What is "breechloader"

Usage examples of "breechloader".

The well-drilled crews handled the galleys with aplomb, scooting around the huge, high-sided, cumbersome galleons like so many waterbugs, discharging their breechloaders again and again to fearsome effect into their unmissable targets, while the return fire howled and hummed uselessly high over their heads.

Since his Browning had a full clip, Dean took the Veri pistol and studied the single-shot blaster until figuring out how the 30 mm breechloader worked.

The English country gentleman who now holds something the same position socially as the knight, is not a sportsman till he can use the breechloader with terrible effect at the pheasant-shoot, till he can wield the salmon-rod, or ride better than any Persian.

Lissen, I got me up to York some ten and twelve-pounder rifles, breechloaders all of 'em and fitted with the friction-spring primers that Carey and Dan Smith dreamed up, too.

Here, breechloaders hadn't come into common use for seventy years after that.

Pete's cannon are, however, not only much heavier than usual breechloaders, they are safer to fire, lighter in weight than any other gun of their bore, have a greater range than anything anyone here has ever seen, and have unbelievable penetrating power, thanks of course to pointed, cylindrical shells and rifling.

Every man had a copy of the Westley-Richards breechloader in a scabbard in front of his right knee, a short broadsword like a machete or heavy cutlass at his belt along with a bayonet.

The original design had been very similar to the old Sharps breechloader from the ancient American Civil War, with a moving breech block that clipped the end off of a linen cartridge when the breech was closed to expose the powder charge to flash from a priming cap.