Smokepoles?

[Eric Krewson]

I shared this story on another site, sometimes if you are very lucky you get to meet down to earth people who are head and shoulders above the rest of us.

As a builder of carefully crafted flintlock rifles often I take offence if someone calls one of my creations a "smoke pole" which is the common vernacular used by most of the people that are shooting any rifle loaded through the muzzle.

I refer to my M/Ls by the name of the original 18th or 19th century builder who's work I copied or its particular style.; it might be my Beck, Bogle, TN .40, Kibler SMR, fowler or trade gun but never a smokepole.

I do make exceptions on taking offence, here is an example;

I was walking down an old logging road on a public management area with my flintlock Beck rifle when an older guy pulled up in a Toyota Humvee looking vehicle. He looked at my rifle with a big smile on his face and said "YOU SHOOT A SPARKLER'! The conversation was on.

I am a non combat army vet (Germany) from 67-69, he was a retired Gunnery Sgt with 4 or 5 tours in Vietnam and 5 purple hearts. He was as jovial and happy as anyone I have met in the woods, we talked for at least an hour and then parted ways to go hunt.

I ran into him at a car wash that summer, he was wearing shorts, there was very little bare skin on his legs, just multiple patches of scar tissue and hunks of muscle missing from various wounds. He said him and one of his combat buddies had a contest to see who could be wounded the most, then he smiled and said, "looks like I won". Later he said he had 5 Purple Hearts and his buddy only had 4.

At this point I had so much respect for the man I couldn't have cared less if he had referred to my rifle the worst pile of pig manure he had ever seen.

[Gimlis Ghost]

Terms like "Smoke Pole" and "Fire Stick" are often found in western fiction, never ran across it in an historical account. "Fire Lance" on the other hand was the official Chinese term for their first primitive fire arms.

[JW_Halverson]

Terms like "Smoke Pole" and "Fire Stick" are often found in western fiction, never ran across it in an historical account. "Fire Lance" on the other hand was the official Chinese term for their first primitive fire arms.

You also don't see any references to "black powder" until after smokeless powder was born!

[Gimlis Ghost]

It just occurred to me that the improvised weapon Captain Kirk came up with in the Star Trek episode "Arena" was a crude approximation of the Chinese Fire Lance. The Bamboo tube he used as way to large in diameter though.
The Fire Lances had a bore of perhaps 1 1/2 inch more or less and fired a cloth wrapped potato sized river rock or multiple smaller stones. They also fired various choking dusts and broken glass or pottery shards.
The impact would have been minimal and not likely to injure an armored warrior, but the blinding dust and sharp shards would likely disable anyone who was hit at close range.
These were often fired off in bundles lashed to a cart, acting more like a Claymore mine. The guy who lit the fuse was hopefully fleet of foot. If the contraption didn't simply blow up, the guys hit by the shrapnel storm and survived would have no mercy on those that fired it.