Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction Company
taking a look at a Duck's Foot pistol. This is kind of one of the iconic,
unusual, strange guns of history because, well, it looks quite odd and impressive.
Named Duck's Foot, of course, because the splay of the four barrels kind of mimics the splayed webbed foot of a duck.
Now, there's kind of some communal, ancestral understanding of,
or perceived understanding of, what a Duck's Foot pistol is for.
I want to take a closer look at this, and I want to consider what that assumed knowledge is,
and then also maybe consider this from the alternative point of view. So best case, worst case, for a Duck's Foot.
So I guess we should actually talk briefly about the mechanics of how this thing actually works first.
These are muzzleloading barrels, all four of them. You can see the patterning here. That's not actually rifling,
those are basically wrench marks so that you can unscrew these barrels for cleaning or replacement.
You'll notice that they are each numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4, the frame as well as the barrels.
So there's a tool, you can stick it in there, unscrew the barrels, take them off. That's what that's all for.
It is of course a flintlock. It does not have an actual piece of flint in it at the moment.
But what you would do is load powder and shot or ball into each of the barrels,
you would then pour a little bit of priming powder into the pan there,
close the frizzen, and then when you're ready to fire
(I should have actually, there we go, put that at half-cock),
when you're ready to fire, cock it the rest of the way.
When you pull the trigger, this comes forward, the flint is going to snap onto this plate.
That's going to open it and dump a pile of sparks into the priming pan.
That powder ignites, that fire goes through these three holes into these four barrels.
(That centre hole leads to both of the two centre barrels.)
And that ignites all four barrels and it all fires simultaneously. This is a four projectile single-shot pistol.
So that leads us to ... why? Why would you do this?
And the conventional wisdom is that these were for people who were in a position where,
if they had to shoot someone, they were probably going to have to shoot a bunch of people all in a group.
Like prison guards perhaps, or ship captains who might potentially have to deal with a mutinous crew,
someone dealing with a riot, that sort of thing.
And that stands up in so far is it's kind of like the only good reason to have this.
With this spread, I don't know how clear it is from the video, but if you're at four or five paces
you're pretty much hitting three people wide with this.
Which means if you're only trying to hit one person it's not the best tool to actually use.
I know someone's gonna say just hold it on its side. Honestly, I'm not sure, that might work or it might
cause unreliability with powder falling out as soon as the frizzen opens, before it has a chance to detonate.
Not sure, never actually tried shooting a flintlock held horizontally before.
But there is variety in these guns' design.
This is the most common sort of configuration with four barrels in a horizontal plane.
There are some examples with more barrels, there are some examples with fewer.
There are occasionally examples that have some vertical variability to them as well.
So like one barrel points a little bit down or a little bit up.
Most of the time though they're in a horizontal plane.
The designer assumes that you can actually hold the gun at the right elevation at whatever you're trying to hit.
I think it's interesting to consider this today in relation to, or in cognisance of the fact that during this time period
a firearm was not really your primary weapon, if you were using it as a weapon,
because a firearm really only held one shot. You were gonna have a single-shot pistol and then that's it.
No more shooting, because in a fire fight you're not actually going to have time to reload the thing.
So that's why a lot of early hand guns had basically sort of a mace.
They could be flipped around and used as impact weapons. That's not the case on something that's meant to be small like this.
That's why early rifles had bayonets, they could be used as spears or sort of short pikes after being fired.
And the typical person you would associate with carrying one of these,
like a prison guard or a ship captain, would also be carrying a bladed weapon, a sword of some sort.
And so the idea is if they have a pistol as well, the pistol's the first thing that you fire and then it's done and you toss it,
and switch to the thing that is your real actual main weapon, which is a blade of some sort.
So if you are actually in a position where if you have to shoot someone, you're probably going to have to shoot a bunch of people,
I suppose this does make some element of sense.
You know, if you can hit say, best case, four separate people all at once before you have to go to a sword,
I suppose that evens the odds a bit, no matter what they are.
In today's view, obviously this would be a Really Bad Idea.
However, ... I mean, can you imagine the liability today of ...
Could you ever fire this in a defensive situation knowing that, you know, you're firing at about a 20 degree spread,
and you're gonna hit all sorts of things that you're like not aiming at?
Yeah, you could never use something like this today.
But hey, that's part of what makes it interesting from a historical perspective.
So, there is one other thing I want to show you.
I don't have any identification information on this, with the exception of the word "Raith" here in the side plate.
No idea who that is, but it is marked in there. So.
Not a whole lot else to show you, well, no other markings. A little bit of scrollwork engraving on the other side.
And then those numbers that I pointed out earlier, but that's it.
Unfortunately I don't have any specific information about the actual history of this specific Duck's Foot.
I don't know who Raith is, don't know where or when this was manufactured.
Although the most common, sort of the standard time period for these would be late 1700s maybe early 1800s,
but that's just speculation on my part.
I do know that this came out of the collection of a gentleman by the name of Richard Garrett,
who is a quite knowledgeable, published author on various subjects relating to antique firearms.
So there is at least that bit of provenance that speaks to its authenticity.
And it does generally exude ... This appears to be an authentic original Duck's Foot, so far as I can tell.
I am of course also not specifically an expert in such matters. Anyway, it is definitely very cool to get a look at one.
They are neat and iconic weird pistols of history.
So if you would like to know more about the Rock Island Auction Company, take a look at the description text below.
You'll find a link there to their YouTube channel as well as their Instagram page, and you can follow everything they do there.
Thanks for watching.