Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, I am here today at the James Julia Auction House
taking a look at some of the guns that they are going to be selling
in their upcoming spring of 2018 Firearms Auction.
Today we have a Nock Volley Gun. This is something that people have
been requesting a video on for a while. And I finally
actually got the chance to take a look at one in person.
So, these were originally developed in 1789, they were
the invention of a British fellow by the name of James Wilson.
And he actually thought that this would be an infantry gun. The idea of course is you have
7 barrels that all fire simultaneously, hence the name of Volley Gun.
And he proposed this to the British military, and they took a look at it and went, "Nyah, not so much."
This would have been really quite impractical for the infantry.
It takes forever to reload, they are heavy, difficult to aim of course because
you've got 7 un-rifled musket barrels going in all different directions.
However, the Royal Navy saw it and they were a lot more interested.
They thought that this would have a very substantial application for ship to ship combat.
The idea was you could have some guy up in an elevated position on a mast with
one or several of these things firing down onto an enemy ship's deck
and clear out a whole bunch of enemy sailors or marines all at once.
And for that sort of application the weight wasn't that big a deal, because
you are not carrying it around very far, it's just staying on a ship.
So in 1790 the Royal Navy actually adopted these, and they ordered 500 of them.
Now, the gun was originally invented by a guy named Wilson, it's become known as the Nock Volley Gun
because the Navy contracted with a British gunsmith by the name of Henry Nock to manufacture them.
First a couple of prototypes, and when they liked the prototypes they hired him to build all 500 of the guns.
And as a result it became known as Nock's Volley Gun.
Now, they ordered ... just over another 100 in 1787.
These were actually issued out to British ships, and they fairly quickly got a pretty poor reputation.
For a couple of reasons. For one, the recoil. The recoil on this thing is remarkably heavy.
So ... this particular one is a 28 gauge, which is approximately .55 calibre,
and it would be firing of course 7 .55 calibre round balls all at the same time, the powder charge was 40 grains.
Which doesn't sound like all that much, until you put 40 grains in each of the barrels.
And when you add up that bullet weight plus that powder charge,
you've got something very much akin to like a four or eight bore rifle.
We are talking about close to a quarter pound of bullet here, with ... 280 grains of black powder behind it.
The recoil was really quite substantial. There are stories about it causing dislocated shoulders or fractured collar bones.
I kind of doubt that, unless you really do something stupid while you're holding this thing,
I don't think it would cause that sort of physical injury.
But it would certainly be very unpleasant to shoot.
The guns were also not particularly accurate, although that's kind of part of the idea,
is that it's kind of like a shotgun. Now you might wonder why not just a shotgun?
Well, this does give you substantially more mass going downrange than most shotguns.
Now the other problem with this was one of reliability.
You might wonder how do you get one firing mechanism to fire 7 barrels simultaneously?
The idea of having like 7 different powder tubes that all detonate at the same time,
that seems really unlikely to work well.
Well, Wilson and Nock had a really quite clever idea on this, and what they did was actually
the powder charge from the flint that fires only goes to the centre barrel.
So when you fire the actual lock, you are only firing the centre barrel,
and then the flame from the centre barrel sets off the outside six.
That sounds pretty good and that was mostly reliable. The problem was that it wasn't completely reliable,
and you would end up with maybe a couple of the barrels that didn't fire sometimes.
Well the problem is, how do you tell which ones did and which ones didn't? You really can't.
As a result you end up if you go to reload the gun, well, either you don't reload all the barrels
and then maybe you pick the right ones and maybe you don't.
Or maybe you reload all 7 barrels and then some of them are now going to be double-loaded,
which is going to cause even more recoil and potentially bulge or burst barrels when you do fire.
You can see where the problems come in.
So ... I wasn't able to find any real records of these being used in combat.
Although they were definitely ... issued out to ships.
By 1805 the British Royal Navy decided this is no good and they declared them obsolete in 1805.
So a pretty short life span for these things.
Well there's the muzzle end of this thing. You've got one centre barrel and then a cluster of 6 around it.
This one unfortunately is a little dented in. There's a ramrod on the bottom.
These are muzzle loading guns, so of course you need that ramrod ... to reload the whole thing.
There is supposed to be a sight rib on top, which unfortunately on this particular example is missing.
Moving to the back end of the gun we have the lock assembly on the side.
If you take off the lock, this whole barrel cluster unscrews from the main frame of the gun.
Couple markings here on the side. Tower was the private Birmingham manufacturing facility
that made these guns, as well as many other British rifles.
And then we have a crown and GR, for King George, who was the ruler of England at the time.
As per law, each of the barrels is proofed. You can see that going ... all the way around the outside.
You definitely don't want these to blow up, proofing was a good thing at this time.
The stock is really quite massive, very wide. It has to be that heavy and sturdy in order to survive
the recoil impact when you fire this thing.
It's hard to underestimate, ... often when you see these fired on camera they are being fired
with much reduced charges because a full powder charge in this thing is ... a serious experience.
After the Navy declared these obsolete, Nock did continue to make a few of them for a short time.
He made them commercially, mostly unrifled like this one, he did even make a few rifled versions.
The problem is all the problems that these had in military service they would continue to have in civilian use.
And, of course, the practical application of something like this ... outside of a naval battle is pretty slim.
I mean, really ... there's not a whole lot of point to it. And predictably they didn't sell very well.
The gun did get a big rejuvenation of notoriety in 1960 when it was portrayed in the hands of Jim Bowie
in the movie "The Alamo". Now the idea that Jim Bowie would have had a Nock Volley Gun
is pretty preposterous, there is in fact zero historical evidence to suggest that he did.
But it looked pretty cool in the movie, and especially since he was firing blanks in the movie,
the thing had no recoil, it was easy to handle and, boy, he fires one shot and just piles of enemy soldiers go down.
So, that really got it some new notoriety and it's become a relatively well known gun, if not one that's often seen.
Of course these are quite scarce in the real world, very cool to get a chance to take a look at this one.
If you would like to add it to your own collection, it is of course coming up for sale here at Julia.
If you take a look at the description text below, you'll find a link to their catalogue page on it,
where you can see their pictures and provenance and description,
value estimate and everything else you need to know
to place a bid on it and perhaps make it yours.
Thanks for watching.
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