New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Hoping Lammerlaw will see this post being a gun collector but somebody else may be able to confirm as well. I found these whilst detecting over the remains of a scow which was beached and abandoned over 100 years ago. Nothing much remains of the scow apart from chunks of iron but there are still some targets around it.

Before anybody says "Sinkers" that was my first thought as well but they don't have any holes in them or splits for line. Also the last time I hunted this spot I came away with a 3 ringer minnie ball. The area saw quite a bit of activity in the mid 1800's. They are too small for musket but I think too big for buck, somebody on another forum mentioned pistol shot.

Have posted on an international forum as well thus the US dime as a comparison for size. Any ideas anybody?????

holy s**t. i have just thrown out something that is identical to these. mine was the size of the middle one.

i found mine, just the one, whilst detecting what i presume was a firepit. it was at the edge of some stacked stones on some very steep ground. i actually had a signal that turned out to be in total 8 handmade nails. there was a lot of old ash so i presumed someone had burnt their old boots.

anyway, in amongst the ash was one of these round stones. i couldn't figure out what is was exactly as it seemed a bit on the light side to be a stone that had tumbled into such a smooth shape. i was guessing it was a stone that came from a boil hole in the waterway nearby. i washed it and was even surer that it wasn't a stone. i chucked it in the trash just last week.

how heavy are these ones? i always thought a musket ball would be heavy like lead?

I don't think they are out of the size range to be musket balls. They could also be grape shot for a cannon.

my post from earlier today seems to have vanished so here's another shot,

the ball i had, which i chucked out last week, was approx the size of the largest one in the pic. i found it in what was a well known gold producing area dating back to 1863ish. it was in a fire with 7 hand made nails that were about 2 inches long on average, and a smaller round nail. i've found old boots in a fire nearby but these nails appear too large to be from boots, and there were no boot remnants to be found this time. as nails were so scarce back then such things were often recycled any which way possible.

my ball seemed pretty light to be lead. if i held a lead one of the same size i would say it would be 3 or 4 times heavier than this.

i do think my ball would have been too large for a pistol, a musket perhaps. how many people would have been carrying a musket around in the wakatipu i'm not sure. pistols more likely.

now i wish i didn't dispose of it.

i actually thought it was a small stone that had been tumbled in a boil hole. the weight would have been about right. it just didn't seem to be stone but i'm not 100 percent certain. it definitely wasn't a perfect sphere but if it was a ball from a musket i guess it would have still been ok.

i will see if i can find some more one day. in the meantime i might have a look at the net also.

just completed one of the most disgusting tasks. curiousity got the better of me so i trawled through the rubbish, rotten meat and all, but alas, it must have been the previous weeks that had the ball in it. oh well, history lost. it's now buried at the landfill at victoria flats. 1000 years time it will probably end up in the kawarau river to be found by someone else.

Simon,

Sorry to hear you lost your stone projectile. I was wandering about the river one day looking for agates when I found what looked like a big chunk of slag. I chucked it and it broke like glass. Not long after saw a much smaller less interesting piece of the same stuff in someone’s collection. Apparently it was some sort of iron mineral and quite a good specimen. Oh well, live and learn eh?

Many moulds for bullets caste both conical and round bullets and round ones are certainly not uncommon. What was the date of the scow? Some one mentioned grapeshot and that is not a silly suggestion either as it is quite feasible for them to indeed be grapeshot - the earliest scows may have carried a cannon or two but more likely a carronade if anything or a signal gun or swivel gun. The later was placed on a mounting on the rail of the vessel and used for close range defence against boarders. If they came from a Spanish wreck on the Florida Keys you could say with 100% certainty that you had musket balls or grapeshot and the same if they came from say the Orpheus, Osprey or Boyd but from a scow...Hmm!

I have no idea though why any New Zealand scow would carry any gun for defensive reasons as the first scow made in New Zealand was the Lake Erie made in 1873 and the Maori Wars were by then over. It is vaguely possible that some skitterish ships master may have kept a small gun with grapeshot for defensive purposes just in case trouble arose but somehow I dont think its likely - if I put myself into the place of a ships master I might have carried one to blast to Kingdom Come any crittur which squeaked, squawked or otherwise hiccuped, like an errant whale, shark, seal, sea lion or a sadly lost Walrus just as Captain Hamblin of the whaling vessel Eliza Adams spend his spare time when he wasnt chasing whales or hunting down deserters blasting shit out of an old brandy case with his Colt Patent revolver.

They are not percussion revolver balls as they are all too big - to be percussion revolver they would be around .44 caliber although the British did make Dragoon revolvers for use in areas where the natives worked themselves up into an Adrenaline frenzy prior to attacking and where an almighty Ummph was needed to bowl them. To this end they made 'Hand cannons' for lack of a better term!

Have a look at this gun -

http://www.firearmscolle...t/cat_details.asp?id=185

Both Adams and Tranter made these Dragoon pistols in .38 bore or .50 caliber - these guns were rather large and cumbersome compared with even their .44 equivalent.
Your lead balls are not however for these guns as they are too large. They could conceivably be for a British single shot army or sea service type in either flintlock or percussion or private purchase single shot pistol - the smaller ball seems about right at maybe .62 cal while the larger one might be a musket one

This gun could well take the smaller ball

http://www.oldguns.co.uk/images/4024.jpg

This one might take the larger ball

http://www.oldguns.co.uk/images/2684.jpg

These pistols however were more or less obsolete during the days when scows ruled supreme but that does not mean that they were not used now and again by various men who owned them and still used them - these pistols were made obsolete by the invention of good quality reliable revolvers - in England the best were the Adams - his first good gun was the 1851 model revolver which was also used as the basis for the Tranters as there was a working relationship between Adams and Tranter. Indeed revolvers were already well and truly on the scene a quarter century prior to the first scow mad ein New Zealand and most gold miners in 1861 carried repeating pistols with the odd fellow who could not afford a revolver carrying a box lock single shot, boot leg pistol or other single shot weapon.
Adams and Tranters were the British equivalent to the American Colt and Remington revolvers, Colt especially and indeed the Adams revolver was in direct competition to Colt - Colt had a factory in England - and Adams were made under licence by the Massachusetts Arms Company in the US of A. The Southern States also purchased Adams and Tranters direct from England. Adams, Tranter and Colts were the best revolvers used on the Maori War battlefields.

If I had a musket I would have favoured conical minnie balls as they had a hollow base and would expand into the bore/rifling effectively sealing it. At the time this scow went ashore the firearms would have nealry all been rifled, the exceptions being shotguns. I would also have favoured conical bullets in my Adams or Tranter as they packed more punch but round balls were lighter and wasted less lead...if you missed!

Hope that all helps!

Edited by user Wednesday, 2 November 2011 10:25:08 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified