THE name blunderbuss is derived from the Dutch donderbus, meaning thunder-gun (when I was a schoolboy in the 1950s, the Afrikaans word for gunpowder was buskruit). No doubt this weapon was so named for its very loud report, for it was typically a big-bore which fired a hefty charge and had a very short barrel. The slight trumpet-shape of the muzzle may well have amplified the noise, and doubtless also spewed out a frightening amount of blitzen. A smoothbore, it was loaded with what we today would call buckshot (Afrikaans: lopers) and was intended as a close-range anti-personnel weapon. Researching the blunderbuss on the Internet brings a confusing array of contradictory statements as to its introduction. Surviving examples prove that blunderbusses were made throughout the 1700s and early 1800s.
I must, however, challenge the oft-repeated statement that the blunderbuss was the ancestor or forerunner of the shotgun. This is quite wrong. The concept of firing shot (multiple small lead clippings) probably dates back as early as guns themselves. It is a matter of historical”) described as multiple shot firearms used primarily for hunting birds by the aristocracy, chief among them Henry VIII. (Initially the pellets were cubic in shape, clipped from sheet lead.)
