Committee of Safety musket

[Rifleman1776]

Source for that scenario?

Spence

It was in a historical fiction book I read on my Kindle last year. I am terrible at remembering authors and titles. But do retain content. Go figger..... :idunno:
I'll try to retreive it and will post if I do. The main settings were South Carolina and Florida. Well done and well researched book.

Unfortunately, it was in my old Kindle. I haven't used in months and the battery went down and, apparently, deleted all my archived books. Not sure if I can recover on my new Kindle Fire. Good book, well written and researched. It was set in late 1600s to mid-1700s. I'm convinced the scenarios I mentioned are accurate for parts of South Carolina, Georgia and north Florida.

 

[George]

If you can recall the name of the book it might be possible to find it in a searchable form online. It's an interesting scenario you describe, but, to me, it has the ring of an author's creation. It would be good if we could check his source. Otherwise it's pretty useless for my purposes.

Spence

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Is it always true that Committee of Safety muskets were patched together from preexisting parts?

Always and Never are tough words to live up to. :wink:

Spence, it's going to depend on the colony and the contractor..., and then as mentioned you are going to find the label of a CoS Musket applied to any jumbled together piece in many cases.

Plus you have provenance problems.

Starting with the latter..., So Private Parts serving in a local militia unit gets an old LLP musket, sent back to the colony when that colony's regiments get issued French arms. He keeps it after using it in the war, but the barrel has a problem, so he gets the local gunsmith to fit a used barrel. It's a Dutch or French barrel, and centuries later, after it was lovingly preserved by the descendants of Private Parts, it's brought out for auction. Only now the appraiser declares the musket to be a rare CoS musket, when in fact it was cobbled, after the war. :shocked2:

As for a true CoS musket, well each colony would have different situations, and some more than one. Using Maryland as an example (as I can get into some local records), in 1768 in Annapolis an inventory showed:

Above the conference chamber...,

86 carbines and short muskets;
57 old muskets, and carbines;
104 ditto, mostly without locks, and not worth repairing;

And also...,

Under the conference chamber...,
382 muskets, very rusty, and many of the locks want repairing;
6o ditto mostly without locks;
35 musket barrels;

So seven years before the war there are 104 muskets too worn out to be repaired, plus 382 in bad shape, and in another portion of the storage area an additional 60 muskets, mostly without locks, and finally 35 musket barrels. There are other muskets that are in good shape, but I have omitted mention of them as one would not cannibalize a serviceable gun..., I hope....

So how many of these were scrapped, and the hardware, plus any repairable locks and usable barrels became muskets for the AWI?

By 1776 we find musket barrels, alone, being issued to an officer:

A Bill of Armes sent to the Council of Safety at Annapolis by Capt Norris Nov. 20th 1776.

To 50 Musket Bbls.

Is the good captain building guns, or repairing existing guns???


Add to that there are documents that the gunshop at Jerusalem Mill Village [as one example] was contracted to make complete muskets, so you have them either making them from scratch, perhaps after barrels were delivered, or perhaps assembling them from existing parts in a simple, restocking operation.

Then throw into the mix, if one is going to start producing muskets, one might be producing new parts, which are sand cast copies of old parts, so a 1748 LLP sideplate could be used to make side plates for "new" muskets, in 1776...and how can one tell??

LD

 

[Artificer]

If you can recall the name of the book it might be possible to find it in a searchable form online. It's an interesting scenario you describe, but, to me, it has the ring of an author's creation. It would be good if we could check his source. Otherwise it's pretty useless for my purposes.

Spence

This sounds to me more like what Loyalists and Patriots did to EACH OTHER, instead of what the British Army did. There were some pretty horrendous things done down South between these groups in the AWI.

Gus

 

[nhmoose]

Oliver Wiswell by Kenneth Roberts perhaps? Great writer from Maine. [Historical novels perhaps not to accurate but his works are worth reading]

 

[Rifleman1776]

If you can recall the name of the book it might be possible to find it in a searchable form online. It's an interesting scenario you describe, but, to me, it has the ring of an author's creation. It would be good if we could check his source. Otherwise it's pretty useless for my purposes.

Spence

This sounds to me more like what Loyalists and Patriots did to EACH OTHER, instead of what the British Army did. There were some pretty horrendous things done down South between these groups in the AWI.

Gus

The Sergeants word was the same as the King's law with limited ranking officers in those southern small settlements. They controlled most, or all aspects of settler life. This included free access to the women, prohibiting religious funerals, quartering and forms of punishment. Now, I'm really upset :cursing: I can't remember the title. It was well researched and gave a great picture of life in that part of the country at that period of time.

 

[Artificer]

Hopefully you will remember the title. However, this may be an account of one British Sergeant who got away with many things that were far beyond his authority and British Law, but I have a very difficult time believing it could have been more than an isolated case, if all these things were indeed true about the Sergeant.

Gus

 

[Rifleman1776]

the Sergeant

As referring to a class of people. Locally, "the sergeant" was law.

 

[Artificer]

A historical fiction novel may be extremely well researched and....to be kind.... still be highly biased and inaccurate. Some of those things could not have been done unless a superior British Commissioned Officer had declared martial law. If by "free access to women" you mean forcing women against their will, that was a severe Court Martial Offense in the British Army, no matter what the condition of the women.

Hope you remember the title.

Gus

 

[Ray-Vigo]

Several chapters in Kevin Phillips' "1775: A Good Year for Revolution" have nice studies of the various colonies trying to procure weapons, shot, and (most of all) gunpowder. It's an interesting book with lots of nice studies and facts about arms procurement and supply.

The book does a good job of conveying the difficulties of supplying and outfitting the various state militias and later the Continental Army.

It's very, very hard for us as Americans today to imagine the supply and armament difficulties of the 1770s. Today, the US military has some of the finest weapons, in high quantity. It's hard to envision an America where governments are desperately trying to find enough arms and supplies just to protect themselves.

But then the crisis of the 1770s drove colonies to arm themselves with whatever they could manage. There was talk of issuing medieval-type weapons in some circles even, including pikes and pole arms, because there was such a struggle to arm up. These committee of safety muskets often reflect the struggle, freely recycling parts, adding new/cruder parts, etc. Really interesting stuff.

 

[Artificer]

Going a bit off topic, but to add to your point.

Ben Franklin suggested using bows and arrows. Now, that would not have been such a bad suggestion considering the distances most armies fought, even considering how few bowmen there were available. Still inexperienced men could have been taught to fire against the formations of the day. But the lack of Boyers to make good bows and others to make good arrows, nixed the idea.

Gus

 

[vtbuck223]

The term "committee of safety" and "committee of safety musket" has been very narrowly defined in the gun collecting world.

I often hear discussions and arguments around...whether or not a musket is a "committee of safety musket".

The term committee of safety was still being used during the war of 1812....and almost every small town had one.

From the records and history of my very small town here in Vermont....I have the following from 1812;

- At the September meeting of that year it was "voted to support
Levi Clark, Amos Dodge, Araunah Waterman, John Simons, Sam'l
Boyes, Jonathan Burnam and Samuel Miller as a Committee of Safety
for the town of Johnson."

This Committee were :

"To use their endeavors to detect spies or curtail secret conspiracy to
hold correspondence with each other and with slnjilar Committees in Neigh-
boring Towns and States, and in every way to aid or assist in supporting the
laws of the United States, and to take any measures that shall be deemed
necessary when met to carry the above into effect."

"Voted to raise one hundred dollars to purchase fire-arms for the use
of the town."

Would it be wrong for someone who owned one of those fire-arms today....to refer to it as a "committee of safety musket"?

 

[rich pierce]

We cannot normally know who owned a musket and when, how and why they used it. For me a COS musket must be a newly made musket made to COS specs and marked thus. Otherwise any non model, civilian smooth bore stocked here around the Revolutionary War is a COS musket.

 

[vtbuck223]

I understand the reason that the gun collecting community has defined it this way. However, from a historical perspective...I just find it to be misleading as there were many other arms procured by "committees of safety".

 

[Okwaho]

I suggest that you read AMERICAN MILITARY SHOULDER ARMS Vol.I Part II.by George D. Moller which discusses among other subjects Committee of Safety muskets as well as early American muskets in general.In particular see PP 106 through 130 for a fine discussion on Committee of Safety muskets.One area in these muskets has always intrigued me and that is their architecture. of Up to about 1777-1779 they reflect British styling and are basically copies of the brown bess but then I believe that they begin to reflect American and French styling following shipments of French arms starting about 1777. This is my thinking and it is not chiseled in stone.The Barret gun may reflect my theory and one post herein saw a French influence in that gun.
I am agreement with Rich here and welcome any responsible opposing comments.See my previous post on a composite musket in my collection which type opens up a whole area of discussion on early American revolutionary muskets outside the realm of Committee of safety muskets and other arms of that ilk..
Have fun.I will stick with my early French guns
Tom Patton

 

[Wes/Tex]

Have enjoyed reading this discussion. My experience follows Okwaho's comments. It does appear that most early versions were some kind of local take on the British LLP with some novel twusts at times. As thd war progressed they appear to have been mor French in styling with a few an interesting mix of British, French, Dutch or German parts as such became available to the gun makers. George Neumann shows some very novel mixed parts muskets and officer's fusils in his illustrated books.