Original British Flintlock Brass Barrel Blunderbuss Marked Tower & Chatham Dock No.4 Original Items

Original One-of-a-Kind Item. Acquired from the Strakaty Collection of Vienna, Austria.

This is a superb British Brass Barreled Flintlock Blunderbuss with TOWER across the tail of the Lock Plate and Crown over G.R. to center of the Lock Plate. Brass Butt Plate, Trigger Guard marked “REV.” over “S.4.” and brass side plate with tail supporting a belt hook bearing crown proof. The 15.25-inch Brass Cannon Barrel is marked on the top CHATHAM DOCK No. 4.

The weapon dates from around 1800 and is 31 inches in overall length offered in very good condition.

George Strakaty of Vienna, Austria was a born Czech and actually was in the modern arms trade and worked for the Czech Government Arms Company of Omnipol in Prague. Strakaty’s role was as an International salesman taking him all over the third world. However, Strakaty was a total Anglophile and every time he visited London would buy only British antique weapons.

Christian first met George Strakaty, at Omnipol, in 1971 and over the years they became close friends he leading Christian to many Government arms stashes he had discovered. As time passed George?s collection became quite extensive. In the late 1980s Strakaty, by then well past his prime, retired to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands together with his wife Ruth. Before doing so however he announced to Christian that he wanted him to buy the entire collection, it was a major undertaking and it took almost five years to pay off the debt.

Only in the last three or four years, now that, as Christian puts it “is truly on the home stretch himself”, has he reluctantly been letting go of some of the Strakaty collection.