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This is only loosely military associated but it does very expertly cover the technology of American firearms most adopted by "Military" units.
Any personal weapon of the 19th century no matter where in the world manufactured, NOT canons or crew served, would fit here.
Please don't hesitate to "stretch" my description if you have something worth sharing on guns of that period.
IMO, the adoption of the percussion cap and the breech loading repeating weapons, cartridges etc. during this period is fascinating and worth being placed here.
I belong to a gun club with a very enthusiastic black powder bunch of crazies. I myself mainly shoot a Ruger Mk III and a 1911A1 Colt ACP.
The nice thing about these black powder fanatics, is they are proud as punch of their "Shooting Irons". I, being who I am, shamelessly ingratiate myself with them even to buying rounds at our bar.
Upside one, is they are actually force their weapons on me to try. I usually graciously take them up on their offer and cap off a few and some times more, rounds.
Second upside, I don't have to lay out the cash for weapons I really don't want to own.
Third upside, is I don't have to clean these black powder firearms because they are so meticulous about their shooting irons they don't want anyone else messing with them. Any of you who have cleaned black powder guns know what kind of a pain in the A$$ doing it right is.
They want it done right and I agree wholeheartedly that only the owner can really do that
Just to show the Americans did not have a patent on the design, production and use of the revolver in war.
Credit goes to
Ronald M. Walker , Ph.D History, University of Leeds (1984)
and Terry Gile, MA Secondary Social Studies Education & History, Coastal Carolina University (1998)
Samuel Colt came to London to try to apply for a patent on “his invention” - the revolver - long before he tried the same trick in the USA. The London Patent office refused his patent, on the grounds that he hadn’t invented the revolver (despite wild claims made by his company’s PR department) He had merely introduced some improvements to an existing invention, mainly involving the way that the cylinder is prevented from revolving when you don’t want it to. He was granted a patent for his OPEN FRAME, single-action revolver with its novel anti-rotation gadget, and sent back to the USA, where he presented himself at the patent office with the same claim… and was promptly granted a patent. (Was the US Patent office unaware of - for example - mr Puckle’s revolving cannon, which fired round shot at Christians and square shots at Muslims.)
Colt’s revolvers were regarded by officers in the British army as not really serious weapons. Their choice was a Dean, Adams & Dean heavy calibre, SOLID frame, DOUBLE ACTION revolvers. Usable with one hand, able to stop a charging native with just one shot, if there’s a misfire, just pull the trigger again, and if all else fails… hit the bugger on the head with it.
“Adams was the manager for the London arms manufacturers George & John Deane. On August 22, 1851, he was granted a British patent for a new revolver design.
[1] The .436 Deane and Adams was a five-shot percussion
(cap-and-ball) revolver with a spurless hammer, and the first revolver with a solid frame. The revolver used a double-action only system in which the external hammer could not be cocked by thumbing it back, like most other pistols of the era, but instead cocked itself when the trigger was pulled. This made it possible to fire the gun much more rapidly than contemporary single-action
revolvers, such as the Colt , which had to be cocked before each shot.
[2] Deane and Adams' revolver was shown at the Great Exhibition
of 1851 and subsequently approved by the British Army's Small Arms Committee in addition to being adopted by the East India Company for use by their cavalry. Orders for the revolver were great enough to prompt the Deane brothers to make Adams a partner in their firm, which became Messrs. Deane, Adams, and Deane.
In 1855 a veteran of the Crimean conflict, Lieutenant Frederick E.B. Beaumont
, improved the gun by linking the trigger to a spurred hammer, permitting both single- and double-action fire. A new version of the revolver, the Beaumont–Adams, was produced and became so popular that it is said Samuel Colt was forced to shut down his London manufacture as a result.
[1]
So the definitive answer to the original question is “Yes”
//EDIT//
A couple of deeply offended claims that I failed to answer the question, and instead indulged in “an anti-Samuel Colt rant”. To that comment, I’d draw the commenter’s attention to a Bostonian gunsmith (who lived in London for several decades) named Elisha Haydon Collier. He produced a flintlock revolver in London, which he patented in 1818. Samuel Colt was apparently fully aware of the pistol’s existence… which makes his claim to the
SAME PATENT OFFICE that HE had “invented the revolver” laughable. Here it is:
Anyone else want to tell me “That’s not a revolver”? The Patent office disagrees!
WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?
This one brings joy to my cold, black heart.
Source: I.P. Sukhanov, Director, Weapons Division, TsVMM.
Colt - The Boarding Party Revolver of Russian Sailors.
The general tendency to invent firearms with several rounds made Samuel Colt think that multiple barrels were the wrong path: "There must be a single barrel and revolving cylinder with chambers holding the rounds." The inventor took out a patent on this principle in 1835. Further refinements of a multiple round ("repeating") revolver were crowned with receipt of a patent on 27 October 1849.
Two years later Colt showed six various kinds of his revolver at the International Exhibition in London. The most successful of them was the Model 2 Navy (a naval pattern from 1851). This revolver demonstrated the best accuracy when firing; at 64 paces 25 out of 48 shots hit a 30 cm by 30 cm square target.
In that year model "Navy U.S.A." colts began serial production in American factories. By 1854 67,500 of them had been made. Production increased continuously so that in the years 1867 to 1873 some 200,000 to 215,000 were made every year. During the Crimean War (1853-1856) this model revolver was also manufactured in London, England, where 60,000 were made (the "Navy London"). In May 1854 the Russian minister of war, Prince V.A. Dolgorukov, received a message from Brussels saying that "... the trading firm of Schmidt and Co. is offering our government the chance to acquire a thousand "revolver" system pistols firing six shots, priced at 125 francs each, including all costs of transporting these weapons to the Russian border at Tilsit, to where they would be delivered no more than two months from the day the contract was signed. The firearm known as a "revolver" is most impressive. (Signed) Consul General for Russia in Brussels, Major General Glinka."
Glinka's letter soon arrived on Emperor Nicholas I's desk and received the following resolution: "By Highest Authority I permit the Navy to procure five hundred pistols upon the stated conditions."
Lieutenant F. N. Yanovskii of the Coast Artillery Corps was sent to Brussels to buy and receive the firearms. Non-Commissioned Officer S. Mesyanchuk went with him to guard the funds. The drafting and signing of the contract was assigned to State Councilor Berkherakht.
In Belgium Lieutenant Yanovskii realized that J. Schmidt was actually just assembling revolvers from parts delivered from American and English factories.
A little later Samuel Colt gave Nicholas I a presentation model of his weapon. The artistic decoration on the revolver was done by the master Gustav Yang: blackened steel detailing with gold tracery. The grip was mounted in bronze and with decorative engraving. The emperor reciprocated by giving Colt a snuff box decorated with imitation diamonds.
Later similar revolvers were owned by Alexander II and the grand dukes Constantine Nikolaevich and Michael Nikolaevich. These revolvers are now in the collections of the State Hermitage.
In June 1854 a contract was signed for the production and delivery to St. Petersburg of the first 500 Model 2 Navy revolvers. This batch of colts (500 weapons with accessories) was delivered to St. Petersburg in February 1855, which was more than opportune since at this time the defenders of Sevastopol were in dire need of repeating firearms. However, the delivery of the next batch of 1000 weapons was constantly postponed, and the quality of the revolvers became markedly inferior due to the use of handmade parts. The business culminated in breaking the contract with Colt and a decision to produce colts in Russia. The master gunsmith of the prototypes shop at the Tula Arms Factory, I. Norman, was called to St. Petersburg to examine the colt revolvers. He confirmed that they could be made in Tula, and the factory immediately was given the order to produce 400 weapons.
The most skilled and experienced craftsmen were assigned to make the first Tula revolver. The Tula production Kol't differed from its prototype. The barrel was made from forged cast steel which increased its strength and allowed the barrel walls to be 0.3mm thinner. The barrel, shortened by 2mm, had six grooves instead of seven (0.38mm deep, 1.78mm wide) with a regular turn of 3/8 of a revolution. The height of sight was increased. The surface of the cylinder was engraved with a naval battle between American and Mexican ships. The cost of a Tula revolver was 25 roubles (an American one cost 32 silver roubles 63 kopecks). Revolver cartridges were made of a paper covering rolled for 1-3/4 turns in a shell, inside which was placed a gunpowder charge (full charge weighed 1.33 grams, and reduced--0.97 grams). Bullets were conical-cylindrical (15.2mm long, diameter 9.3mm, weight 7.8 grams). The bullet was fastened to the shell by two turns of rough thread. The production of kol't pistols by individual order (decorated variants) was placed with the Izhev Arms Factory.
The revolver proved to be well made and it was shown to the emperor. Comparative firing trials with Russian and foreign models were carried out in Tula and at the Sestroretsk factory in that same year of 1855 with uniformly positive results. Assessments of the testing by Collet, the head of the Sestroretsk factory's master workshop, and Trummer, the instructor of rifle battalions, were favorably approved by the inspector of arms factories Lieutenant General A. Golitsyn. Factory workers began serial production. The first three hundred revolvers from Tula were delivered to St.-Petersburg merchant Ye. Paramonov on 28 February 1856. A St.-Petersburg tradesman, P. Kurikov, made holsters, belts, and firing cap pouches for them (at 30, 23, and 13 kopecks each, respectively).
Tula Colts with their accessories went to the Guards Naval Equipage. Soon a second model Colt was being sold for 30 silver roubles in the stores of merchants Vishnevskii, Bartnits, Junker, and Skorsyrev.
A little later these revolvers (naval model) began to be issued to line naval equipages. They armed ships' officers, bosuns, drummers, buglers, and boarding parties. Large-scale issue of the new weapon was accompanied by issues with the firing cap's inflammability. Firing pins for these revolvers were made according to the size of (smaller) hunting firing caps, but Russian government factories produced only large caps and were not equipped to make small ones. It was resorted to buying them from the French firm Geveleau (35 thousand of two types) and in Belgium from the manufacturers Falisse and Trapmann (125 thousand caps for the fleet and 75 thousand for the Tula Arms Factory.)
Alongside the indisputable virtues of the Colt revolvers were substantial defects such as, for example, the charges, manual cocking, and the diameter of the firing pin channel, which with unskilled use often led to excessive leaking of gunpowder.
However, even after the appearance of other kinds of revolvers the Colts remained in the navy's arsenal. This is explained by the chronic shortage of Russian firearms. We know that the sailors of patrol boats, monitors, and other ships were armed with "koltovskie" revolvers even at the time of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78.
