So I've been reading testimony given at the trial of Captain John Preston and a handful of grenadiers for perpetrating the Boston Massacre. Three witnesses testified that the first shot sounded like a pistol shot, even though most witnesses concur that the only guns fired were Brown Bess muskets loaded with a standard charge of gunpowder and two lead balls each.

For those of you who've heard both flintlock rifles and flintlock pistols being fired, can you tell the difference between the two by sound alone? How does a flintlock pistol being fired sound different from a flintlock rifle being fired? Feel free to assume that both pistol and rifle are bored the same and loaded with the same charge of powder and ball (as, I believe, was standard practice in the U.S. Army immediately after the Revolution).

I have a Bess and a Sea Service pistol. Both are flintlock. But the Bess is .72 caliber (11 gauge) and the pistol is .62 caliber (20 gauge)...the British military load for the Bess was 120 grains of FFg. The pistol is 30 grains of FFFg...

You can definitely hear a difference in the two. There is no pistol that was the same caliber as the Bess that was issued to troops at the time.

120 grains vs 30 grains
75 vs 62 caliber

You be the judge.

Fair enough. How would you describe the difference in the way they sound when they're fired?

Lol, one sounds like a musket and one sounds like a pistol.

Like a 45-70 vs a 38

If you are near Temple Texas I can give you a hands on experience.

Big boom vs smaller boom. I have a 50 caliber Hawken and 45 caliber Colonial pistol.

Well, for comparison here's footage of a modern replica flintlock pistol (maybe a Pedersoli?) - fast forward to around 5:40.



Link to original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M4XaQn2t6c

And here is footage of a flintlock rifle being shot. Fast forward to around 2:45.



Link to original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkWxYnHPsE0

I have a .45 cal flintlock duelling pistol and Kentucky rifle, and the pistol report is sharper and "shorter" if that makes sense, although I haven't tried the same charge in both. You can definitely tell the difference.

OK, yeah. Joel's videos make it clear - "major thump vs. minor crack" - but now I definitely get what you and MikeinNC are saying.

I'm think I'm going to have to go back and re-read what I read to try to get a better sense of where people were located and what acoustics might or might not have done. The air was very cold (there was reportedly as much as a foot of snow on the ground, and the street where it happened was said to be covered with broken ice) and no one mentioned there being much wind, so if all things were equal one would expect any noise to come through pretty clearly. On the other hand, the street was fairly narrow, irregularly shaped (it widened across each intersection), was lined with brick and wood two story buildings and was full of shouting people. It was also cut with a number of alleys, some of which were empty and one which was said to be crammed with people.

Apparently it was fairly easy to hear shouting about 70 to 150 yards away, but there were clear lanes that would have made that possible. The first shot was also fired from a rifle that might've been held low (it's unclear whether the redcoat fired when he stumbled or as he straightened up) and the crowd seemed to be pretty uniformly spread around the soldiers when it happened. Once the shot went off, though, a lot of people started running and only the soldiers at either end of a semicircular line were facing thick crowds. I would've thought that the first shot could seem somewhat muffled to bystanders, but maybe some combination of elements made it seem sharper as well. Maybe the people who thought they heard a pistol heard some kind of echo rather than the shot itself?

Hmm. Must read, must ponder. Not that it makes any difference in the real world, but it was striking to see multiple witnesses describe the sound as being like that of a pistol. FWIW, I haven't seen anything that would indicate that a pistol was fired, and direct eyewitnesses were absolutely certain it was a musket.

Thanks to everyone for helping out!

For what it's worth, in cold, wet conditions, one rifle could have had a partial ignition of the charge, resulting in a different report.

I have stood on the circle of bricks where this took place many, many times.

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I'm think I'm going to have to go back and re-read what I read to try to get a better sense of where people were located and what acoustics might or might not have done.

I doubt if it's that complicated. Eyewitness testimony, then and now, is not always reliable. How many times have you seen people think gunfire is firecrackers or a car backfiring? Or an incident happens, the cops interview multiple witnesses and every one has a different account? The witness might simply have been mistaken. (Or not.)

Well, I suppose I might have said that I hoped to find something that would explain it. You're right, but on top of everything else the testimony record is one raging cluster of conflicting bits of partial information that jump from one chronology and context to another without warning. What's bedeviling me is that there are just enough details floating around that it might be possible to come up with an informed, rational explanation.

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For what it's worth, in cold, wet conditions, one rifle could have had a partial ignition of the charge, resulting in a different report.

Yeah, and apparently these guys (and their muskets) had just come out of a relatively warm, dry guard house. If scopes and ski goggles can fog up under those circumstances, maybe deliberately unloaded musket bores could attract water from the environment as well?

My wild theory was that the ignited gunpowder may have flashed around the wadding and balls in some way, too, since the rifles may or may not have been carefully loaded. The corporal of the guard may have ordered/authorized loading and the captain that came with them had lagged behind a bit to talk to someone. The soldiers came from a regiment that even the Brits considered obnoxious, hard to manage and prone to picking unnecessary fights with civilians, so I can see the enlisted trying to load muskets before the captain had a chance to tell them not to. At the same time, the crowd may have been jostling them somewhat as they loaded - at least one redcoat felt obligated to stop loading long enough to shove a bayonet at a bystander.

Massad Ayoob, if you're out there, there might be some scope here for another one of your forensic articles. If you're crazy enough to take on the OK Corral mess, you're crazy enough to try this one on for size.

Definitely. A pistol is just going to be a loud bang. A rifle will have the "crack" of the super-sonic speed. That is.......if the powder charge has been portioned correctly.
It is the same with modern handguns vs rifle.

You may want to visit the show, Unsolved History:The Boston Massacre.( season 1 episode 7)

I just saw it on Amazon Prime, Mrs Mike gets it free thru her subscription.

Pretty good investigation to include the layout and weapons.

Thanks! I think I've found it on SchoolTube; I'll sit down and give it a watch tomorrow evening.

'Ear-witness' is not held in such high esteem as 'eye'witness.

The subsequent events may have echoed down the ages, but the sound of the shot, not so much.