FOR those boys among our readers – both young and grown up – who are fascinated by ‘pirate’ pistols, this swashbuckling article is intended to appeal to you as year-end holiday reading.
It is not known exactly when people began striking flint and steel together to start a fire. But eventually some clever gunmaker realised the idea could also be used to discharge a gun – and so the flintlock mechanism was born. To begin with, there were three styles of locks invented in different countries at different times. The locks all had their own distinctive look but performed the same function of directing a shower of sparks onto the priming powder which in turn set off the main charge.
Searching through my reference books I discovered the first was the miquelet lock developed in Spain in 1547. Next came the snaphaunce style from Holland in 1570 and this was followed by the common flintlock developed in France and perfected in 1612. Of course there was much overlapping in firearms history as seen in the English
