This season’s opening credits features a weird-looking rifle. It kinda bugged me.
Given that we’re running up the Battle of Kings Mountain, I thought maybe it was a prop-master’s off-kilter take on the Ferguson Rifle, the breechloading invention of Major Patrick Ferguson, the commander of the Loyalist force in that hinge-point battle. It doesn’t look anything like the Ferguson, and I kinda didn’t like that.
Turns out, it’s a proto-Hall rifle. Which requires some explanation.
For those of you who have not yet plunged into this yarn, Outlander has a central conceit of time-travel, accidentally discovered by Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser at Craig na Dun in the Scottish Highlands outside Inverness. She travels from 1940s Scotland to 1740s Scotland. It gets… complicated.
For our purposes, it is enough to know that Claire’s daughter Bree was born and raised in the 20th Century with an exceptional knack for engineering. She brought that back into the 18th Century with her.
So… as the Carolina backcountry became engulfed in the flames of civil war in 1780, she developed a Hall Rifle — a quarter century before John Hancock Hall actually did.
Model 1817 U.S. contract breechloading rifle made by John H. Hall of Portland, Maine, 1817. Acc. # 1915.49.30. Missouri Historical Society Museum Collections. Photograph by Cary Horton, 2004. NS 29096. Photograph and scan (c) 2004, Missouri Historical Society.
Per The American Rifleman:
Among the pantheon of American military arms, the Model 1819 Hall Rifle is one of the most unique designs. Initially developed by Hall in 1811, the rifle emerged as a standout concept in an era dominated by smoothbore muskets and, to a lesser degree, muzzleloading rifles. Its subsequent production would not only pave the way forward for firearm evolution, but it would also change the course of industrial history, as Hall’s revolutionary Rifle Works would be the first true producer of interchangeable machine parts.
Unlike nearly all standard longarms of the age, typified by the Model 1816 Springfield that was then the issue martial musket of the U.S. military, Hall’s design was a breechloading rifle. At the rear of the gun, a breechblock pivoted on a transverse pin running through two metal bars on either side of the action. This enabled the front face of the block to be lifted out of the line of the bore axis, exposing a cylindrical chamber where blackpowder and a round ball could be inserted. Once loaded, the block pivoted downward, where it was secured by a spring-loaded, spur-shaped catch that protruded from the bottom of the walnut stock.
A .52-cal. rifled arm, the Hall’s pivoting breechblock enabled the user to more quickly load a projectile compared to the process of using a ramrod to drive a patched round ball down the full length of a rifled barrel. At the top of the pivoting breechblock was a flintlock priming mechanism, comprised of the hammer and frizzen, that was centrally mounted, necessitating that the open sights be slightly offset to the left of the bore line.
I’ll take that Kibler Colonial of Jamie’s any day over that ugly thang Bree is shooting — but one does have to appreciate the innovation. And the cool obscure historical firearms tidbit…
Reese Crawford says
The Hall saw serious use in the Trans Mississippi theatre of the US Civil war. Confederate Arkansas forces in 1861 were armed with them at the battle of Wilson’s Creek. A percussion carbine of the same Hall design was the standard arm of the Union 2nd Missouri Vol. Cavalry. Mainly used for anti guerilla actions, these troopers in blue were truly a match for the bushwhackers.
JimC says
Excellent. This was a blind spot for me — I knew about McCulloch’s breeechloader, but I never paid any attention to the Hall, which is why I didn’t recognize it in the title cards.
Greg Walker says
They made beautiful rifles in those days –
The muzzle velocity of the .52 caliber [M1819 Hall rifle] was approximately 1,240 feet per second (fps) when using a standard 70-grain black powder charge in percussion variants.
Key Velocity Details:
Performance: The velocity was roughly comparable to, or slightly less than, standard muzzle-loading muskets of the era due to gas leakage at the breech.
Hall 1819 Rifle – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz21BCV8nMM&t=1s
JimC says
1,240 is right in there for a muzzleloader. It’s also the advertised muzzle velocity for .22LR CCI MiniMags.
Greg Austin Walker says
Indeed. But you get hit with a .22 MAG it hurts.
You get hit with a .52 caliber bullet – anywhere – it REALLY hurts.
JimC says
Yeah, a few more foot-pounds.
Quixotic Mainer says
I believe Sam Chamberlain, who was just recently in an article would have carted a Hall as a dragoon in Mexico. Kit Carson used a battlefield pickup Hall after his rifle broke in the San Pasqual fight too.
They made their mark in their day. That’s a good pick for something to give you an edge without loudly declaring you’re a time traveler. Could be worse, she could have picked a Giradoni air rifle!
JimC says
How did I miss all that?
This is why I love this campfire…
Joe says
I was happy to see Bree bring up the Hall idea, and was even more surprised to see the rifle being fired on screen. That has to be a custom work and probably not cheap to produce. Hearing her describe the Ferguson rifles was great as well, and having the entire finale be centered around King’s Mountain worked out nicely for our country’s 250th. I knew a bit about the battle before (thanks in part to several of your blogs- shoutout to this great piece for any who haven’t read- https://frontierpartisans.com/the-scottish-marksman/) but I took a deeper dive into it after watching the finale and now appreciate the battle’s historic impact even more. I also remembered you wrote an article about the old growth trees in that battle and others that wouldn’t be around anymore today, so filming in Scotland in this case actually probably made that part of the battle, the secure cover the attackers had available, more accurate.
JimC says
I didn’t realize the battle would make up the culmination of the whole series. Pretty potent. Not a documentary version, but I was glad to get the representation.