By Hugh Stephenson
This Dublin Castle Short Land Pattern musket, marked to the 9th Regiment of Foot, was most likely used—and ultimately captured—at the Battle of Saratoga 249 years ago. This battle (more accurately a series of engagements in September and October 1777) is arguably the most important of the American Revolution. Prior to this American victory, French support for the colonists had been largely covert; Louis XVI was hedging his bets. The colonists’ success against British forces in a series of bloody engagements, culminating in the capture of approximately 10,000 prisoners, led to open French support for the revolutionary cause. A treaty of alliance, negotiated by Benjamin Franklin, followed, and large numbers of French troops and munitions altered the course and outcome of the war.
The 9th Regiment of Foot, under General John Burgoyne, took part in many key engagements during the Saratoga campaign, including the Battle of Freeman’s Farm—a fierce action in which the British lost around 600 troops, many of them officers targeted by American sharpshooters. Following the surrender to General Horatio Gates, the British regiments became prisoners of war. Although the original agreement allowed for their return to Britain, George Washington countermanded it, and they remained prisoners until the end of the war in 1783.
We can place this musket at Saratoga with an unusually high degree of confidence. As a result of DeWitt Bailey’s extensive research, we know that arms issued from Dublin Castle to the 9th Regiment included 126 muskets and bayonets in July 1770, and a further 390 in September 1775—the latter likely rearming the entire regiment. Bailey also records a shipment of 1,000 Dublin Castle muskets and bayonets sent to Kinsale on 21 March 1777, intended for ‘the recruits for the additional companies going to regiments now in America’. The 9th Regiment surrendered at Saratoga and did not serve again as a unit during the Revolution. Its regimental markings are known from several surviving examples. A similarly marked Dublin Castle musket associated with the 9th Regiment and Saratoga is held in the collection of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.
The stock of this musket has been cleanly snapped in two and subsequently repaired for continued use. This damage is consistent with eyewitness accounts of the surrender, which reported that ‘the invaders marched dejectedly enough. Some of the men, in impotent anger, broke the butts of their muskets against the ground, and some of the drummers stamped their drums to pieces.’
The ‘Brown Bess’ flintlock musket patterns are synonymous with British military power in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Often referred to as the ‘Tower Musket’, they were assembled at the Tower of London and marked accordingly. In Ireland, however, muskets were assembled at Dublin Castle and marked as such. These arms, while broadly conforming to Tower patterns, were produced for the Irish establishment and for regiments stationed in or passing through Ireland. This was particularly significant during the American Revolution, when the acute demand for arms—combined with Cork’s importance as a principal embarkation point—led to Dublin Castle muskets being disproportionately represented in the American War of Independence.
Dublin Castle had been contracting for musket parts as early as 1713, and distinct patterns are recorded from the 1730s. The earliest known Dublin-made example closely matching a Tower pattern dates from 1756. Interestingly, certain features first seen on Dublin-produced arms were later adopted in Tower patterns, reflecting the fact that Dublin was not merely imitative but also a source of innovation. Although Dublin Castle ceased producing arms shortly after 1798, Irish contributions to arms development did not, with Dublin gun-maker John Rigby pioneering many innovations and becoming superintendent of the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield in 1887.
Hugh Stephenson is a clinical psychologist and associate professor at Ithaca College, New York, with an interest in arms and armour.