The Brown Bess

It is believed that the name was derived from the brown colour of the barrel which occurred from russeting, an 18th-century metal treatment. It may also be attributed to the rich colour of the dark walnut stock. Some argue that Bess came from a reference to Elizabeth I, though it is more plausible that it was an extraction from the German words “brawn buss” or “braun buss”, meaning strong or brown gun.

The average soldier was expected to release three volleys per minute; four was exceptional. After the first volley, troops usually took from twenty to thirty seconds to reload. Upon loosing the second volley, they would reload and the third volley would occur a minute after the first. Defending troops were expected to release two volleys in the twenty-some seconds it would take their enemy to cover a hundred yards at a dead run. The second volley would hopefully be fired at less than thirty yards.

The Bess was 4.10 feet long and the bayonet was 1.4 feet and weighed approximately fourteen pounds. The average man was about 5.4 feet which is about 4-5 inches shorter than the average man today. Every able man would fight back then. Young boys and old men (although they often didn’t make it to “old men”). British foot-soldiers would wield these cumbersome firearms into battle for nearly 150 years.

"IT WAS LONG, heavy and inaccurate. It has no sight with which to aim; only a bayonet nub. It took 18 separate motions to load and misfired one out of nine times the trigger was pulled. It lacked rifling, used powder that was susceptible to dampness and it required a new flint every 20 shots. Nevertheless, this rudimentary, single-shot weapon enabled Britain to build and defend an empire. Officially designated the Long Land Service Musket, history remembers it best by its nickname: the Brown Bess.

The forerunner of the Brown Bess made its first large scale appearance at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704, though it wasn't standardized until the 1730s. In various patterns, it served as the principal long arm of the British military until the introduction of the Enfield rifled musket in 1853. Even then, vast numbers were upgraded from flintlock to percussion cap firing systems during the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny of 1857. Even the shortest version of the musket was just a foot under the five-foot, seven-inch height of the average soldier of the era. Its recoil was so ferocious, rankers frequently suffered bruised shoulders during battles. Decades after it was officially retired, cast-offs were still being traded to indigenous populations in Africa and Asia…"

A common cause for debate is the meaning of the famous song “Black Betty”. The origin and meaning of the lyrics are subject to debate. Historically the “Black Betty” of the title may refer to the nickname given to several objects: a musket, a bottle of whiskey, a whip, or a penitentiary transfer wagon. Some sources claim the song is derived from an 18th-century marching cadence about a flint-lock musket (The Brown Bess) with a black painted stock; the “bam-ba-lam” lyric refers to the sound of the gunfire.