What is "slowmatch"

Usage examples of "slowmatch".

That started a fistfight, and apparently these haywagon boys were carrying firepots or slowmatches.

Knowing full well the incipient dangers into which they rode, the peril that might lie between them and the royal camp to the northeast, all rode at least partially armed, weapons ready and slowmatches all lit and smoking, only the heavier pieces of defensive armor left off .

Instead of slowmatches you have to light, you crank this clockwork spring and the wheel spins and spits sparks into a pan.

After meticulously checking their priming, some tightening the springs of wheel-locks, others blowing on and tapping ash from slowmatches before clamping them into the arms, the firing began.

Although gates of small castles and hilltop palisades slammed shut and hastily armed men appeared on wall walks, with the smoke spirals of slowmatches plain to be seen, no one of the mounted men made any move toward these pitiful defenses, for this was not a raid they rode, but a diplomatic mission.

It was then that one of the prow gunners, unbidden, plunged the end of his slowmatch into the primed touchhole of his paterero and sent a two-inch iron ball whizzing from out the long barrel of the piece at point-blank range, only to see the missile's flight cant sharply upward some half-cubit from the unmissable target and perceptibly slow.

The match tubs had been emptied and the slowmatches extinguished, rolled up in coils like light line and returned to the magazine along with all the flintlocks, prickers and cartridges.

He took time to blow upon that slowmatch, but then, as he harbored scant faith in the ability of the ancient, ill-balanced and woefully inaccurate firelock to accomplish anything more of value than a loud noise to alert the camp, he reined up long enough to check by a vagrant beam of moonlight that the priming had not shaken from out the pan of his new wheellock pistol.