Classic Boat — March 2018

SYDNEY SMITH

Punt gunning is an arcane skill and vanishingly

rare. Today, few know that this obscure branch of

wildfowling attended the birth of popular yachting

WORDS EUAN ROSS

SHOOTING

THE BREEZE

T

here is little trace of a common purpose today,

but yachting and wildfowling were entwined

for more than a century. As yacht racing

became increasingly fashionable through the

1800s, The Sporting Magazine (1793-1870) introduced

seafaring scuttlebutt alongside the hunting, shooting and

fishing bulletins. All the news that might interest the

‘man of pleasure, enterprise, and spirit’ now included

yachting. Hunt’s Yachting Magazine, the first specialist

sailing periodical, appeared in 1852. But The Field,

established the following year, was equally popular with

yachtsmen. It offered a smorgasbord of country sports

and maritime recreations, reflecting the rich seasonal

calendar of leisure pursuits to which a gentleman of

means might aspire. Brooke Heckstall-Smith, yachting

editor of The Field, also served as the Yacht Racing

Association secretary for almost 50 years from 1896.

Henry Coleman Folkard famously catalogued the

world’s sailing craft in 1863. He had previously

conferred his wit and wisdom on the nation’s gunners.

Among chapters on ‘wildfowling in a gale’ and

‘wildfowling in drift ice’, the intrepid Henry advocated

the use of a stanchion gun as his weapon of choice. This

small cannon was operated from the companionway or

the forehatch, with due caution exercised to avoid

shooting away the rigging and murdering one’s

companions. Throwing up to 2lbs (c1kg) of shot, a

stanchion gun could dismast a well-found 10-tonner.

After the birth of aviation, experience on private yachts

with spring-recoil stanchion guns led the Royal Navy to

use the system for deck-mounted anti-aircraft defences.

The real sport, however, was in gunning punts, which

seems to have originated in the first decade of the 19th

century. Much of the equipment in use today has

changed little from that period. It remains a madcap

niche of wildfowling, conducted in fragile, canoe-like

craft camouflaged in dove-grey paint to inhabit the

sinister aspect of miniature battleships. Gunning punts

are built with minimal freeboard and navigated prone to

minimise their silhouette. The gun itself, a Brobdingnagian

weapon twice the bore of a shotgun with a 7ft-9ft

(2.1-2.7m) barrel, is roped from the bows with a bridle

of hawser-laid rope to absorb the kick-back and transfer

the recoil to the vessel. The whole punt is effectively the

rifle stock, so patience and anticipation are the stock in

trade of a successful marksman – or ‘gunning punter’.

Wildfowling and sailing enjoyed a particularly close

rapport in the old days, as described by writers from

Above l-r: a

gunner stands by

his punt in this

photo taken in

1912; an early

example without

sail... the recoil is

clearly shown as

the punt is driven

backwards