Sir - not sure what you mean by this comment. The British were among the first to see the advantages of elongated bullets - back as far as 1842, IIRC - and actually went to the Crimean War with the Pattern 42 and 53 rifled musket - both of which shot a Minie bullet and not a round ball. True, they were rather slower to adopt metallic cartridge, bullet-firing handguns, but so was everybody else. Over the other side ofthe Atlantic Ocean, The War of Northern Agression was fought on both sides with ball-firing handguns.
tac