What is the earliest contemporary description or illustration of a blunderbuss

[dana_w]

Originally Posted by Miqueleter

Dana, perhaps this may be of some help, keeping in mind, of course, terminology is a mine field. From Francis Markham in "Five Decades of Epistles of Warres", London, 1622, Bk. IV, p. 133 refers to the late invented Dragoones 'being not aboue sixteen inch Barrell, and full musquet bore'."

Dragon is a heavy-caliber carbine carried by dragoons, from which they are said to have derived their name, though the converse seems equally derived. Dragon seems to have gone out of use in favor of the term musketoon. So says Claude Blair et al of Pollard's History of Firearms.

Hello Miqueleter. Thanks for adding your input. It seems to me that we have wandered together into the terminology mine field before. You probably notice how carefully I constructed the description “blunderbuss like weapon in England”.

I would love to have a definitive description of the distinct differences between a Dragon / Dragoon, Musketoon and Blunderbuss. Unfortunately most authoritative definitions are like this one from the Tower of London's William Reid. (Encyclopedia Of Firearms, Harold L. Peterson, Page 222, 1964)

MUSKETOON
A type of musket with a short, smoothbore barrel and large bore; by inference, a soldier armed with a musketoon. The term was loosely used, and no satisfactory definition is to be found in contemporary descriptions that range from "short bastard snaphaunce musquetts" (1688) to the shortest kind of blunderbuss (1772). W.R.