One of our readings this week was Cary Carson’s essay “Material Culture History: The Scholarship Nobody Knows.” In it, he breaks the field down into four genres of scholarship, and briefly sketches the evolution of the field. However, in doing that, he argues there are some problems with the field and plenty of room for growth.
Carson’s breakdown of the field and discussion of its weak points gave me some insight into new ways to think about my mysterious matchlock and also about civilian firearms in general. The first problem he raises with the first genre of material culture works is that object scholars often start with a collection of objects and study them rather than starting with a big question and seeking out objects as evidence. This made me think about what a punt gun could be used as evidence for, and there’s lots of possibilities. It is a working class firearm which could tell several social history stories about market hunters, a specialized regional firearm which could support a regional history or technological or industrial history, its ban could fit into a political history, its use fits in to economic history…I could go on. There are simply a lot of possibilities, which grow further when I start to think about hunting weapons more generally. Carson next discusses the theoretical works written by material culture scholars. However, he argues that they are derivative of theoretical works in other fields, and almost serve as no more than links to celebrity scholars. I’m not a big fan of worldview-defining theories and ideology, as they have many weaknesses, but they can be helpful if applied carefully. In the world of punt guns, and many other weapons, theories are especially hard to apply to objects, because there is an incredible amount of cultural and regional variation. Many firearms are designed to fit the terrain they’re being used in—punt guns only make sense in specific coastal environments—and many designed for universal use still have a lot of cultural differences for what is at heart a utilitarian object. However, neither of these were the most potent sections of Carson’s work for me. I was struck more by his recommendation for reaching the public. He essentially argues that since Americans live in such a vibrant material world, the best way to reach the American public is to connect historic objects to the basic struggle for human rights. By doing this, he argues, it becomes easy for us to find ways to translate objects into messages. This is a very helpful framework for looking at all kinds of firearms, which are intimately connected with rights, as they have been tools to gain and defend rights, tools to take and suppress rights, and the subject of a hotly contested debate about rights. However, hunting guns in particular have an even more immediate connection—they are intimately connected with the struggle to survive. They literally put food on the table. A punt gun allowed its owner to kill and sell ducks, and use that money to survive and make life more comfortable. The more effective it was meant the hunter could live more comfortably. The power of that connection for the audience might even make them empathize with the plight of the hunter once market hunting was banned. And that is the power of objects.
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Our next task in documenting Lesley is to document several related items. Each of us was given an object to study for the rest of the semester; I was assigned a firearm. However, despite my knowledge of historic firearms, this one immediately threw me off. Given the time period we are dealing with, I expected the gun to be a percussion lock or possibly a flintlock. However, I was immediately confounded by the absence of any obvious lock. A closer inspection and description was my next step anyway, but now it was made extra intriguing. Temporarily setting aside my curiosity about the lock, I began by taking some measurements. The most important measurements for firearms are caliber (the inside diameter of the barrel) and barrel length. However, this gun has sustained a lot of damage, and the end of the barrel had been broken off, so my measurement for barrel length is probably inaccurate and not helpful. However, what I could measure was 45.5". The way the barrel broke also made it difficult to get a measurement for caliber. Normally I would prefer using a caliper to take that measurement, but all I had was a ruler, so I made do. I measured 15/16", which is about .94 caliber. I also measured an overall length of 66". I also noted the materials: iron barrel and barrel bands, wooden stock. I also noted the matchlock styling influences on the stock and the rear sight. I also picked the weapon up and found it to be significantly heavier than most others, and extremely unbalanced. Clearly, it was not meant to be highly mobile or for field use. The Hudson Valley fowlers I had experience with were over 6' long and heavy, true, but they were balanced and much easier to carry, even if not very maneuverable. I tried getting into firing position with it, but it was far too unbalanced to hold steady, the stock was too long, and the recoil would be too much to handle. Obviously whoever used this fired from a rest or support of some kind. Next, I moved on to the firing mechanism.
On early European and American firearms, the lock, stock, and barrel were typically made separately, sometimes by different gunsmiths, and then assembled later (with some exceptions such as boxlock pistols). This means the lock was removable and usually attached on the right side by screws going through the stock to the sideplate on the left side. This obviously wasn't the case with this gun. Before I took a closer look, I first thought this might be a more modern weapon, like a modern shotgun which opens at the breech and has an internal action (approximately the modern term for lock). However, upon taking a closer look, the gun unmistakably had a matchlock of a type I hadn't seen before. Matchlocks were the earliest and simplest of all the locks, holding a lit slowmatch which, when you press the trigger, descends to light the powder that will fire the gun. They were both unreliable and dangerous. The trigger on this gun had no trigger guard and was operated by pulling up on it, as is typical for most matchlocks. However, instead of the lock being attached to the outside, it is integrated into the stock. As best I could tell without taking it apart, the trigger is simply connected to a bar that is connected to the serpentine (the part which holds the match) so when you depress the trigger the serpentine and match go down and ignite the powder. While this was the visual evidence confronting my eyes, it still didn't make any sense why someone would be using a matchlock for market hunting in the 1800s, so I kept doubting myself and my conclusions so far. I went next to the museum's records on the firearm to see what they had to say. The record states the weapon is a punt gun, donated to the museum by Theodore Newbold in 1984. The record also listed a model of a punt gun in use on a small boat, as well as a photo of the boat and gun in use. This described punt guns as having a 2" bore (2.0 caliber), while the object in front of me wasn't even half that caliber. There was also a short description in some appraisal documents, listing the gun as an early wood and iron duck hunter's gun from the first half of the 19th century with an unusually short overall length of 65". The appraiser's qualifications were listed as a specialty in Chinese and oriental art. Beside this was a printed Wikipedia article on percussion locks. All of this was starting to make less and less sense; why would there be an article about percussion locks in the record for a matchlock? Why would the gun be so unusually short, and with a much smaller caliber than expected? Why would anyone be using a matchlock to hunt ducks in the 1800s? I began to think this matchlock might be an early punt gun, and not the 1800s 2 caliber 7' (or longer) percussion lock punt gun I was seeing described by the record. I also considered the gun might have been passed down from hunter to hunter. It gave me a lot to think about after class. So much that I couldn't help but to do some research on punt guns. And what I found is beginning to make me doubt it's a punt gun at all....
Some questions sprang immediately to mind: how do you open this? Some type of tool that fits in the two holes? Where does it lead to? Is there a tank? An engine? To start investigating this, I immediately scanned the Lesley for evidence of a fuel system I discovered two fuel tanks, on either side of the boat, directly under the gas caps. Attached to one of them was a fuel line that led to the center of Lesley but did not connect to anything. This raised more questions: what did the fuel line power? I speculated it was probably for some type of onboard engine, although I could see no immediate evidence (besides the fuel system) of the engine or what it powered. I noted that parts of the fuel system were now green in color, and wondered if they were made of some type of copper alloy, and that the fuel tanks were grey and covered in various degrees of rust. I also noticed looking at the tanks that they were roughly the same size and shape, but one had additional attachments on the head of the drum while the other did not. Why would they be different? After making notes on these, I proceeded to look for more evidence of a former engine. I could find no propellers or engine mounts or much of anything, but I did find an odd screw connection which led to a hole through the hull. Perhaps this was some kind of exhaust port for the engine, or maybe it fit another component. At this point, I felt I would find no more evidence and instead began speculating the purpose of the engine. Since it was obvious the boat had masts and sails, it did not seem likely the engine was the primary system of propulsion. I figured it was probably for slow speed and close quarters movement into and out of docks and small spaces, especially because it is very hard to maneuver by sail in those areas. I started walking around the boat again, and then noticed something else which could be evidence of the engine. What I found were several pieces of wood in the bottom of the boat which had various holes and cuts where engine and drivetrain components could have been. It is obvious something ran through them, and the first had odd cuts which could have been part of the engine mounting system. My theory is the center holes may have held the driveshaft or similar component, while the other two carried some type of exhaust system. Or maybe it's the inverse, with the exhaust running through the center in a system with two propellers. Unfortunately the Lesley is too unstable for me to climb in and try to see how the holes line up to investigate further. General research on 1930s boat engine design will help clarify things for me.
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