Longarms: shotguns and carbines carried by British officers?

[roconn]

Reverend ED in LA:
As you are no doubt aware that officers also carried Howdah pistols 2 barrelled versions in 577 calibre and the quite popular Lancaster 4 bbl pistol in the puny 455 & 476 bores.
I do recall a number of years ago the inimitable Skeeter Skelton writing about the 577 calibre Howdah pistol and checking it out on his range and the wallop those 577 slugs had on concrete blocks.... magnificent to see.

roconn

[Matt Easton]

Great, thanks for that.
It seems likely then that Hodson either used a revolver pistol, with attached carbine stock, or an actual revolver carbine with fixed stock.

I don't think the Sharps was 'official' during 1857 was it? Private purchase only I would have though. I would imagine the 'official' carbine was still the 1844 Pattern wasn't it? Then replaced by the Enfield carbine in 1861/62.

[L. Braden]

Evidently, Matt, the Sharps was tentatively official only for the regular British cavalry in India after its initial issue in the summer of 1856. Evidently also, there was no official weapon for all branches of the service, because the govt. bought a number of different makes and issued them to various units on an experimental basis, though still retaining the standard Minies and Enfields. Why did the govt. waste money making their own weapons, if those weapons weren't as good as those they purchased? It's no secret that govt.-made firearms were generally inferior to those made by private gunmakers.

[ED, in Los Angeles]

I am sort of ignorent of pre 1850 British weapons or any countries pre 1850 arms, so I speak in this post I am now writing with little authority, but I don't think that the muzzle loading Enfields or any of the PRE breech loading carbines had much use with the cavalry units. I am talking about the whole unit, officers and enlisted. You really can't successfully load a muzzle loader rifle or carbine mounted on a horse. What do you do, stop the horse and extract the ram rod and hope you don't drop it while loading or putting it back in the bands under the barrel? Between the sword only era and primitive breech loader era, a cavalry pistol was used. The Americans had one and so did the Europeans I do believe. The American muzzle loader was quite nice. It was a pistol with a long barrel, about 10 inches,(255 centimeters), and had a nice feature of a holster on the saddle. It also had a 'keeper' on the ramrod that was in the form of a swivel with a guide hole in it that allowed you to utilise the ramrod and then you could simply drop the ram rod and it would hang from the front of the pistol in the keeper with the bulb end pointing upwards to the sky and the bottom of the ramrod to the ground. You still needed to fumble with a small thimble shaped cap to press over the nipple. Many of these cavalry pistols had a 'Manyard' (?) tape system that replaced the need to put a cap on the nipple for ignition. It was a metallic(?) tape with small exlosive caps at intervals on the tape you could advance to fire, similar to the paper cap tapes used in childrens toy guns of the 1950's here in America. The gun was 'old school' in shape and form...one piece wood stock and handle, with metal lockplate and either a brass or metal cap on the end of the handle. I think it had a lanyard ring on the metal cap. Maybe not. It looked like a high tech classic 'pirate' gun fron an old illustration of the day. I saw one for sale a couple of months ago at a gun store...very pricey. I think between 3 or 4 thousand dollars. I am not sure, but I do believe that I saw several British and French 1840's era muzzle loaders with the same ram rod swivel keeper. Now wether the entire unit of cavalry was equiped with such a gun, or just officers, I do not know.
I think everything I have stated is true, but more needs to be said.

[Matt Easton]

Hi Ed, I believe it partly depended on the designation of the regiment. For example, in general (very very general, as regiments kept making up their own rules until the Cardwell reforms) I believe Lancers carried pistols (as well as lances and swords), heavy cavalry sometimes had pistols (in addition to a sword) and heavy dragoons generally had carbines (as well as swords). The original purpose of heavy dragoons was to ride to a position, dismount and fire from that position until required to move somewhere else. They also carried swords and could act as cavalry as required. There were also Hussars and Light Dragoons of course, who originally were intended to act as primarily sword-armed light cavalry, but they also sometimes carried pistols or even carbines.
So as I understand it there were quite a lot of cavalry who carried pistols or carbines in addition to their swords or lances. In the case of pistols they were generally discharged during the charge, before the sword was drawn, and probably not reloaded. In the case of carbines, they were generally used dismounted. However, both cavalry pistols and cavalry carbines had ramrods which were attached by a pivot and slide, as you describe above. In general officers carried a sword and pistol or (after 1840) revolver. However there are quite a few cases I believe of officers using carbines or shotguns as a matter of personal preference - as some examples above show.

Cheers,
Matt

[Matt Easton]

Here you can see carbines carried by heavy cavalry during the Mutiny:

[Matt Easton]

A double-barelled musket/shotgun (smoothbore) carbine marked to the Scinde Irregular Horse, c1853:

http://www.michaeldlong.net/kolistB/1/P ... 500516.htm

Matt

[fantomark]

hi!

Another example of non regulation carbines used by a famous British officer on campaign was Archibald Hunter .
Sir Archibald was armed with a Winchester repeater during Sudan Campaign in 1885 , and was reported shooting dead not less than six Dervishes at close quarters, before being badly wounded himself in a sortie from Kosheh in December 1885, just before the Battle of Ginnis (that he missed as a result of the wounds sustained in the action at Kosheh).

(American Winchester repeaters were also quite popular with Italian Officers serving in Africa during the same period).

Ciao!

Marco

[Matt Easton]

Thanks Marco, very interesting - I was not previously aware of any examples of Winchester carbines being used by British officers, but it makes sense!
To add to what has been written above, I am reading various things related to the Indian Mutiny at the moment, and it has become apparent to me that civilians and the wives/children of British officers often made use of hunting/fowling guns (ie. shotguns and other hunting guns) in defence during 1857. In some cases shotguns were all that these non-combatants had to defend themselves with. It also of course shows that many officers owned shotguns and rifles and didn't carry them around in military actions (in one case an officer's wife prepared shotguns whilst the officer himself used his sword).

[Matt Easton]

I came across another earlier reference in Sita Ram Pandey's 'memoirs', AKA 'From Sepoy to Subedar':

"Many sahibs (officers) were wounded because they persisted in going close up to the walls to fire their shot-guns and rifles. This was strictly forbidden but the orders were disregarded."
From his account of the Siege of Bharatpore in 1825, first published in his 'memoirs' in the 1870's.

I am also reading about Gerald Goodlake VC, of the Coldstream Guards, who led a force of sharpshooters during the Siege of Sabastopol in the Crimean War - he certainly made use of a rifle and is pictured many times with it.

Matt