Original Item: Only One Available: This is a very interesting Musket that started life as a standard 39″ barreled Flintlock Brown Bess either of East India Company issue Model 1771 (Windus Pattern) or as a 1796 India Pattern issued to British troops all over the world.
As the percussion system clearly outperformed the flintlock, in 1839 the Tower of London started a massive Conversion Program to update the National Musket Reserve. However in 1841 a disastrous fire consumed a major portion of the Tower itself and that included over 400,000 converted Flintlock Muskets, putting Great Britain into a serious state of un-readiness. The result was the introduction of the Lovell pattern Percussion Musket of 1842 that was in effect a virtual clone of the then Standard East India Pattern Model E/F Infantry Musket.
What we are offering here is an original Flintlock Brown Bess that was found in Kathmandu, Nepal that had been converted to percussion sometime in the 1830s and issued into East India Company service. This most probably arrived in Nepal with a Sepoy Mutineer after the Great Rebellion on 1857/58 that tore India apart and was only put down with great help provided by Britain’s Nepalese Allies.
A classic musket with standard Brown Bess India Pattern features but converted to percussion, which was thankfully not in the Tower of London at the time of the great fire of 1841.
Fully cleaned and ready to display.