A Very Rare Nock General Post Office Packet Boat Flintlock Pistol. 17” overall, 10" 16 bore round brass barrel engraved ‘H. NOCK LONDON’ with London proof marks, flat border engraved Sea Service style lock plate stamped ‘Nock’, ring necked flat cock, regulation style brass mounts, belt hook & butt cap stamped 'General Post Office’. With brass tipped ramrod.
Circa 1795
Long Sea Service pattern pistol in very good condition, ramrod an old replacement.
The General Post Office ran a small fleet of 16 armed Cutters or Packet Boats delivering mail to British outposts, Henry Nock and then Wilkinson had the contract to provide them with pistols.
See British Ordnance Single Shot Pistols by Davies, Chisnall and Brooks. Chapter 7 page 3
‘Those Entrusted with Arms’ by Frederick Wilkinson, 2002. Appendix 4, pages 254-258 plus pages 125-126 for details of Nock contract.
‘The Falmouth Packets 1689-1851’ by Tony Pawlyn, 2003.
‘The Falmouth Packets’ by David Mudd, 1978.
When Henry Nock died in 1804, his contract to supply these Packet Ship pistols appears to have been taken over by his successor James Wilkinson with a few ‘WILKINSON’ marked examples surviving of near identical pattern to Nock.
Only a handful of these extremely rare packet ship pistols have survived. Considerably rarer than the Mail pistols made by Mortimer and Harding for land use. Appendix 4 in the book ‘Those Entrusted with Arms’ by Frederick Wilkinson, lists just two of these Nock Packet Ship pistols (page 256) compared to 66 recorded surviving Mail Coach pistols. This is hardly surprising as there were approximately 120-140 Mail Coaches but just 16 packet ships (1808 list) operating out of Falmouth with many wartime losses of packet ships and crews. Research reveals just 5 surviving packet ship pistols by Henry Nock - the three recorded in the above books, one of which in museum condition was sold by West Street Antiques in 2011, plus one excellent condition example with a belt hook in a private collection in the USA, one (without a belt hook) owned by the Postal Museum and on loan to the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth. This pistol is a newly discovered example.