Ferguson rifle The Ferguson rifle was one of the first breech loading rifles to be widely tested by the British military . Other breech loaders were experimented with in various commands , including earlier versions of the Ordnance rifle by Patrick Ferguson when he was in the " Fever Islands " ( Caribbean ) . It was often misreported by historians to be a . 65 ( . 648 true ) caliber rifle . However , it actually used a standard British carbine ball of . 615 caliber . The use of an oversized ball contributed to some of the erroneous claims of fouling and inaccuracy . The Ferguson Ordnance Rifle was used by the British Army in the American Revolutionary War at the Battle of Saratoga ( 1777 ) . It may also have been used at the Siege of Charleston in 1780 ( Ref : Life of Washington , W . Irving , Vol . IV , Ch . 5 , 1857 ) . Its superior firepower was unappreciated at the time because it was too expensive , the Crown treasury was too low , the short - land pattern of the King ' s Musket , aka the Brown Bess musket , had just been approved and was beginning production , and so was too new ( only 10 years into its 50 - year lifespan ) and the gunsmiths of England could not produce them fast enough for mass deployment during the American War . As such , Ferguson only ordered 1000 rifles to be made . The combined gunsmiths of England could produce 500 muskets a month , but the 4 gunsmiths making Ferguson ' s Ordnance Rifle could not make 100 in 6 months at 4 times the cost per arm of a musket . Details . The breech of the weapon is closed by 11 starting threads on a tapered screw , and the trigger guard serves as the crank to rotate it . One complete turn dropped the screw low enough to drop a round ball into the exposed breech followed by a slight overcharge of powder which was then sheared to the proper charge by the screw as it closed the breech . Since the weapon was loaded from the breech , rather than from the muzzle , it had an amazingly high rate of fire for its day , and in capable hands fired six to ten rounds per minute . The action was adapted from the earlier 1720 Isaac de la Chaumette design by Major Patrick Ferguson ( 1744 - 1780 ) , who redesigned it around 1770 . He received an English patent in December of 1776 ( number 1139 ) on details of the design . Roughly one hundred of the Ordnance rifles were manufactured by four British gun firms , Durs Egg being the most notable , and issued to Ferguson ' s unit when its members were drawn from numerous light infantry units in General Howe ' s army . The largest battle in which the rifles were used was the Battle of Brandywine , in which Ferguson was wounded . While he recuperated , his Experimental Rifle Corps was subsequently disbanded . This was in no way due to " excessive losses " or any political machinations . The unit was an experiment ; the men were always slated to return to their original units . If the unit was a failure as reported by some historians , why was Ferguson successful in getting General Clinton to agree to double the size of his experimental corps ? Sadly , once Ferguson took a musket ball in the right elbow his chances of surviving , let alone returning to the field , did not look good , and the experiment of the charismatic young officer was ended . Ferguson ' s men went back to the light infantry units they had originally come from , and his rifles were eventually replaced with the standard Short Land Pattern musket . Some historians report the surviving rifles were apparently put in storage in New York . But as most surviving Ferguson Ordnance Rifles known to exist in the U . S . today were war booty taken North during the American Civil War , questions remain as to any possible deployment of Ferguson Rifles in the Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution . To support this a number of ferguson rifles were brought north by the North Carolina Militia during the War of 1812 . At least two actions are displayed at the Fort Meigs museum near Perrysburg Ohio . They were said to be booty from Kings Mountain . The two main reasons that Ferguson rifles were not used by the rest of the army : However , despite an unsubstantiated claim that one of the actions was found at the battle site of Kings Mountain , North Carolina , where Ferguson was killed in action , the only piece of a Ferguson ever found in America from a gun used in action is a trigger guard found in excavations of a British army camp in New York City . The only association the Ferguson rifle has with the Battle of King ' s Mountain is that Patrick Ferguson was there . Experience with early modern replicas , made before the proper screw and thread pitch of the breechblock were rediscovered , seemed to indicate that while reloading was rapid , it seemed to be necessary to first lubricate the breech screw ( originally with a mixture of beeswax and tallow ) or else the ( replica ) rifle would foul so much that it needed cleaning after three or four shots . However , through the research efforts of DeWitt Bailey and others , the properly made reproduction Ferguson rifle , made according to Patrick Ferguson ' s specifications of the 1770s , can fire beyond sixty shots .