A rare and visually striking whaling gun has ingenious design features of this extremely rare type, known as a Pierce and Eggers Breech-Loaded Shoulder Gun for hunting whales. Made entirely out of bronze gun metal, with the skeleton stock and reinforced barrel, this model was patented in 1878, and on this gun it is still marked patent-pending, making it one of the first that Selmar Eggers' constructed. It is stamped with his New Bedford, Mass. mark, listing the 1878 patent submission.
This rare gun has a breechblock locking device, where the lever-action breechblock would drop, and a center fire cartridge would be placed in the breech and closed. It would lock where the hooked-shaped stud extends through the slot in the bottom of the skeleton stock, and the lever mounted in the stock recess behind the guard pivots to engage the slot, locking the breech. Author James Templeton Brown wrote that it was "the most popular and effective that has ever been introduced in the whale fishgery," in 1887.
Owning a deadly presence, the gun is a stout 29⅜ inches in overall length, and made to fire one-inch diameter Pierce Bomb lances once hammer-cocked. The barrel measures 10½ inches and the gun weighs more than 21 pounds unloaded. It does come with a period bomb lance dart as well. This is a rare period gun that revolutionized the whale hunt.
