Jingol or Percussion 'Three Man' Musket : Able Seaman S Patterson, NSW Contingent, Boxer Rebellion

Chinese Jingol or single shot percussion 'Three Man' musket. The weapon is double the size of the British Pattern 1853 rifled musket but has some continental design features. The back action percussion lock is unmarked but there are five Chinese characters painted onto the butt. The barrel, which is part octagonal with a flared muzzle, has a dark grey rust patina and is held onto the full length wooden stock by four copper bands. The stock is split on the left side near the breech and at the front fore end. The large trigger guard has a ring sling swivel at the front. The flip up rear sight on the barrel tang has three holes for elevation. A steel ramrod is fitted to the weapon.

This gun was brought back from the Boxer Rebellion by Samuel Patterson who was an Able Seaman with the New South Wales Contingent. It was made in China by native armourers about 1857 using the British service Enfield musket as a basic pattern, which they reproduced at twice its normal size, even providing them with sling swivels and rear sights of twice the size. They were intended to fire through loopholes in the Great Wall of China at the Tartars. In doing so they were supported in a clamp at a position between the first and second bands. However, as far as can be ascertained, they were never put to any great use and were eventually laid aside in the arsenal at Peking (which was in one of the towers of the great wall), and there they remained until the Boxers sacked Peking in 1900. The Boxers, being short of all types of weapons, naturally looted all the arms that were held in the Peking arsenal, including the Jingols (as they were known until then). The Boxers lacked light field artillery to combat the international brigade that was being used to recapture Peking, and for this purpose turned the Jingols into "three man guns", by employing three of their members to make the piece mobile. Two of them supported the barrel and held the gun steady for the third, who put the butt to his shoulder, sighted and fired. The recoil was so terrific that the man who fired it was almost invariably killed. This was looked upon as being the same as being actually killed in combat with the enemy, and gained immediate admission to the world of their ancestors.