Muskets at Castillo De San Marcos, St. Augustine, Florida

If anybody else is familiar with the reenactments at "The Castillo", what muskets are accepted for use by volunteers trying to recreate 1740 Spanish Florida? The Pedersoli 2nd Model Bess is an attempt at a reproduction representing a musket not manufactured until 1769. Pedersoli's Spanish Musket is a reproduction of a 1755 musket. The only thing that I can think of that trully fits the period would be a 1730 Long Land Bess. Any body else have any thoughts? I have visited this park many times and it appears as though they are pretty accepting as long as it is an Eighteenth Century musket. My wife and I would like to eventually relocate to the "first coast" and I would like to volunteer at the fort and was just trying to think ahead. :hmm:

I'd call them if I were you. I used to volunteer in the leather shop in the old Spanish Quarter and the guys from the fort used to hang out in the shop often. Very friendly.

Might save you some money and you'd have the answer from the horse's mouth.

Also, don't forget about Ft Matanzas! They use volunteers too.

Knowing the junk they have bought for their own collection/use I would say...

...don't worry about it.

I agree with Alden, I was there in 1972 while serving in the U.S.Navy and was unimpressed with the gun collection,including what looked like 2 English blunderbusses. The cannon on the ramparts however were impressive, and I wished I could have fired a blank out of one. :grin: I was 17 then, and I'm 59 now, I wonder what differences I would recognize 42 years later? :idunno: Tree.

treestalker said:

I agree with Alden, I was there in 1972 while serving in the U.S.Navy and was unimpressed with the gun collection,including what looked like 2 English blunderbusses.

Click to expand...

Well it WAS an English fort and the town WAS raided by English pirates and English colonial forces. Why would it be surprising to see English weapons?

We all know that the NPS has a small budget. To expect any NPS site to have custom made, 100% HC weaponry is unrealistic in this day, and certainly the early 1970's given the advances in research and archeology since then. Like the many among our ranks, they too have to cut corners.

As directly a spanish gun I don't know whats avalible. Sinc the above post points out loose standards at the fort you wouldn't have to be fully hc.
I think loyalyist arms, middlesex village and maybe discriminating general offer the dutch style club butts that were popular in the caribean, and also dog locks. Although such guns were not used by spain and would notbe apart of the military, civilians could have got ahold of used guns. In spite of the law and aggrsive punisments, dutch french and english tradders managed to get thier wares ashore in to the floirda. And although this was past the age of priratcy lots of prirates were still working and smugaling.

I didn't know that about the English, I stand corrected :redface: . Thanks, Tree.

I appreciate everybody's comments. I talked to Charles at "Veteran Arms". He is an old friend of mine. He told me that they work a lot with living history people in St. Augustine. He said that they, too have been looking for a more correct arm for the period. Charles said that the demand is actually high enough there that they are working on building and selling Spanish Escopeta muskets with miquelet locks. I think that would nail it perfectly. I told him that I would hold off until they had some of them ready for sale. :thumbsup:

Beware! Pirate Fashions broached this field and admittedly sold two bad custom repros to a certain fort museum which COULD even be the one mentioned. Ahem...

The gunsmith there subsequently and admittedly learned more and made a fine improved version for me but their quality now is beyond laughable and insulting -- do a search on this site.

Veteran Arms (your friend Charles is a member here who unerstandably but unreasonably complains about reading such) now sells undisclosed India-made guns on internet gun auctions to unsuspecting buyers and may or may not turn to the Pirates as a middle-man as well as to India of course (the latter being much preferred -- how sad is that Pirate Fashions!?)...

The only other, but still rare, regular builders I've known were in Romania and especially California and seem to have given up on them...

When the old Spanish Quarter closed down and the guy who owns the Pirate Museum (very interesting place by the way) in town bought it he redid things. One of the things he did was add a gunsmith in the quarter. Right after it reopened this gunsmith was assembling Tulle kits from Track of the Wolf.

Williamsburg it is not.

Minie ball, you might try calling Jon at http://staugustinetextiles.com/ . He has a cool shop in the old city that is pretty much the only place for Living History guys around here to go to buy stuff in a store. He is very much in tune with the goings on in the local living history community and may give you some advice on this as well.

I realize this is an old subject, but stumbling across it and having some knowledge of the matter, decided to reply. According to the former Historical Director for the Park Service at the Castillo in St. Augustine, the correct military musket for the Spanish colonial period is represented by The Rifle Shoppe's Spanish Light Military Escopeta (776.) These are provided by The Rifle Shoppe in unfinished kit form for about $1,000, but I believe they will assemble and finish one for you for about $2,000. According to The Rifle Shoppe's historical description for this musket in their online catalogue, these were used for a long period and have been found in numerous locations across North America. In the office for the Park Service they had two of these Rifle Shoppe kits which had been assembled and finished for $2,000 each by (I believe) a gentleman in New Jersey, who had subsequently died. The Park Service manager there bemoaned the fact that they had been unable to procure more of these (and also the $2K each price!) So given the situation, the reenactors were given reasonable latitude in the muskets they used, which they provided at their own expense. I believe most of them used English muskets. I told the manager I believed I could provide them correct Spanish muskets built from Rifle Shoppe parts, albeit at a slow rate, and about 6 months later in summer of 2014 drove there from Maryland with an assembled and finished sample (which would cost, you guessed it, just under $2K.) I don't know if the reenactor turnout that day was abnormally light as a random occurrence or if there were other factors involved, but the few folks present commented how much they liked it, etc. but no one seemed interested in paying that much for one, which is totally understandable.

The sheer penury and poverty of the Spanish colonial system never seems to make it into living historians' impressions. Spanish troops in the colonies had a cloth allowance and were supposed to receive items annually, bi-annually, and so on, but there were constant shortages. Since so much of the important parts of Spain's New World enterprise were in the tropics, one should not be surprised to learn that "blanquillo" light linen uniforms were frequently worn... But don't tell that to living historians in their blue wool coats with red cuffs and turn-backs and so on and so forth.

Spain did not have a "sealed pattern" firelock like the French and English until the 1750s... The so-called "llave frances" or French-style flintlock was in vogue along with all things French when the Bourbons took over, but the Miquelet lock was far and away more popular on the frontier, offering as it did a more robust, more reliable lock--llave de patilla--that could use non-standard flint sizes. Weapons captured from Spain's enemies were indeed used and re-used alongside other makes and models.

San Antonio just celebrated its 300th anniversary from the founding of the remote presidio there in 1718... All sorts of people were keenly interested in acquiring Catalan-stocked escopetas and so on... But manufacturers rarely make such things, and when they do, it is for the Pirate re-enactor fetishists, ahem, er, impressionists. Good on the OP for volunteering and getting involved in local history efforts! I doff my cap to ya!