Quote Originally Posted by MikB View Post
It certainly was that. I'd long suspected that the UK habit of shooting round ball didn't exploit the capabilities of the guns or the energy availability from the powder. MikB
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