Magazine small arms are those shoulder pieces and pistols whose systems of construction enable them to fire several successive rounds without reloading. They are divided into two general classes, revolvers and repeaters, the former firing their charges from several chambers from which, till the successive discharges take place, the cartridges are not moved; the latter firing from a single chamber into which, by the mechanism of the piece, the several cartridges are successively loaded, from an attached magazine.
It might be supposed that the desirability of firing several charges without reloading would have presented itself to the users of fire-arms at an early date; and, as a matter of fact, we find that an arm possessing this feature was produced in the century following that in which Friar Schwartz's famous mortar-pestle took its unexpected flight into the air at Mayence. A specimen of these 15th century shoulder piece revolvers is now in the armory of the Tower of London. It consists of a cylindrical breech piece revolving upon an arbor welded to the barrel and parallel with its axis; the whole fitted to a stock and held in place by a traverse pin; notches in a flange at the fore end of the cylinder receive the end of a spring fixed to the stock and extending across the breech, the function of the spring being to lock the cylinder when a chamber is brought up on line with the barrel. Each chamber is provided with a priming pan having a swing cover which, before firing, requires to be pushed aside by the finger in order to present the priming powder to the lighted match. Repetition of fire is effected by throwing back the match holder and turning the breech by hand to bring up another loaded chamber. The fittings and mountings of this gun, very similar to which are two eight chambered revolvers' in the Musee d'Artillerie at Paris, indicate an early Eastern origin.
Another match-lock magazine arm, brought from India by Lord William Bentinck, closely resembles in principle the one just described, but the workmanship is superior and the ornamentation ornate. The breech cylinder has five chambers, each with priming pan and swing cover. The arbor is attached to the barrel, and at the breech where it abuts on the cylinder the barrel is enlarged to correspond with the diameter of the cylinder, to which it forms a kind of shield. The thinness of the metal of the barrels and the extreme length of the chambers in all these specimens would indicate that they were used in the days of powder dust, before the comprehension of the utility of granulation.
The 16th century has its magazine gun representative in the Tower of London armory, in the shape of a pyrites wheel-lock, shoulder piece revolver. It has one priming pan common to all the six chambers of the cylinder; the pan is fitted with a sliding cover, and is so arranged that the serrated edge of the vertical wheel may project into it, and consequently into the priming powder; to this wheel a rapid motion is given by means of a trigger spring acting upon a link lever attached to the arbor of the wheel, the teeth of which striking upon the pyrites create the sparks that ignite the priming; the fire is then communicated laterally to a train of powder about 2.5" long, before it reaches the charge in the cylinder. A repetition of fire is produced by rotating the cylinder by hand, repriming the pan and train channel, and setting in motion the wheel-lock, provided any sparks are generated; the probabilities that they would be seem to have been considered about equal to an even chance, with a small percentage in favor of failure, which accounts for the fact that a lighted match was held to be essential in wheel-lock gun shooting.
This gun has no tip stock, and the barrel is cut away on each side to allow the escape of the balls in case of premature explosions in the cylinder. There is a pistol of the same principle of construction at Woolwich. Both these arms show by their barrels that they were corned powder using weapons. A wheel-lock shoulder-piece eight chambered revolver of the 17th century in the Hotel Olnny at Paris is in system similar to the one last described, but differs from it materially in the arrangement of the vents. There is a single priming channel from the pan to the rear of the cylinder, with eight corresponding tubes extending from the rear to within about a calibre of the front end, where a vent is pierced into each chamber. This arrangement was probably to prevent simultaneous explosion of the charges, and not an attempt to produce a, better effect from the charge by igniting it directly in rear of the projectile. As in the 16th century gun, the priming channel and pan had to be refilled every time a chamber was discharged.
An elaborately finished Spanish gun, in the Cluny, probably of the early part of the last century, seems to come next in the chronological order of revolvers. This gun is a flint-lock; the cylinder is rotated by hand and is locked in the firing position, with a chamber in line with the barrel, by a pin which enters a hole in the rear end and which has to be withdrawn before bringing up a fresh chamber. The chief peculiarity of this gun is a magazine of priming powder immediately above a fixed pan, which serves for the four chambers of the breech; this magazine is hinged to the pan, and is fitted with a sliding bottom, which, when drawn out, is intended to allow a certain amount of the priming to fall into the pan, and when pushed back, to cut off the supply. The rear surface of this magazine serves also as a steel or striking surface for the flint, and is ribbed on its face. The gun has a tip stock covering the forward, and a cap enclosing the rear end of the cylinder; in using it, it would seem that the priming powder in the magazine would inevitably explode; the priming fire would find its way to the other vents, and the lateral fire at the fore end of the cylinder would be directed into the other chambers and explode all the charges prematurely. In the armory of Warwick Castle there is a gun of about the same period that appears to be an attempt to insure greater safety in firing, at the expense of greater complexity of mechanism. It has a flint-lock and a hand-rotated four chambered cylinder. Each chamber is furnished with a priming pan and steel, which latter forms also the cover; therefore the firing of one charge is not so likely to ignite the powder in the other chambers. The tip stock is very light, so as not to cover the chambers; thus if a premature explosion took place, while there would be no material injury to the gun, the rest arm of the firer would probably be carried away. The cylinder seems to have been secured by a spring from the rear end of the barrel. An arm very similar in system to the above is in the Tower armory, the breech system being composed of four distinct chamber tubes fastened together by two end plates and rotated by hand.
The next attempt at a magazine gun is shown in the Dafte gun, invented in England about the middle of the last century. There is evidently an endeavor, in this arm, to produce a more compact weapon, for instead of having a projecting pan and steel for each chamber, recesses are made in the periphery of the cylinder to form pans, and one steel was probably provided to stand over the breech and attached to the barrel. The cylinder containing six chambers is rotated by hand, and is locked when in firing position by a device like that in the pyrites wheel-lock gun. It would seem, from the holder of the steel being fastened over one of the chambers into which the fire would be deflected, that premature explosion would necessarily take place, that the steel would be broken off, and the gun rendered as useless as the man who fired it, at the first discharge.
In 1818, Elisha H. Collier, of Boston, Mass., patented a flint-lock shoulder-piece revolver. It had a priming magazine, a flue or channel that would conduct the fire to the different vents, a cap or shield in front of the cylinder which would direct lateral flame into the loaded chamber,—in short, all of the accessories that seem to have been so efficient in producing premature explosions. The cylinder was borne up against the barrel by a spring, and each chamber was counter bored at the forward end to receive the end of the barrel. This bearing up of the cylinder is maintained during the firing by a bolt which is thrust forward, when the trigger is pulled, by the action of a cam on the spindle of the hammer. Another flint-lock revolver was invented by a Mr. Wheeler, of Boston, in 1819. Its peculiar feature consists in a coiled spring made fast to the cylinder and to the arbor, which, being wound up, is intended to rotate the chambers automatically, an escapement device being operated by the action of the lock. In a marked degree it possesses all the properties that are so well calculated to discharge all the chambers at once.
In 1829, a New England boy, fifteen years of age, who had run away to sea from Amherst, Mass., where he had been at school, was shooting at porpoises off the Cape of Good Hope; being annoyed because he could have only a single shot before reloading his piece, he conceived the idea of a gun with several barrels, to be fired one after the other, and then concluded that revolving chambers with a single barrel would better answer his purpose. This conception he proceeded to work out in wood, and the result so took his fancy that upon his return to the United States from Calcutta, whither his run away trip had landed him, he earned a little money at lecturing, and with it put his idea into metal. Half a dozen years later this invention was patented in England, and soon after in France and the United States: the problem of producing a practical magazine arm had been solved. In the first specification of the English patent granted to Samuel Colt, he claimed among other things, " the object of my principles, adaptations, and applications being to cause the said cylinder to revolve the distance from centre to centre of two contiguous chambers by the action of cocking the gun or pistol, and by the same action to lock the cylinder firmly in its place when so brought, and thus that no care or attention on the part of the person using the fire-arm is required in order to bring the charges into the proper place for being discharged through the barrel "; and that the arm was practical in "sixthly, in effectually separating the recesses (of the cylinder) in which the percussion tubes are placed from each other, so as to prevent fire communicating from the exploding cap to the adjoining ones."
The percussion cap had been invented, a Yankee boy applies it to the old revolving system, compels the action of the lock to rotate and lock the cylinder, and the problem that for four centuries had been vexing the gun makers is solved—a practical magazine arm was produced. The Florida war, which followed so soon after the production of the Colt's revolver, gave the opportunity to prove its value in the field; an opportunity that was fully taken advantage of, in showing what such an arm could accomplish in the hands of men like Harney's rangers.
From that time the utility of the revolver became a fixed fact, and to-day, in 1880, it is the favorite side-arm ashore and afloat in all the countries of the world. As a shoulder piece it has never been extensively used; for, in the days of loose ammunition, the time taken to load the chambers militated against its efficiency for what was then considered long range fighting; and from its construction, the charges in the magazine—the cylinder—could not be readily held in reserve. Although numbers of Colt's revolving rifles were used in the Florida and Mexican wars, by plainsmen on the frontier, and even in the war of the Rebellion by Berdan's sharpshooters and by the infantry and cavalry under Fremont, in the shape of carbines and muskets, the place of the revolving principle as applied to military arms is and was held to be upon the pistol; its duty to supply a rapid and successive lire at pistol practice range, a duty it has always performed satisfactorily, from the time that Fighting Jack Hayes of the Texas rangers attributed his successes to its aid, to the present time.
The history of the adaptation of the revolver to metallic ammunition is not a little curious, as an example of the way in which improvements in arms "grow" from what are apparently worthless devices. On the 3d of April, 1855, one of Colt's workmen, named White, patented a pistol, the principal feature of which was the boring of the chambers entirely through the cylinder in order to load from the rear; a leather gas check was used to stop the escape of the gas to the rear and laterally, a device entirely inefficient, as were most of those for accomplishing the same purpose when loose ammunition was used. This boring-through-the-cylinder arrangement was declined by Col. Colt, when offered to him, on the ground that it was worthless and had been patented in France twenty years before; and it was then acquired by Smith and Wesson, who, in 1858, when the Colt patents had run out and when with improvements in metallic ammunition the breech-loading idea came to the fore, produced a breech-loading revolver, and for a time debarred other makers from boring through their cylinders to take the new cartridges; thus did the White device, originally considered worthless, become of great value to its possessors.
Within the two decades last past a great many changes and some improvements have been applied to the revolving type of magazine arms; but in general principle all the numerous revolvers of the present day are but so many modifications of the Colt's.
It would seem that the difficulty of disposing of the magazine in the repeating type of fire-arms, when that type is applied to pistols, has caused the retention of the revolver as a side-arm since the repeater has been so perfected for shoulder-piece work; for the breech of the pistol, from its size and shape, does not admit of the reception of a good magazine, while the placing of one longitudinally under the barrel is objectionable on account of the change of balance in the pistol hand as the charges are fired. Until a compact magazine, located at the breech of the barrel and having a quality of but slightly changing the position of its centre of gravity as the charges are exhausted, shall be produced, we may expect to see the revolver retaining its position as the favorite side-arm. At the present stage of pistol-making it is difficult to comprehend how any repeater could excel the many excellences of the tried and trusted revolver.
Repeaters.
It is evident, from the definition at the beginning of this article, that a repeater, in the narrower sense, must be a breech-loader; and it is a well established fact that the breech-loading of small arms was not successful before the appearance of metallic ammunition. If these two statements be correct, we should not expect to find practical repeaters among the earlier fire-arms. Although there may be many such, I have been unable to hear of any records or specimens of matchlock or wheel-lock guns containing the germs of the repeating idea. This idea seems to have had four distinct steps of development: 1. Firing in succession charges superimposed upon each other; 2. Loading loose powder and ball charges into a breech-block and successively firing them from it, across a seam between it and the barrel; 3. Loading paper cartridges into the chamber and firing them in succession; 4. Using self-primed metallic ammunition and eliminating the operation of priming.
Porta, in his Natural Magick, 1658, speaks of a great brass gun or hand gun which may discharge ten or more bullets without intermission. The idea was to load with powder and ball alternately until the barrel was full. An intervening "dark powder" gave an interval between the firing of the separate charges so as to avoid the simultaneous explosion of them all. Whether this "dark powder," which may have been some kind of sand wadding, accomplished its purpose or not, Porta does not say, and there seems to be no good reason for supposing it did; but still it is supposed to have been a gun of this type to which Pepys alluded in his Diary, 1662, when he wrote, "After dinner, was brought to Sir W. Compton a gun to discharge seven times, the best of all devices that ever I saw, and very serviceable and not a bauble; for it is much approved of and many thereof lade."
There is the possession of the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. a flint-lock musket, invented by an American named North, in 1820, that was intended to fire several successive charges without using revolving chambers. This gun differs from an ordinary muzzle loading flint-lock musket, only in being provided with half a dozen vents with a lock-catch for each, and in having the lock, movable in a groove along the vented portion of the barrel, carry with it a magazine of priming powder. The gun was to be loaded with ordinary paper cartridges, one over the other till there was a powder charge abreast each vent; the distance between the vents being equal to the length of a cartridge. The lock was then to be pushed up to the forward vent and secured there by its catch in such a manner that the hole in the priming pan corresponded with it, and the first charge fired; the lock was then released, drawn back to the second vent, the priming magazine, by a cut-off arrangement, used to refill the pan, and the second charge fired, and so on till all the cartridges were used.
There is no evidence to show that the beautiful faith of the inventor was ever justified by the works of the gun; and assuredly in these degenerate days no one who knows anything of fire-arms would willingly fire the first charge from a fully loaded North gun—unless indeed by means of a very long string leading from the trigger through a very small hole in the wall of a good substantial bombproof. The fact that the specimen alluded to exists, with its barrel intact, strongly indicates that as a magazine gun it was never fired at all.
Another gun on the superimposed charge principle appeared in France in the first years of the use of the percussion lock. This gun, invented by M. Robert of Rheims, and afterward improved by MM. Gordon Anbry and Robert, had a series of locks and nipples enclosed in the stock under the barrel, each lock being shut off from the adjoining ones by a diaphragm, and all of them let off in turn by a pinion, which by an ingenious arrangement of a coiled spring and rack was for this purpose made to travel, by pressure on the trigger, along the inside of the stock. The distance between the nipples was equal to the length of a cartridge, as was the distance between the vents in the North gun. MM. Gordon Anbry and Robert were very particular in their direction for loading, and had marks on the rammer to show when the charges were properly home; like North they seemed to have had perfect faith that the charge next in rear of the one fired would prove an efficient gas check; though why they should it is impossible to understand. Their claim for the gun is for "la facilite de faire partir plusieurs coups avec un seul canon et en superposant les charges."
But before the advent of metallic ammunition there were many attempts at producing magazine arms, attempts that would have been successful had the guns proved practical breech-loaders—the magazine part was not difficult—the fermature of the breech was the obstacle. It is possible that many arms of the type may have appeared earlier, but the first true repeater of which I have any knowledge is a flintlock, loose-ammunition-using gun of the second decade of the present century, the invention of M. Henry, Ingenieur-Mecanicien in Paris. This gun had a powder magazine on the left side and a ball magazine on top of the barrel. By the action of the lever of the breech block a powder charge was taken from the side, a ball from the top, and at the same time the pan was primed. In speaking of the advantages of his gun M. Henry says:
"Ce fusil presente I'avantage d'etre aussi vite charge pour quatorze ou quinze coups qu'un fusil ordinaire pour un coup; par consequent, il est plus prompt a repeter son feu, d'autant qu'on n'a qu'a faire mouvoir un levier qui fait tourner dans un tonnerre en fer, deux noix en acier, dont l'une laisse le passage a la poudre sortant d'un tube elliptique qui se prolonge le long du canon pour arriver au tonnerre par la grosse noix qui, de son cote, preud la balle d'un tube contigu qui la contient et l'amene de force sur la poudre ; le levier etant ramene a son point de depart, procure ainsi la quantite de poudre necessaire pour V amorce du bassinet; ensuite on n'a qu'a armer et a faire feu; par consequent, on pent tirer quatorze et quinze coups sans recharger. Ce fusil n'a point besoin de baguette, ce qui gene beaucoup dans l'exercise d'un combat; il a la propriete de porter plus loin qu'un fusil ordinaire, la balle sortant forcee; il possede, en outre, le precieux avantage de n'etre pas sujet a crever, comme il arrive souvent, parce qu'il ne pent se charger par double ou triple charge," etc., etc.
This last "precious advantage" so plain to M. Henry early in the present century, was not very apparent to the ordnance authorities of the United States, till the twenty-five thousand muzzle-loaders recovered from the field of Gettysburg, nearly all with two, four, six and even twenty rounds in their barrels, demonstrated only too clearly that it was indeed an advantage too precious to be longer neglected.
From 1820 to 1860, the loose ammunition repeater appeared in various forms in this country and in Europe, always ingenious in construction, usually too complex in its mechanism, and invariably failing for lack of a breech fermature, if for no other reason; the idea of the arm was, however, so attractive that a system of its type was patented in the United States as late as 1860, after metallic ammunition had been in general use for some years. This system, patented by Paul Boynton, Jan. 3, 1860, was intended for a pistol, and consisted of separate longitudinal powder and ball magazines under the barrel, together with a circular one on the breech containing percussion primers. By revolving the barrel and magazines about a central arbor a motion was obtained which by an ingenious device was made to take a ball from the ball magazine, a powder charge from the powder magazine, bring them both into the breech-block in rear of the barrel and drop a primer into the vent cup; the hammer was fitted with a piercer, like that of the ordinary metallic ammunition revolver, instead of with the cupped recess that was used with percussion cap locks. Another system looking to the same result was patented by J. D. Moore in March of the same year.
Of repeaters adapted to the use of the paper cartridge and percussion cap there are numerous records, showing that the magazines were applied, longitudinally under the barrel to feed the charges backward, obliquely in the breech stock to feed forward, above, below, at the side and around the breech, in short in all the ways in which magazines are applied to modern repeaters. Noticeable among arms of this type are the ingenious guns of M. Cass, patented in this country in 1848, and of J. Swyney, also patented in the United States in 1855, The first of these guns had a "magazine in the stock consisting of a series of cartridge cells fastened upon an endless belt, which was perforated under the seat of each cell to allow the passage of a rammer that pushed the cartridge from its cell into the chamber, when this last was by the movement of the belt brought into the proper position; the action of a jointed lever under the breech moved the belt the required distance to bring the cartridges into the loading position, and then operated the rammer that successively loaded them into the chamber; a revolving disk, carrying as many nipples as there were charges in the magazine, and operated by the hammer in cocking, brought up a fresh percussion cap for each fire. The Swyney gun had a longitudinal charge magazine under the barrel, along which the charges were moved by a spiral spring as in the modern guns having magazines of that type, and a cap magazine in the stock. The action of a guard lever moved the breech block down to receive a cartridge from the magazine, carried it up to the firing position, and at the same time capped the nipple on the block. Thus it appears that the magazine part of the repeater was an accomplished fact, while satisfactory breech loading was still an unsolved problem; unsolved, although by many excellent breech-loading devices, and notably by the old Sharp's system, it was very near solution.
Before attempting to trace the progress of the repeater through its post-percussion-cap course, it is first necessary to glance, in a cursory way, at the antecedents of that common parent of modern breech loading magazine and machine arms, the self-primed metallic shell cartridge.
In 1812, Pauly, a French artillery officer, patronized and encouraged by Napoleon I, always anxious for the advent of the breechloader, patented a breech-loading arm "et des cartouches de composition particuliere." In a report made to the Societe d'Encouragement pour Flndustrie Rationale, in July, 1814, Brillat de Savarin says of Pauly's cartridge, "La charge est renfermee dans une cartouche montte sar un culot de cuivre perce dans son centre et creuse de maniere u recevoir une amorce de composition muriatique, sur laquelle vient frapper un barreau de fer mu par le grand ressort; la poudre frapper dt-tonne, l'entincelle qui en resulte enflamme la poudre et le coup part avec un extreme rapidite." Paulin Desormeaux in speaking of these cartridges says: "Ces cartouches nouvelles portent avec elles une rosette d'amorce ou double culasse mobile qui sert de depot au residu de la poudre, et, cette rosette etant renouvelee a chaque chargement, les armes sont aussi propres apres un long service qu'auparavant." A cut of the gun with the charge in place shows that the cartridge was a paper envelope one, the rear of which was enclosed in centre primed copper shell; the gun was of the concealed lock firing-pin type. The advantage of centre priming was appreciated, and the fact that the shell was spoken of as "a movable double breech," would seem to show that its effect as a gas check was known; but be this as it may, a couple of years after de Savarin's report the gun was improved backward to use a detached primer, and eventually to the use of a flint lock, although the breech mechanism so far in advance of its contemporaries was retained for many years.
In 1836, Mons. Robert, of Paris, produced a copper shell cartridge made in two parts, a cylinder, and a cup that formed the flanged head which was filled with fulminate; and shortly after the Flobert cartridge appeared; this last had a drawn copper case and a thick head which was filled with fulminate also. It would seem that both these cartridges provided good gas checks, but they were used only for fulminate cartridges in small caliber weapons, and the principle was not applied to long range or military guns.
In 1846, M. Houiller, of Paris, invented rim, centre, and pin fire cartridges with metallic shells. In the same year, Lefancheux, another Parisian gunmaker, improving upon a multi-barrel cap-lock pistol of the "pepper box" type, bored his cylinders entirely through, loaded them at the breech, and used pin-fire cartridges with copper gas checks, card-board bodies and metallic anvil primers. Lefancheux made a long step in advance; indeed he had all the requisites for a metallic cartridge with the exception of the flanged head. In 1854, Smith and Wesson produced a flanged head metallic cartridge which was also centre fire, but deficient in having no anvil, the fulminate being placed between the head of the shell and an indurated or hard metal disk forced in as far as the flange, and forming both a diaphragm to separate the fulminate and powder, and a resistance to the blow of the hammer. In 1856 the same manufacturers patented a loaded bullet, the powder being contained in a hollowed out recess, and held in place by a steel disk which was the bottom of a copper or brass case pressed into the cavity in the bullet; this case contained the fulminate upon the steel disk, which in turn was covered by a disk of cork. A firing-pin entering through a hole in the top of the brass case was pressed through the cork and brought in contact with the fulminate. A blow on the firing-pin by the hammer was then expected to detonate the fulminate and so explode the powder. Sometimes it did.
In 1856 the Maynard cartridge appeared. This was a metallic shell, centre fire, unprimed cartridge carrying a double canalured ogival pointed bullet, with the lubricant in the canalures after the manner of most of the service cartridges of the present day. It was for use in the Maynard breech-loader and had some very. good points. In 1860 many of these cartridges were made at the Frankford arsenal, where a head in the shape of an attached disk was soldered on. In 1858, G. W. Morse patented a metallic shell centre primed cartridge with an anvil in the shape of a forked wire with the legs soldered to the sides of the shell, the intersection of the two legs being the point to receive the blow. This cartridge had a rubber packing in the head which surrounded and supported the capsule containing the fulminate, the latter fitted over the anvil. But the advantage of the centre primed cartridge was not fully understood till some years later, the rim-fire Spencer being used in the repeater of that name during the war of the Rebellion, and in the Henry repeater also. The rim-fire cartridge proved itself to have the property of providing a good gas check, and the capability of being moved in the magazine and loaded into the chamber without requiring the use of complicated mechanism; but it was defective in that it required a comparatively large fulminate charge to fill the rim-space, and that the fulminate was not always evenly distributed, defects that in the one case caused a great strain on the head, often enough to burst it, and in the other frequent miss-fires.
When the war of the Rebellion proved that the breech-loader was the arm of the immediate future, it gave an impulse to the improvement in metallic cartridges that resulted in the great activity that was displayed in that direction, especially in the United States from 1864 to 1872. The 'best talent of the Army Ordnance Corps gave the subject its attention. Cols. Treadwell, Laidley, Benet, Benton, and Crispin, and Capt. Prince, experimented and made researches in this direction, with results that speak for themselves in the many excellences of the cartridges now manufactured at the Frankford arsenal. In this period appeared the Martin folded, the Millbank close folded, so-called solid, and the Hotchkiss really solid headed shells, and the Berdan, Farrington, and many other excellent primers; immense works for the manufacture of small arm ammunition were established, a great industry was created, and the American centre primed metallic cartridge came into existence to challenge the admiration of the world. All nations that pretend to maintain a fighting force use to-day the American small arm ammunition, either manufacturing it themselves or obtaining it from this country; but there is very great difference of opinion as to the comparative excellence of certain points. It is generally conceded that the cartridge case shall be of the drawn metal centre primed type—even conservative England being on the point of giving up her wrapped metal Boxer shell, a shell experimented with and patented by Gen. Rodman and Col. Crispin, in 1863, and by them rejected as inferior to drawn metal; but the questions of copper or brass, folded or solid heads, canalured bullets with lubricant in canalures or smooth bullets with paper patch and wad lubricant, kind of primer, kind of lubricant, shape of body, cylindrical or reduced (bottled), shape of bullet and proportion of powder charge to weight and shape of bullet, have never been settled, although there has been much investigation in this direction, while the wide field of determining the character of the powders to be used with bullets of different weights and calibers is neglected and unworked.
To return to the repeater; as has been shown, the practical modern repeater only awaited the advent of metallic ammunition, and as may be supposed appeared with it. In March, 1860, the Spencer repeater was patented, and the Henry in October of the same year. The first of these guns, with a magazine in the stock and a breech-block swinging downward and backward by the action of a guard lever, was the favorite cavalry arm of the war of the Rebellion, many thousands of them seeing service in the hands of the mounted troops of the United States and in the navy; while the second, with a magazine under the barrel and a guard lever operated, backward sliding, breech-block, was also extensively used by the cavalry in the same war. Both these guns were excellent arms, and even in the light of recent developments one can only say that as military repeaters they were perhaps defective in using lever-worked breech-blocks instead of sliding bolts; in the position of the loading orifices of the magazine—that in the one being in the butt plate, and in the other near the muzzle; in using rim-fire ammunition, and, in the Henry, in leaving the magazine exposed to the entrance of rain, dust, sand, and mud. After the war of the Rebellion, so great was the activity displayed in working out the repeater idea that, in the United States alone, the number of patents issued for devices of this kind, in the period extending from 1873 back to 1836, reached 120, most of which were brought out later than 1865. Since 1873, many more have been added to the list, the greater number crude and worthless as patented, "mere baubles," in the language of the cynical Pepys, but nearly all containing ideas that, in combination with those of other guns of the type, result in practical arms. The "growth" of the well-known Winchester repeater is illustrative of this combination of principles. The origin of the Winchester was the Jennings, a bolt gun, with an under barrel magazine, patented in 1849. The next year the patent was bought by Smith and Wesson, who manufactured the guns and adapted them to use the wooden shell unprimed cartridges invented by Walter Hunt in 1848. Smith and Wesson spent five years in improving the gun, applied to it several patented devices, and then, in 1855, sold it with its patents to the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company, which was organized to manufacture guns and pistols on the Jennings plan, adapted to use the loaded bullets patented by Smith and Wesson in 1856. The Volcanic Repeating Arms Company tried for two years to bring the gun up to a practical standard, made some improvements, and then went into insolvency. The gun with its improvements was then bought by the New Haven Arms Company, organized to manufacture it, who in turn spent two years and much money in improving it, and eventually, in 1860, produced through the superintendent of the company's works, Mr. B.F. Henry, the Henry repeater.
The Jennings gun had been improved past recognition. The Henry was improved, in 1866, by Mr. Nelson King, who replaced the magazine in one with the barrel, opened slotted its whole length. It was arranged to load by dropping the cartridges in near the muzzle after pushing the feed spring up into a cap which swung clear of, and opened the magazine, by a tubular one that received its charges against the spring through an orifice in the breech. This gun of many ideas was named the Winchester, after the president of the company, which was reorganized under the name of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and which has since manufactured the arm, acquiring the patents of Fogerty and Spencer, in order to suppress the making of guns of those names. In 1873 the gun was remodeled to take centre primed ammunition, and then became the Winchester repeater as we know it to-day.
During the last decade, the military authorities of the world have been seriously considering the adoption of the magazine gun as a standard arm for mounted troops and men serving afloat. As regards this country, the army has been asking for a magazine arm with which to meet the Indians often armed with that favorite weapon of the frontier, the Winchester, and the request has been met by the War Department by ordering, in 1877, a board of ordnance officers to select and recommend a magazine gun for the military service. This board in the following year tested* and experimented with some twenty systems brought before it, and reported as follows:
"The board, in the discharge of these duties, has tested all the guns presented uniformly and in the manner that seemed to it best adapted to determine the question of their suitability for the military service, as well as to determine their comparative merits in that respect.
"The regulations for the trials adopted by the board are given in the appendix.
"Its experiments to test the liability of accidental explosion of cartridges in the magazine seem to show that there is little probability of such explosion when using the inside-primed service-cartridges, or even with the exterior-primed cartridges direct from the factory, when fabricated and inspected with the care and attention usually given them. With cartridges reprimed in the field or garrison, risks may be introduced which have not come within the scope of the investigations of the board.
"From the satisfactory manner in which the Hotchkiss gun, No. 19, has passed these tests, and from its combination of strength, simplicity, and great effectiveness as a single loader, the board is of the opinion that the Hotchkiss gun No. 19 is suitable for the military service, and it does, therefore, recommend it as such."
Signed: J.G.BENTON,
Lieutenant-Colonel of Ordnance, President of Board.
F.H.PARKER,"
Major of Ordnance.
J. P. FARLEY,
Major of Ordnance.
In 1879, a thousand Hotchkiss guns were issued to the army for trial in the field, and in the same year the Naval Bureau of Ordnance adopted the same gun for the standard shoulder-piece, and at the same time took a few Remington-Keene and ordered a few Lee guns for trial. In 1880, the current year, the Interior Department ordered a thousand Remington-Keene guns for use in the hands of the Indian police. General Miles has requested that the troops under his command be armed with the Lee gun, as he considers it the best known arm for Indian fighting.
England has been awaiting the advent of a magazine arm adapted to the awkward Boxer cartridge, and will wait long if the reason for delay continues to hold good.
France has adopted the Kropatschek for its navy, and intended to take fifty thousand of these guns for use afloat, but has lately concluded to use them only experimentally and has but two thousand in service.
Russia had a few Evans' guns a half dozen years since, and is now experimenting upon magazine guns.
Germany is doing nothing in this direction.
Austria has adopted the Fruwirth gun for its navy, and has forty thousand of them in the hands of its shore troops who guard the frontier, doing customs work, etc. The government is also experimenting with the Vetterli.
Italy has adopted the Winchester for its navy, and has made a few thousands of the guns at Venice. For shore service the government is endeavoring to convert the single loading Vetterli into a magazine gun on the plan of Capt. Bartolemeo.
Turkey has the Winchester for it cavalry.
Switzerland has adopted the Vetterli magazine gun, and is the only country which has thus far put a repeater into the hands of the infantry of the line.
Norway has introduced the Krag-Petersen into its navy. The writer has been unable to learn that any other countries are doing anything in the way of adopting magazine arms. All the military repeaters now in use, except the Winchester, are of the sliding bolt type of breech-block, and all of them, except the Hotchkiss and the Lee, have magazines under the barrel.
The weight of the military opinion of the world seems to decide, at present, that the repeater shall be used as a single loader for ordinary fighting, with the charged magazine held in reserve for critical moments; that it shall be so devised as to be capable of being so used; and that as a single loader it can be as easily manipulated and as rapidly fired as any gun on a single breech-loading system; that the breech-block shall be of the bolt type, that the piece shall be so constructed that the magazine and all working parts connected with it may be disabled without detracting from the usefulness of the arm as a single loader; that, other things being equal, same number of charges in magazine, etc., the centre of gravity of the charged magazine shall fall between the rest hand and the shoulder of the man firing the gun; that the magazine shall be capable of taking and the gun capable of firing cartridges of different lengths; and that it shall be readily and rapidly charged.
The fact that so many military repeaters have tip stock magazines, bad as regards position, is due to the desire for greater stowage capacity than one in the butt stock will furnish without making the piece very clumsy.
In preparing this article I have consulted and extracted from the United States Army and Navy Ordnance Reports, the United States French and English Patent Reports, and the writings of Col. Colt, Col. Church, MM. Paulin Desormeanx, and others. I am indebted for aid and information to Gen. W. B. Franklin, Mr. C. M. Spencer, and Mr. T. G. Bennett, Secretary of the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. I do not feel at all sure that the specimens I have selected as illustrative of the different steps are the earliest or latest of their type, or that they best fulfill the duties assigned them; my endeavor has been, by the use of references at hand, simply to indicate in a very general way the development of the magazine gun idea from its inception to the present day.
Hartford, Conn., June, 1880.
Since the foregoing paper was prepared there has been a marked forward movement toward the general adoption of magazine rifles.
Germany has experimented with several, and at one time seemed to favor the Loew system, similar to, if not identical with one brought out by Lee some years ago; it consists of a detachable magazine that grasps the piece forward of the trigger guard; its advantage is that it can be readily applied to any single loading bolt-gun; its disadvantages are that when upon the piece it is very awkward, and when detached very clumsy for transportation upon the person. England is asking for a good butt-stock magazine, lever-action carbine, and has shown a little inclination toward the Martin-Spencer, a gun like the old Spencer in general principles, but charging the magazine through the receiver instead of through the butt-plate. Nearly all European countries are searching for economical systems upon which to convert the single loaders at hand into magazine arms. China is at present taking five thousand Hotchkiss rifles, and the Argentine Republic is endeavoring to decide upon the magazine arm to be procured in this country for the arming of her cavalry.
The United States Navy has just taken a thousand new model Hotchkiss rifles, of which the new modeling consists in replacing the side cut-off and bolt-lock by two parts, one on either side of the receiver, and in fitting the receiver into the stock differently; these changes make the gun stronger in those faces where in service it had been found weak.
The army has purchased no magazine arms since it took a thousand Hotchkiss carbines about two years ago; these arms have generally given satisfaction to the people into whose hands they were put when magazine arms were desired. The stocks have broken badly, owing to an inherent weakness in that point—a defect that has now been eliminated. By authority of congress an army board made up of officers of all arms of the service is to meet in New York next July to investigate magazine gun systems, and recommend the one or two best adapted for use in the army.
In my opinion the Hotchkiss possesses more of the desiderata of a magazine arm for the navy than any other at present procurable.
The Lee system is very attractive in that it allows the shipping of a charged magazine in the same time that it would take to put a single charge into any kind of a tube magazine or into the receiver of a single loader; and in that it allows the transportation of ammunition upon the person, in the magazine, as conveniently as in any other way, and consequently allows the use of several magazines for each piece. Further, the detaching of the magazine removes all chance of the disabling of the piece as a single loader, through accident to the repeating parts, and renders unnecessary some of the more complicated and delicate parts of the ordinary magazine systems, viz. cut-off and cartridge stops; on the other hand, this detaching renders the magazine liable to be lost, but this liability is so small that the advantages of the detaching plan would seem to greatly outweigh it.
Unfortunately, owing to business complications among the owners of the gun, no one has yet been able to obtain any considerable number of Lee arms, and the three hundred ordered for trial in the navy have not yet been made, although the order was given nearly two years ago.
National Armory, Springfield, Mass., March, 1881