British Enfield History, Part One

Enfield. The very name conjures up visions of the iconic British service rifles of the 20th century for most of us. Small arms manufacturing at Enfield goes all the way back to the muzzleloading era. The Royal Small Arms Factory in the Enfield suburb of London was opened and assembling Brown Bess muskets in 1804. Anew manufacturing facility was built and began making guns for the British military from 1816 to 1988. Power was originally provided by water wheels turned by the River Lea.

The river was also used by barges to bring raw materials from ocean-going ships on the Thames and finished product back for shipment all over the Empire and the world. The Pattern 1800 Infantry Rifle, a muzzleloading flintlock known as the Baker rifle, was the first product manufactured at Enfield and saw service with the British army during the Napoleonic Wars as well as by the Mexican Army under López de Santa Anna during the Texas Revolution.

It was considered very accurate for its day with hits reported out as far as 300 yards. Comparing it to the Brown Bess smoothbore musket that most troops were still using at the time, it was indeed a marvel of accuracy. It was said any man that was hit with a single, aimed shot at 100 yards with a Brown Bess was a very unlucky man indeed and that was typical British service issue until the 1840s when it was replaced by the Brunswick rifle.

The Brunswick rifle was a muzzleloading percussion rifle in .704 caliber with two groove rifling. It took a belted round ball that was notoriously difficult to load. The 577 Snider. belt on the ball was to be fitted into the rifling in the barrel and required the shooter pay attention to aligning the two. Not terribly difficult on the rifle range but a deuced nuisance on the battlefield when one was being shot at.

Nonetheless, the rifle was in production for nearly 50 years (1836-1885) in four basic models both rifled and smooth bored. They were the patterns 1836, 1840, 1841, and 1848. It was a heavy beast to carry, weighing in at 9-10 pounds without its sword bayonet. After these two somewhat cumbersome weapons the British got it nearly right in 1851. The invention of the Minié ball changed warfare around the world.

It was faster to load than the Baker and Brunswick which were special issue due to their being so slow to load. With Claude- Étienne Minié’s projectile, new rifled muskets were as quick to load as the smoothbores while retaining the accuracy of previous rifles. That made it conceivable to arm an entire army with rifles. Unfortunately, the Board of Ordnance decided to retain the overall length of the older muskets that most troops were still armed with to maintain consistency in bayonet combat.

The 39-inch barrels had hardly gotten into production when someone woke up and realized this was a silly concept. Within two years anew model appeared and finally gave the British Army as good a rifled musket as any army in the world: The Pattern 1853 Enfield used in the Crimean War at The Thin Red Line (Battle of Balaclava) by the British troops as well as by the North and South in the American Civil War.

These were .577 caliber and made in several lengths for the Army, Navy, and artillery troops, with a carbine-length for the cavalry. Most of the guns that saw use in America were made by private companies because Enfield couldn’t keep up with the demand from both its own country and the United States who, at this point, weren’t very united. You would think with all this success everyone would be happy with the gun but you’d be wrong.

The British Admiralty decided that the barrel of the 1853 was a bit too light and thin to handle the heavy cutlass bayonet they had come up with. They demanded and got a heavier barreled version with five groove rifling This was designated the 1858 Enfield. The Pattern 1858 Indian Service rifle was developed to arm the Indian Army. The British were always very clever in arming its colonial troops with firearms of lesser effectiveness than those issued to

Similar in concept to the 1873 "Trapdoor" Springfield but opening to the side rather than toward the muzzle. British units. This was probably in response to British fears of colonial revolt and sealed by the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857. Rather than arm the Indian Army with 1853 rifled muskets, they bored out the barrels to smoothbore, making them less accurate and increasing the bore diameter from .577 to .656, and replaced the adjustable sights to fixed sights.

This made the Indian Army service arm less accurate than the British and also made the barrel A tilting block action with an internal hammer in the original .577/450 Martini-Henry was later converted to .303 British. The Mark IV was given a longer handle to give the shooter more leverage to extract the fired case. thin enough to occasionally burst upon firing. It would also flex and bend if the bayonet was used with any vigor. This lead to a heaver barreled version that was renamed the Pattern 1859 (modified).

Another version of the 1853 Enfield was the Pattern 1861 Enfield musketoon. It was basically an 1853 Enfield with a short barrel and a faster rifling twist. The British issued it to artillery and the Confederacy imported them to arm both The wholesale slaughter of the War of Northern Aggression ("American Civil War" as the Yankees call it) saw the introduction of small numbers of experimental cartridge rifles, including some repeaters.

But since this is a history of British Enfield firearms, we’ll skip over these and stick with firearms development at Enfield. The American Civil War and the innovative, experimental, and limited-issue cartridge firearms it inspired was the death knell of the muzzleloading era. Governments, being frugal in spending on the military when the guns are silent, was uninterested in developing anew breechloader.

Both the United States and Britain looked for ways to update the vast quantities of muzzleloading rifles they had on hand rather than spend money developing anew rifle. In the United States, this led to Erskine S. Allin’s conversions of adding a hinged breechblock ("trapdoor") to the Model 1861 Rifled Musket that had been used as standard Union issue. The British used the Snider conversion of the 1853 Enfield. artillery and cavalry units when they could sneak them through the Union blockade.

The 1866 Snider-Enfield conversion of the 1853 Enfield used most of the original parts with the exception of the breech. Developed by Jacob Snid-

577 Snider, .577/450 Martini-Henry, and .45-70 Government used in the trapdoor 1873 Springfield for size comparison. With 85 grains of black powder, it is no wonder the Martini-Henry recoil was considered "substantial." er originally from Montgomery, Georgia and adapted by the British, it fired a .577 caliber cartridge and utilized the original stock, lock, a modified hammer, and all the original furniture. In other words, it gave the British Army a breachloader at a really cheap price.

Despite being a stop gap between the muzzleloading era and anew design, it was both more accurate than the original 1853 as well as much faster to load. The design was so successful and the conversion so easy that there were many imitations, including those of the Nepalese and Dutch, as well as unauthorized knock offs resulting in the French Tabatière and M1867 Russian Krnka rifles. Sniders were made in three lengths.

The Rifled Musket or Long Rifle with a 36.5" barrel and three barrel bands, the Short Rifle with a 30.5" barrel and two barrel bands, and the Cavalry and Artillery Carbine with a 19.5" barrel and one barrel band. The Snider conversions served in the British Army for about a decade until slowly phased out as the first of the really famous British breechloaders were phased in during the mid-1870s. However, the Sniders were given or sold to colonial troops and saw service well into the 20th century with them.

Once again, this kept their colonial troops one generation behind the British Army in firearms. If you have ever seen the movie Zulu you are familiar with the star of the movie and the next rifle manufactured at Enfield: The .577/450 Martini- Henry adopted in 1871.

Famously used at the Battle of Rorke’s Drift by 139 British Army regulars from the 24th Regiment of Foot and a handful of colonial troops against an estimated 3,000-4,000 Zulu warriors fresh off the defeat of a force of 1,800 British, colonial, and native troops along with perhaps 400 civilians at Isandlwana. The cartridge it used was the old .577 Snider base soldered to a brass foil case that was necked down to .450 to improve trajectory and velocity.

Loaded with 85 grains of No. 6 black powder and a 485 grain lead bullet, recoil was substantial. Originally designed as a breechloader rather than a conversion from an older muzzleloading, it was designed by Swiss inventor Friedrich von Martini based on a Peabody design. The rifling was designed by a Scotsman named Alexander Henry, thus Martini-Henry. In the end there were four different variations of this service rifle identified as Mark I-IV.

In 1877 a carbine version was introduced that in itself had five variations. This seems to be the beginning of the confusing English system of coming up with names and markings for every small change no matter how slight. That also led to every person that made any update to the firearm stamping it to show it had been modified to the latest pattern.

You don’t have to have seen many British service rifles to know they have more markings on them than a modern Ruger but the marks on the British rifles don’t spell anything. Still, they tell a story if you know how to read them. The original cases were brass foil rolled around a mandrel and then soldered to an iron base. These were then loaded with black powder and proved to be rather fragile, subject to being damaged, and tended to stick in the chamber as the barrel heated up.

They were eventually replaced by a drawn solid brass case. The study and collecting of British small arms ammunition is a collecting niche all on its own as there were so many variations. In 1889 the British started converting .577/450 Martini-Henry to .303 British. Of course, they couldn’t simply call it a .303 Martini. That would have been too simple. These were renamed Martini-Metford rifles. The conversion used Metfordpattern rifled barrels that were fine for the original black powder .303 cartridges.

In 1895 the Metford barrels were found to quickly wear out when fired with the new smokeless powder version of the .303 cartridge. In that year the Enfield rifled barrel was introduced and the name was changed to Martini-Enfield when the barrel was changed. So, the same gun could have been a Martini-Henry one day, a Martini-Medford the next, and a Martini-Enfield a couple of years later.

The Martini single shot action in its various calibers and conversions was in service from 1871 until 1918 and remained in reserve in Australia, New Zealand, and India well into the World War II years. That concludes our quick tour of the Enfield-made rifles prior to the adoption of a repeating rifle. We will look at those in the next installment. AG