Jan 09 2024 65 mins
It is common wisdom that most everyone believes that the punt or stanchion gun, also known as the big gun, saw its beginning in England. In the podcast, I give some history of the punt/stanchion/big gun along with a few of my thoughts on why, how, where, and when the punt gun originated and the general area where it originated.
With this podcast, it surely looks like that big guns were being used for waterfowling as early as 1734 in the colonies. However, I find no more mention of big guns being used for waterfowling until some 60 years or so later. Maybe, some of the reasoning why is because the colonies were in the Seven Years’ War from 1755-to 1764. Whaleboats with smoothbore swivels were the model gunboats of the Seven Years’ War in North America, while wall guns were also utilized. The whaleboat smoothbores and wall guns were utilized in almost every action in the interior. Following this came the American Revolution, with trouble brewing between England and the colonies, beginning in 1765 when members of the American colonial society rejected the authority of the British Parliament to tax them without colonial representatives in the government. During the following decade, protests by colonists—known as Patriots—continued to escalate until the American Revolutionary War started in 1775 and lasted until 1783. Like the Seven Years War, wall guns and whaleboat smoothbores were used. After the Revolutionary War, the colonists were extremely busy forming a new government and drafting a constitution with its bill of rights. Certainly, not much waterfowling was done from 1755 until the start of the nineteenth century.