The "Lewis & Clark" Blunderbuss
Between May 1804 and September 1806 a group of about
thirty-three intrepid individuals under a commission from President Thomas
Jefferson braved virtually unknown territory, traveling westward from St.
Louis, Missouri, across the continental divide until they reached the Pacific
Ocean near present day Astoria, Oregon. Captain Meriwether Lewis was selected
as commandant of the Corps of Discovery by President Jefferson himself, and he
picked his close friend Second-Lieutenant William Clark as his
second-in-command.
It is undisputed that there was a great deal of care
in the preparation for the expedition in order to ensure its success, and the
greatest proof of that is that all members returned safely to St. Louis, and
part of that preparation was the selection of firearms to be used for an
unknown amount of time in the wilderness.
According to the Western Explorers site “The journals and records prepared by the
expedition members show that they carried U.S. military rifles obtained from
the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and service muskets brought by
soldiers posted from other units. Personal firearms were brought by Captains
Clark and Lewis, and some of the hunters enlisted for the journey may have used
their own rifles. The French-speaking boatmen may have carried “trade guns,” a
common type of musket. Lewis brought an “air gun,” a case of matched pistols,
and a fowler, and Clark brought his personal .36 caliber long-rifle, and an
"elegant fusil”. A “swivel gun,” a small cannon, was mounted on the keelboat,
and the two pirogues each had a
blunderbuss, each also mounted on a swivel. All the firearms of the Lewis
and Clark expedition were single-shot, muzzle loading, black powder guns with
flintlock ignition, the notable exception being Lewis's air gun, which on
several occasions astonished native Indians with its repeating operation.”
Blunderbusses were short, heavy, smoothbore shoulder
arms used for defense. They were usually mounted on a pivot in the rail of a
boat or the top of a wall. The muzzle was flared for rapid loading and as an
unforeseen benefit it also worked like a sound amplifier, increasing its
psychological effect.
Contrary to popular belief blunderbusses were not
loaded with stones or nails or broken glass or pieces of chains or horseshoes,
but with a healthy load of buckshot, or grapeshot as it was known at the time,
and they generally were used against a concentration of men.
While your typical 12-gauge shotgun loaded with 00
buckshot will put eight to twelve pellets downrange, you could easily loaded
twice that much on a blunderbuss.
From a tactical perspective, and considering the personal
firearms or light weapons of the respective eras, the blunderbuss at the times
of Lewis and Clark would paly the same role as a light machinegun or a Squad
Automatic Weapon (SAW) plays today.
The blunderbusses came into play during the
explorers' confrontations with the Teton Sioux on September 25 and 28. On
Lewis's orders the men loaded the swivel gun with 16 musket balls and the
blunderbusses with buckshot. On the second occasion, warriors seized the
keelboat's cable. Clark was ready to blast them with the swivel gun when a chief
defused the situation by jerking away the cable. That winter, the swivel gun
and blunderbusses were apparently mounted on the walls of Fort Mandan. Returning
to the Hidatsa villages on August 14, 1806, Clark wrote, "we directed the blunderbusses be fired
several times" -a peaceful salute to the Indians who had befriended them
during the winter of 1804-05.
Again in salute, the blunderbusses sounded for the last
time upon the explorers' arrival in St. Charles, Missouri, a month later. As
Clark recorded in his journal entry for September 21, "we saluted the Village by three rounds from
our blunderbuts (sic) and the Small
arms of the party, and landed near the lower part of the town. We were met by
great numbers of the inhabitants.” Two days later, according to Clark, when
the explorers arrived in St. Louis, "we suffered the party to fire off
their pieces as a Salute to the Town."
Upon returning to St. Louis, and following a
well-deserved heroes welcome, the expedition was disbanded and all items were
auctioned off, and partially due to that auction currently there is not a
single firearm from the historic expedition known to the public. Or is that so?
In 2001 Hampel’s Inc. (the predecessor company to Hampel’s Gun Co.) was engaged by the family
of renowned firearms collector Jack Berryman to handle the dispersal of his
collection of fine, historical firearms. After the successful completion of
this task, the Berryman family presented to Mr. Karl Hampel the opportunity to
acquire the last item and crown jewel of said collection: a blunderbuss mounted on a swivel, that Mr. Berryman obtained from
William Clark family descendants in the Detroit area in the 1950’s. He had
actively pursued this gun, utterly convinced that this was one of the two blunderbusses
mounted on the pirogues of the Lewis & Clark Expedition!
The blunderbuss has locks made by Cooper, of London,
in approximately 1790, a 23 ¾” inches bronze barrel with a .729 inches bore
(which is about 12 gauge), English walnut stock, and a total length of 40
inches. The complete gun weighs a bit over twenty-three pounds and would have
been quite a load had it not been mounted on a swivel.
Mr. Berryman actively displayed the blunderbuss in
multiple collectors meetings around the country and it was prominently featured
at the “FIREARMS OF OUR WESTERN
EXPANSION” at the NRA Annual Gun
Collectors Exhibit in Salt Lake City, Utah on April 1992. Its description
during that meeting reads as follows:
“#1. This flint-lock
(sic) “swivel gun” was made by Cooper
of London, ca. 1790. It was designed for fixed mounting on a riverboat or
rampart. This type of firearms found favor with early explorers such as Lewis
and Clark. Many such pieces were utilized along the rivers and by-ways of the
far west where effectiveness in repelling would-be borders was an important
function for a boat borne weapon.”
The NRA 1992 BEST
ARMS AWARD RECOMMENDATION FORM provides the following additional details:
Description:
Blunderbuss (shotgun),
British manufacture, .729” bore, no serial number, flintlock.
Originality of Components: All
original except possibility of replacement ramrod.
Provenance and/or historical importance: These
were used aboard ships, early stage coaches, forts, and any place a yoke and
swivel feature could be used. Lock-Cooper London, about 1790. The Lewis &
Clark expedition carried two swivel guns on boats, which “saved the day” when
they encountered the Teton Sioux on September 24, 1804. Scarcity of these boat
swivel guns at the time could support a contention that this weapon or one like
it had an important role in the success of that Missouri River exploration.
Other significant information: This
blunderbuss had hand made forge welded chain links, ring and wedge, indicative
of the time. It is probably the only one available with full brass barrel and
original swivel hardware. This weapon, or one identical to it, is featured in a
treatise by Cyril Bracegirdle, on page 35 of the August 1983 issue of the Gun
Report publication. Picture here reproduced. A letter by Charles R. Suydam
volunteered information as to this swivel blunderbuss authenticity. Letter and
publication are available.
Note from
Author: Unhappily I could not locate
copies of mentioned publication and letter.
I think that nobody would disagree that the Lewis
& Clark Expedition marks the beginning of the western expansion of the
United States of America that eventually resulted in a country that extends “from sea to shining sea!” and while it
maybe impossible to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the Karl Hampel
blunderbuss is the only surviving firearm from the Lewis & Clark
Expedition, it is nonetheless a unique artifact from a time when our great
nation was being sculpted by the hands and will of giants, to the greatest
extent of the word!
Currently the “Lewis
& Clark Era Blunderbuss” which is consistent with descriptions from the
Journals of the Expedition is displayed at Hampel’s Gun Co. in Traverse City,
MI, on consignment from Karl Hampel’s personal collection. Unfortunately we do
not have bulletproof documentation to confirm that the blunderbuss under our
care is actually one of two carried by the Corps of Discovery, and the modest
price of $250,000 reflects that.
