Human history can be seen, from a certain perspective, as a continual arms race against each other. Our advanced weaponry of today like machine guns, automatic rifles, missiles, and tanks, all comes from a need to assert dominance over those around us.
Often there have been moments during this arms race where something new offered an edge over your opponents. The stirrup, the recurved bow, gunpowder, nuclear weapons, all have altered the dynamic and thrown everything into confusion.
Sometimes however a weapon is so ahead of its time that the world is not entirely ready to understand it. This is an accusation that could be levelled the Puckle Gun, a machine gun from the start of the 18th century.
A Strange Mix of Prejudices
The Puckle Gun was developed in 1718 by the English Lawyer James Puckle. It was also patented in the year 1718. This is extremely early for automatic weaponry, and a singular fact about the Puckle Gun should illustrate how early this is: it had two different kinds of bullet.
It was designed to fire both round bullets and square bullets depending on circumstance. The round bullets were designed to be used against Christians, whereas the square bullets, reckoned to cause more tissue damage and therefore increased suffering, were to be used on Turks.
It was believed that square bullets would do more damage to Turks and send a message that Christians were better than Turks. Although this might be an arbitrary distinction in reality, given how many bullets were being sent down range by this thing.
For the Puckle Gun is the design of the first multi-shot weapon in the world. Although it could be treated as the prototype of the machine gun, it was not exactly the machine gun. The idea was there, even if all the techniques were not.
The Puckle Gun was mounted on a tripod with a single bored barrel. It had a multi-chambered revolving cylinder with a matchlock-type firing mechanism. The design of the Puckle gun was very complex for its time.
It also had a similarity with the later Gatling gun. The Gatling gun had a central shaft that was a copy of the Puckle Gun. The Puckle gun barrels and those of the Gatling Gun both rotated around this central shaft.
Puckle Gun was not the first multi-shot gun with a revolving chamber. The gun was, however, the biggest in size and the first practical application. The Puckle Gun’s destructive potential was also higher.
But the gun was also very expensive and difficult to manufacture. Why the Puckle Gun did not become a widespread design could be because of its cost and complexity.
The gun was designed first as an anti-personnel weapon to be installed in warships for combat. Initially, the weapon drew a lot of attention from both the British Navy and private investors. However, upon close inspection of its design and function, the British Navy and the investors found flaws and drawbacks in the design.
Because of its many drawbacks and flaws, it was discarded as a prototype, and not many investors wanted to take it forward. The big size would cause a lot of problems with the feasibility of such a weapon. The size of the weapon would mean that it would be difficult to transport it and also fit it onto warships.
On the other hand, it would also be difficult to handle the gun because of its complexity. The navy personnel would need special training to operate it, which can be expensive and time taking. Moreover, such a gun design also came with some tactical disadvantages. The tactical disadvantages would neutralize the advantages of such a gun type.
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The Navy and the infantry wanted to get guns that were lightweight and would give a straightforward, demonstrable tactical advantage to the soldiers. The Puckle gun was the opposite of it because it was heavy and had a stationary design. This would mean that the enemy can destroy it from afar with targeted shots.
The Puckle Gun was a difficult one to use on the front lines because it would take a lot of time to deploy the gun, reload it and redeploy it. On the front lines, you want a gun that would be quickfire and does not give the enemy time to retaliate or attack.
Even if the soldiers managed the timeline to reload, it was simply not possible because, at one time, only one chamber of the gun could be reloaded. Moreover, it would take three people to do the reloading itself.
The time, effort and human resources that this single gun would need is something that the British Navy or investors could not spend on something that they could do better with other models. The final nail in the coffin of Puckle Gun was the inability of the gunsmiths of that era to mass produce the parts and the gun itself. A lot of material and customization would be needed to create the parts of the Puckle Gun. The Puckle Gun could never go into mass production.
The End of Puckle Gun
Even though the gun was never mass-produced, it was a unique gun design and an engineering marvel. It created a lot of press and curiosity in people and the government when it was field tested in 1722. It proved able to deliver the stream of bullets as designed in all weathers.
In fact, given the technology of the time it was amazing that such a gun could fire so many rounds. The number of shots that the Puckle gun could fire was unbelievable because the average soldier in Europe could only fire two shots in a minute, and that would take good weather. Even if every soldier in a regiment fired at his full potential, the number of shots would be half of what the Puckle Gun would do at the same time.
The initial idea was that a single Puckle Gun could replace the manpower of 3 men on the battlefield and save a lot of lives for Britain. However, the result was the opposite, as it took two to three men to load the gun. In the early days, some noblemen of Britain placed orders for the Puckle gun. However, the British Navy or Army never put a mass production order, and the Puckle Gun was lost to history.
Top Image: Advertisement for the Puckle Gun featuring James Puckle’s patent. Source: Unknown Artist / Public Domain.
By Bipin Dimri
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