COLT SINGLE-ACTION REVOLVERS MARTIN PEGLER 21/09/2016 15:09 Author Illustrators Martin Pegler was for many years the Senior Curator of Mark Stacey was born in Manchester in 1964 and has been Firearms at the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds, UK. a freelance illustrator since 1987. He has a lifelong interest Martin has established The Somme Historical Centre in all periods of history, particularly military history, and (www.martinpegler.com), where visitors can see the has specialized in this area throughout his career. Mark technology used in the 1914–18 trench warfare. He is the completed the battlescene illustrations for this book. author of a number of books including the highly acclaimed Born in Malaya in 1949, Alan Gilliland spent 18 years as Out of Nowhere: A History of the Military Sniper. the graphics editor of the UK’s Daily Telegraph, winning 19 awards in that time. He now writes, illustrates, and publishes fiction (www.ravensquill.com), as well as illustrating for a variety of publishers, architects, and developers (www.alangilliland.com). Alan completed the cutaway illustration for this book. Other titles in the series WPN No: 9 • ISBN: 978 1 84908 433 8 WPN No: 11 • ISBN: 978 1 84908 526 7 WPN No: 19 • ISBN: 978 1 84908 803 9 WPN No: 23 • ISBN: 978 1 78096 011 1 WPN No: 42 • ISBN: 978 1 4728 0657 4 WPN No: 44 • ISBN: 978 1 4728 1095 3 WPN52 Cover.indd 2 COLT SINGLE-ACTION REVOLVERS MARTIN PEGLER WPN_052.colt Layout.v6.indd 1 21/09/2016 15:06 This electronic edition published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Acknowledgments Publishing Plc My grateful thanks to Dr. Robert Maze and Dr. Laurie Landau First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Osprey Publishing, for providing photographs of some of their fine Colt collection and associated ammunition. Also to Roy Jinks, Smith & Wesson PO Box 883, Oxford, OX1 9PL, UK historian, for permission to quote from his book, and to Peter 1385 Broadway, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10018, USA Smithurst for his assistance. As always, this work is entirely my E-mail: [email protected] responsibility and any technical errors are also mine. Osprey Publishing, part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Artist’s note Readers may care to note that the original paintings from which © 2017 Osprey Publishing Ltd. the battlescenes in this book were prepared are available for private sale. All reproduction copyright whatsoever is retained by All rights reserved the Publishers. All enquiries should be addressed to: You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or [email protected] by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or The Publishers regret that they can enter into no correspondence otherwise), without the prior written permission of the upon this matter. publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil Editor’s note claims for damages. In this book linear, weight, and volume measurements are given in US customary units of measurement (yards, feet, inches, A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British pounds, ounces, grains). The following data will help when Library converting between US customary and metric measurements: Print ISBN: 978 1 4728 1098 4 1yd = 91.44cm PDF ebook ISBN: 978 1 4728 1099 1 1ft = 30.48cm ePub ebook ISBN: 978 1 4728 1100 4 1in = 2.54cm 1lb = 0.45kg Index by Rob Munro 1oz = 28.35g Typeset in Sabon and Univers 1 grain = 0.002oz Originated by PDQ Media, Bungay, UK 1 grain = 0.064g Osprey Publishing supports the Woodland Trust, the UK’s leading Front cover, above: An Army-issue Colt Single Action Army, in woodland conservation charity. Between 2014 and 2018 our .45 caliber with 7½in barrel. These were the revolvers that were donations are being spent on their Centenary Woods project in used in the bulk of the fighting during the turbulent period of the the UK. Indian Wars. (NRA Museums, NRAMuseums.com) Front cover, below: Paul Newman (left) and Robert Redford in a www.ospreypublishing.com  scene from the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. (Bettmann) The NRA Museums Since 1935, the NRA Museum collection has become one of the Title-page image: Purportedly an image of Jesse and Frank James, world’s finest museum collections dedicated to firearms. Now with Jesse (at left) holding a Colt Model 1860 Army. housed in three locations, the NRA Museums offer a glimpse into Frank, on the right, is holding a Remington Model 1858 Army. the firearms that built our nation, helped forge our freedom, and (Library of Congress) captured our imagination. The National Firearms Museum, located at the NRA Headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, details and To find out more about our authors and books visit examines the nearly 700-year history of firearms with a special www.ospreypublishing.com. Here you will find our full range of emphasis on firearms, freedom, and the American experience. publications, as well as exclusive online content, details of The National Sporting Arms Museum, at the Bass Pro Shops in forthcoming events and the option to sign up for our newsletters. Springfield, Missouri, explores and exhibits the historical You can also sign up for Osprey membership, which entitles you development of hunting arms in America from the earliest to a discount on purchases made through the Osprey site and explorers to modern day, with a focus on hunting, conservation, access to our extensive online image archive. and freedom. The Frank Brownell Museum of the Southwest, at the NRA Whittington Center in Raton, NM, is a jewel box museum with 200 guns that tells the history of the region from the earliest Native American inhabitants through early Spanish exploration, the Civil War, and the Old West. For more information on the NRA Museums and hours, visit www. NRAmuseums.com. WPN_052.colt Layout.v6.indd 2 21/09/2016 15:06 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 4 DEVELOPMENT 7 The evolution of the revolver USE 33 Revolvers, revolution, and renegades IMPACT 69 The dawn of mass-production CONCLUSION 78 BIBLIOGRAPHY 79 INDEX 80 WPN_052.colt Layout.v6.indd 3 21/09/2016 15:06 INTRODUCTION Colt. Even to people with little interest in or knowledge of firearms, the name has a resonance that creates a powerful mental image. Normally it is that of the archetypal cowboy, toting a six-shooter; an indication of just how successful Samuel Colt’s products were in defining an era. More than any other, the Colt revolver is the most easily identifiable and iconic handgun in the world. Since its introduction in 1847, it has remained in production – with one or two slight hiatuses – up to the present day, and it has been copied by countless other manufacturers. Samuel Colt was born in Hartford, Connecticut on July 19, 1814, into a world that had changed little since the first English settlers landed at Cape Henry on April 29, 1607. His father was a dyemaker, with a particularly thorough knowledge of chemical processes. Young Samuel showed some hint of his inherited scientific curiosity at a very early age, making his own pyrotechnics and taking firearms apart to see how they functioned. He developed a curious fascination with nitrous oxide and became something of an expert on the subject, which would stand him in good stead in the future. He also loved manufacturing explosives and began to construct submarine mines, successfully blowing up a raft in a local pond at the age of 15. When an experiment with a torpedo went badly wrong, however, he was forced to leave his school, the Amherst Academy, under something of a cloud. This did not deter him in the least, however, and his interest in firearms continued unabated. He joined a trading ship bound for Calcutta at the age of 16 and it was from this time, he later acknowledged, that his initial idea for a revolving-cylinder firearm originated. Although Colt’s later design was heralded at the time as a major breakthrough, as is so often the case his revolvers were actually the culmination of decades – one could reasonably say centuries – of firearms development by other men that eventually enabled Colt to piece together 4 the mechanical jigsaw which culminated in a workable multi-shot WPN_052.colt Layout.v6.indd 4 21/09/2016 15:06 handgun. There had been earlier attempts, harking back to the 18th century, and even the most dedicated Colt enthusiast will admit that the original percussion revolvers produced by Colt were not the strongest, most reliable, or most accurate of handguns. Colt himself acknowledged the shortcomings of the earliest designs, and continued to refine them throughout his working life. Probably no other manufacturer, firearms or otherwise, has had such a long-term impact on the modern world as Samuel Colt. Not for nothing was it said: “It wasn’t God or the declaration of Independence that made all men free and equal, it was Colonel Samuel Colt.” If he was not the finest firearms designer America was ever to produce, there was one thing that Samuel Colt excelled in: exceptional marketing skills, in an era when the term had not even been coined. Nor could it be claimed that the Colt factory pioneered totally new methods of mass-production; it utilized the same techniques – the “American system” of manufacture – that companies such as Robbins & Lawrence and Eli Whitney had developed prior to the Samuel Colt, 1814–62. (Photo by American Civil War. They used standardized machine-made components MPI/Getty Images) that were truly interchangeable and once the Colt factory had been established at Hartford, Connecticut, these same production methods were employed, utilizing improved and refined forms of fabricating parts to streamline the production process and improve profitability. Such was the demand for Colt’s revolvers from Europe that in 1852 he established a factory at Pimlico in London. During the Civil War years (1861–65), spectacular advances had been made in firearms design, particularly with regard to ammunition. If Colt suffered from one major problem in the post-bellum years, it was the company’s inability to bypass the Rollin White patent, which prevented Colt from converting its percussion guns to cartridge-loading. The Rollin White patent covered the loading of revolvers by means of a cartridge from the rear, and it held up the future development of Colt’s cartridge revolvers, permitting the company’s arch-rival, Smith & Wesson, to establish itself as a more innovative handgun manufacturer, introducing self-ejecting cylinders and double-action mechanisms. It could be argued that the Colt company never quite recovered from this, even after the patent expired and it was able to manufacture its own range of cartridge revolvers. It is a curious anomaly that the actual working lifespan of all these single-action revolvers encompassed little more than 50 years, by which time a new generation of more sophisticated revolvers had appeared. From the late 1830s, when the first Colt Paterson revolvers emerged, men clamored for the Colt, which was carried by miners in the goldfields of California, soldiers of both sides during the savage battles of the American Civil War, and by trappers, traders, buffalo hunters, renegades, and robbers. Tens of thousands of Colts were carried by pioneers who began the long trek into the uncharted land west of the Mississippi River as migration increased dramatically after the end of the war. With the 5 WPN_052.colt Layout.v6.indd 5 21/09/2016 15:06 growing conflict between settlers and the Native American tribes, the US Cavalry, placed in the forefront of the disputed territories, were issued the Colt as their standard service revolver despite its by then rather questionable practicality. It was a sign of the high regard in which Colt’s handguns were held that it was chosen over stronger, faster-loading revolvers that were by then being produced by companies such as Remington and Smith & Wesson. So brilliant was Colt’s advertising that today the popularity of the brand remains undiminished. In part this can be attributed to its unparalleled use in movies and television series, where the viewer could be forgiven for believing that no other form of handgun existed in early America. (The Winchester, similarly, appeared to be the only rifle.) Above all else, the Colt has become synonymous with the cowboy era, which in itself lasted for a remarkably short period of time. Although it was Mexican vaqueros who worked the Western plains from the 18th century, the American cowboy’s lifespan began only with the arrival of the huge cattle herds to feed the burgeoning populations in the West in the 1840s; and they died out with the introduction of railroads and the fencing of the ranges in the 1880s in order to keep cattle away from the ever-expanding A typical Colt Single Action Army farms. It is not, of course, coincidental that this was also the main era “Peacemaker” in .44-40 caliber, during which the handgun and rifle were put to their greatest use and loved by the movie industry to the around which hundreds of movies and television shows were based. To exclusion of almost every other understand how Samuel Colt and his ideas were to affect the future of type of revolver. (© Royal Armouries XII.3698) firearms design so radically, however, we need to go back some 200 years. 6 WPN_052.colt Layout.v6.indd 6 21/09/2016 15:06 DEVELOPMENT The evolution of the revolver PRECURSORS A German revolving wheel-lock pistol (shown here) and carbine, Single-shot firearms, no matter how sophisticated, suffer from one both datable to about 1610, exist inescapable shortcoming. Regardless of how perilous the situation, in in the collection of the UK’s Royal order to reload his weapon a shooter must become defenseless for a period Armouries. These weapons were mechanically unsophisticated, of time. To possess a firearm that had a cylinder or magazine which requiring the cylinder to be contained multiple charges was a goal toward which many gunsmiths and rotated manually and the priming engineers had striven tirelessly. There were a few partial successes, of charge loaded prior to each shot, course, but aside from the limitations of their manual mechanisms the the chamber then being locked in position in alignment with the main problem exhibited by such guns was their predisposition for multiple barrel. Wheel-locks were, by their ignition, as the flash from one charge ignited the others. nature, capricious things when it It was not until the 18th century that an element of mechanical came to ignition, although sophistication began to creep into the designs of prototypical revolvers. matters improved somewhat with the more general introduction of Two examples stand out in particular, one being a beautifully made the flintlock mechanism around German flintlock sporting gun of 1732 which has a steel or frizzen that the 1620s. Samuel Colt examined closes off each preprimed pan until it is in line with the barrel for firing, the pistol when he visited the although it still required manual turning prior to each shot. The other Tower of London in 1849, and used it to illustrate his lecture to example is a compact revolving flintlock pistol manufactured by Artemus the Institute of Civil Engineers in Wheeler of Concord, Massachusetts, in 1818, and patented the same year London in 1851. (© Royal in Great Britain by his friend Elisha Collier (1788–1856). Armouries XII.1078) 7 WPN_052.colt Layout.v6.indd 7 21/09/2016 15:06 This English snaphaunce revolver, It was the invention of the percussion cap or caplock ignition in the c.1670, bears all the hallmarks of 1820s that finally enabled gunmakers to begin producing true revolvers. later revolvers. It was also With the problems of unreliable ignition finally resolved, gunsmiths initiated examined by Colt during his Tower production with renewed enthusiasm and in 1825, not long after Samuel of London visit in 1849. (© Royal Armouries XII.1780) Colt was born, Elisha Collier designed a five-chambered percussion revolver that was both self-aligning and rifled. True, it was a cumbersome and muzzle-heavy weapon, but Collier had overcome most of the technical stumbling-blocks that had hitherto constrained other designs. Artemus Wheeler’s revolving At some point in the early 1830s a transitional revolver, known as the flintlock gun (upper image below) had seven chambers, but also a pepperbox, began to make an appearance in both the United States and pawl mechanism that Europe. It was, in effect, a more practical version of Collier’s design, automatically rotated the cylinder. comprising of an elongated cylinder with between three and a dozen It was not flawless, however, and barrels, which rotated around a central arbor or axis pin. Percussion rotating the cylinder by means of cocking the hammer shows that ignited, the pepperbox was relatively effective, although only over very at times it did not align itself short ranges (it was said at the time that even a point-blank shot could perfectly with the barrel. An miss the target) as the centrally mounted hammer effectively blocked the existing example in the Royal line of sight for aiming. It did, however, provide a level of firepower that Armouries has had the pawl spring disconnected for precisely had hitherto been impossible to attain any other way. Samuel Colt later this reason. Elisha Collier greatly claimed that the pepperbox design was his idea, but as the type had improved on Wheeler’s revolving appeared across Europe and America at much the same time, it is more flintlock pistol design and from likely that several manufacturers had 1820 began to use percussion ignition. The rifled, five-shot simply utilized the concept of earlier example shown here (lower flintlock revolvers and adapted them to image below) was made by Mills the new percussion ignition. of London, a partner of Collier’s. (© Royal Armouries XII.1503 (above) and XII.4000 (below)) 8 WPN_052.colt Layout.v6.indd 8 21/09/2016 15:06