch to facilitate mass-cutting (see illustration) was later subject to a patent : I used a wad-cutter like the above to cut out patches from folded material placed on a sheet of thick lead (I cut out a hundred in about ten minutes) and greased on both sides they served very well. Prior to purchasing this wad-punch - to ascertain the correct size - I drew various size circles on material using a variety of foreign coins, cut them out by hand with scissors and then experimented for the best fit. If you place a rifle-ball on the patching material on the muzzle of your rifle and push the ball into the rifling, slice off the excess when the ball is flush with the top of the muzzle, extract the ball and patch and this gives an idea of the size of circle you are looking for.
Along with the rifle-bullet I found in 1980 at the location occupied by the 1/95th Rifles (‘The Knoll and the Sandpit’) on the battlefield of Waterloo, these two ‘finds’ became almost the sole surviving references to original bullets used by the 95th Rifles in the Napoleonic period and as such the bullets formed the provenance to this aspect in my recreated Rifleman Moore of Wellington’s Army 1810-1812 display for English Heritage. |
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North Yorkshire Militia Click for more details and enlarged image
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Rifleman Moore Click for more details and enlarged image
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Ezekiel Baker’s ‘Wad Punch’ Click for more details and enlarged image
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