A large 19th century flintlock pistol

[CutlassCollector]

My Belgian sea service pistol is marked with the ELG - no crown and does not appear to have an inspectors mark.

With reference to the lack of a ramrod in some pistols. Pistols were of limited range and generally issued to seamen for boarding actions. The boarding party were probably handed a pistol previously loaded by the armourer and a cutlass and as has already been stated the chances of stopping to reload during a melee would be non-existent, even if they had been trained and carried the right equipment.

Lieutenant Green who fought at Trafalgar and went on to write a training manual for improving the weapons training of the crew noted that it was commonly reported that as soon as the sailors boarded they fired the pistol, chucked it at the enemy and then got to work with a cutlass.

He promoted reversing the grip after firing so that the barrel ran along back along the forearm of the left arm so it could be used as a guard to deflect cutlass blows to the head. It does not say how well that was adopted - my guess would be the sailors carried on throwing them away as as soon as they could.