Original British Sea Service Iron Barrel Flintlock Blunderbuss marked H.M.S. Revenge-Circa 1800 Original Items

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

This is an original British Sea Service Blunderbuss circa 1800 with a 15.5-inch iron barrel and measures 31.5 inches in overall length. The condition is we like to call an “untouched sleeper”.

The flintlock bears a CROWN over G.R. and is nicely marked TOWER, which have become somewhat faint under over 200 years of grime still on them. Bears classic sea service brass mounts of trigger guard and butt plate which are both engraved with P/4. The brass escutcheon displays the classic naval “fouled anchor”.

However, the most interesting aspect of this fine blunderbuss is the “S” side plate that is marked H.M.S. REVENGE. Research tells us H.M.S. Revenge was a 74 gun Third Rate Ship of the Line of 183 feet in length, built in Chatham Dock Yards in Kent England. Launched April 13th 1805 and participated in Admiral Lord Nelson’s great Victory at The Battle of Trafalgar later that year. She went onto to an illustrious career finally being broken up in October 1849.

A sleeper in many respects there is evidence of old wood worm damage to the stock around the side plate and tang area of the stock, but the decay is no longer active. A fine untouched example that just may or may not have been present at the 1805 BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR, but certainly seems to have been part of important British Naval history.

History of the Strakaty Collection- a collector named George Strakaty of Vienna, Austria created what we now call the Strakaty Collection. George 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, IMA’s Owner, 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 Christian almost five years to pay off the debt. Shortly after George passed away.

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.