Nock gun

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Nock's Volley gun was a hand-held weapon invented by British engineer James Wilson in 1779 and named after Nock, the London-based armaments manufacturer contracted to build the gun. During the early stages of the Napoleonic Wars, 635 Nock guns were purchased by the Royal Navy, and were intended to be fired from the rigging of warships onto the deck in the event that the ship was boarded by enemy sailors. However, the impact of all seven barrels firing at once was more powerful than had been thought, and frequently broke the shoulder of whoever was firing the gun. Officers were reluctant to issue the guns during battle out of fear that the flying sparks would set fire to the surrounding rigging and sails. A smaller, lighter version was produced, which shortened the gun's range, but the powerful recoil ensured that sailors were very reluctant to risk breaking their shoulders by firing the gun.

The volley gun comprised seven barrels welded together, with small vents drilled through from the central barrel to the other six barrels clustered around it. The central barrel screwed on to a hollow spigot which formed the chamber and was connected to the vent. The gun operated using a standard flintlock mechanism, with the priming gunpowder igniting the central charge via a small vent. When the flash reached the central chamber, all seven charges ignited at once, firing more or less simultaneously. The first models featured rifled barrels, but this made loading a long and cumbersome process, resulting in all following models being manufactured with smoothbore barrels. The gun was 37 inches in length, with a barrel length of 20 inches and a calibre of 0.52 inches. The few models purchased by the Royal Navy were removed from service in 1804.

[edit] Popular Culture

The Nock gun was made popular due to its appearance in Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series, in which the character Patrick Harper (a strong, burly man) wields an ex-Navy Nock gun.

A Nock gun is also used by the main antagonist of the video game GUN, which is set in the American west, by ex-civil war officer Thomas Magruder on the game's last story level. However, his gun fired one barrel at a time, and when unlocked by the player, acted as a seven barreled shot gun (his fired rounds that did not spread).