To say that the British Board of Ordnance (which would become the War Department in 1855) was “reluctant” to adopt a revolver for military service is an understatement to say the least. Handguns had been issued in rather limited quantities by the British military for land service, and other than some mounted regiments, sergeant majors and buglers, the handgun in British service was almost exclusively the prevue of the officers who were required to provide his own sidearms. The Royal Navy (the “senior service”) was somewhat different, as the handgun was seen as an integral part of the variety of small arms used by sailors in boarding and landing operations. As the age of the reliable percussion revolver began to dawn in the 1840s and 1850s, the British military still eschewed the repeating pistol in favor of the single shot, large caliber muzzleloading pistol, which would continue to see service in some arms of the service into the third quarter of the 19th century!
The first revolvers acquired by the British military were .36 caliber Colt Model 1851 Navy single action revolvers and Robert Adams’ Model 1851 double action only percussion revolvers in both 38-bore (.50 caliber) and 54-bore (.442 caliber). These acquisitions occurred in concurrence with the outbreak of the Crimean War, and the revolvers were only authorized for issue on an emergency basis when single shot pistols were not available. Only Lancers, sergeant majors of Hussars and Dragoons, buglers and officers were authorized to receive the revolvers. Interestingly, of the 23,700 Colt 1851 Navy revolvers that were acquired by the British military between 1854 and 1856 only about 5,000 were issued for use by the land forces in the Crimea, nearly twice as many (some 9,600) were issued to the Royal Navy for use, and the balance remained in storage in the Tower of London. With the cessation of hostilities, the Colts were withdrawn from use by all land forces and only the Royal Navy would continue to use the guns, as well as some colonial forces. To further emphasize their traditional orthodoxy of the British War Department officially adopted a .577 caliber single shot percussion muzzleloading pistol in 1856 that would continue to be the primary issue sidearm for those few soldiers authorized to carry one, for more than a decade.
The mid-1860s and the conclusion of the American Civil War showed the world that the muzzleloading single shot infantry rifle was now officially obsolete and that breechloading arms now ruled the battlefield. In case the lessons of the Civil War were too far away for the War Department to truly take note of, the overwhelming success of Prussian troops using their breechloading Dreyse “Needle Rifles” against Austrian troops armed with traditional percussion muzzleloaders during the 38-day Austro-Prussian War of 1866 certainly drove the point home. The British almost immediately began to pursue a program to alter their muzzleloading Enfield pattern arms to metallic cartridge breechloaders. As an afterthought the War Department also started to look at modernizing the Model 1851 and 1854 Adams patent percussion revolvers in service.
While most people think of Robert Adams when the name “Adams” is used when discussing English revolvers, his cousin John Adams was nearly as important in the world of British handguns, particularly in the nascent days of breechloading cartridge revolvers. While Robert Adams Model 1851 double action revolver had been the first British designed revolver to be acquired by the British military and his subsequent Model 1854 Beaumont-Adams revolver would set the standard for percussion revolvers in British service, it was John Adams’ Model 1867 that became the first standard issue cartridge revolver for the British Army.
John had been intimately involved with gun making and inventing most of his life and had spent a good part of that time in the shadow of his cousin Robert, even working alongside Robert at the London Armoury Company. It was in the post-Civil War period that John really came into his own, as he devised methods of altering percussion revolvers to cartridge revolvers and eventually developing what became known as the Model 1867 breechloading cartridge revolver, a conversion of the M1854 Beaumont-Adams percussion revolver and which was adopted into British service as the Mk I revolver in the .450 Adams chambering. The official War Department entry 1738 in the “List of Changes” dated November 26, 1868, described the Mk I revolver as “Deane & Adams’ Revolver Pistol Converted to a Breech-Loader by Mr. J. Adams.” The modifications to the solid frame Adams percussion revolvers were to modify the frame by adding a loading gate, add a fixed extractor rod to the right side of the frame and barrel and to install a newly produced five-chambered bored-through cartridge cylinder. The Mk I was quickly followed up with the Mk II model of 1872. These guns were purpose built as cartridge revolvers by John’s Adams Patent Small Arms Company. They utilized a two-piece frame with a six-chambered cylinder, loading gate and fixed ejector rod of the Mk I. The Mk II was quickly followed up by Adams’ Model 1872, designated as the Mk III which incorporated a new pivoting ejector rod that was carried concealed within the center of the cylinder arbor pin. This system would see extensive use throughout the latter part of the 19th century in such well-known designs as the Webley RIC and Bulldog revolvers. The Mk III was adopted and ordered in some numbers by the British War Department with deliveries beginning circa 1874, with deliveries being made not only to regular British military forces but to colonial forces as well, including the Northwest Mounted Police in Canada and forces in Australia. The M1872 Mk III (sometimes referred to as the M1878) was the standard issue British military revolver from the time it was adopted until 1880 when the Enfield Mk I began to replace it. This made the Mk III the primary handgun for the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880), the Anglo-Zulu War (1879), and the 1st Boer War (1880-1881). Despite the popular culture image of the British officers at Rouke’s Drift using break top revolvers, perpetuated by movies like Zulu, it was the Adams Mk III that was issue side arm of that era.
In 1880, the War Department adopted a newly designed revolver that would be produced at the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield (RSAF). The design was arrived at in response to a general dissatisfaction with the Adams MkIII revolver then in general issue and a desire to find a more effective cartridge. This new revolver design would represent a number of innovations for the War Department in that it was the first revolver produced by the British government at RSAF, it was the first time that the solid frame Adams was abandoned for a hinged frame revolver that utilized simultaneous extraction and it introduced the “wings” forward of the cylinder to assist with holstering the revolver. This last innovation would become a ubiquitous feature on English service revolvers for nearly a century. The new revolver was officially referred to as “Pistol, Revolver, B.L., Enfield (Mark I), Interchangeable” but was more commonly referred to simply as the Enfield MkI Revolver. Unlike the Webley top break revolvers that would eventually replace the Enfield MkI and MkII revolvers, when the barrel was released to tip down, it did not take the cylinder with it but rather pulled the cylinder forward along the axis of the arbor pin. The cylinder moved only far enough to facilitate the extraction of empty cartridge cases, allowing the unfired cartridges to remain in the revolver. Unlike most top break revolvers, like the Smith & Wesson or Webley designs which used an extractor star that pushed the cartridges up as the barrel tipped and then retracted into the cylinder, the Enfield revolver used a fixed extractor star to hold the cartridge rims in place near the breech face while the cylinder moved forward. A similar design, minus the extractor star, was utilized in the Merwin, Hulbert & Company “automatic ejection” revolvers. Like the Merwin, Hulbert & Co. design, this “self-extracting” mechanism, as the British military referred to it, required that the revolver was loaded through loading gate, rather than directly into the cylinder when the action was open, as was possible with the Smith & Wesson or Webley designs. A period explanation of the way the pistol was unloaded was published in the 1886 North-West Mounted Police Manual and Firing Exercise and read in part:
“….with a smart jerk of the wrist, throw the barrel forward,…” and closing the barrel “…by a smart jerk throw the barrel back into position.”
The new British service revolver was officially adopted in April 1880, with some small improvements that were the result of the trials of the original design that were performed by the Royal Navy aboard HMS Excellent. The revolver was chambered for the .476 Enfield Mk II cartridge, a Berdan primed, black powder slightly tapered rimmed cartridge with a .455” bullet diameter, a .474” neck diameter, .478” base diameter and a .530” rim diameter. The case length was .87” and the overall length was 1.33”. The round nosed lead bullet weighed 265 grains, was propelled by an 18-grain powder charge to a muzzle velocity of 600 ft/s and had an anemic muzzle energy of about 80 to 90 foot-pounds. A slightly improved MkIII cartridge was adopted soon thereafter, which increased the bullet diameter to .477”, without any changes to the barrel of the revolve, which increased the pressure created by the cartridge and created some minimal increased in velocity and muzzle energy.
The new Enfield revolver had a 5.875” round barrel and a six chambered cylinder. The cylinder was flued with pointed terminations that are sometimes referred to as “church steeple” flutes. The action was traditional double action, allowing the revolver to be fired with either a long, heavy, double action trigger pull, or the hammer could be manually cocked, which provided a much lighter single action trigger pull. The action was opened by pulling back on a release on the top right rear of the frame, which then allowed the barrel to be tipped down, pulling the cylinder forward to facilitate the automatic extraction. As noted, loading was via a loading gate. The gate was downward hinged and located on the right side of the frame. Sights were simple, rugged, military revolver sights and consisted of a narrow sighting groove in the top of the frame and rounded blade on a tall base near the muzzle. A swiveling lanyard ring was mounted in the revolver’s butt. The revolvers were blued with one-piece walnut grips. The Mk I revolvers had checkered grips and the later Mk II revolvers had smooth grips. Some minor improvements in the mechanism and safety were made and officially adopted in April of 1882 as the Mk II. The War Department noted that the Mk II was “strong, simpler and safer” but more importantly cost “2 schillings and sixpence less” to produce than the Mk I. The Enfield revolvers were produced at RSAF from 1880 to 1889 and were officially replaced by the Webley Mk I in 1892, although the Webley’s started to be produced and brought into service in 1887. Like most British military arms that became obsolete and were no longer considered appropriate for front line service, the Enfield revolvers soon found themselves being sent to the far reaches of the British Empire and saw service around the globe, including in Australia, India and Canada. Some remained in service in these secondary locations into the second quarter of the 20th century, although most were out of service by the end of the Great War. At least a few stories suggest the venerable Mk II revolvers were still seeing service in Australia as late as 1942. A good example of the long-term use of the Mk II revolver is that it was in use with the North-West Mounted Police (now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) from 1883-1905. The Mk II also saw at least two decades of service with the Royal Navy during the last quarter of the 19thand early 20th centuries.
Offered here is an about FINE condition example of an Enfield Mk II Revolver that also bears the very weak remnants of North-West Mounted Police markings on the right side of the grip. Whether this revolver was one that the Mounties acquired new, directly from RSAF, or was one of the revolvers that they received when the guns were withdrawn from front line service. The revolver is clearly stamped with the traditional Victoria era {British Crown}/V.R. on the right rear of the frame over ENFIELD/1884/II. These markings show the revolver was made at RSAF Enfield, taken into service in 1884 and is the Mk II model. A small {Crown}/E/1 inspection is found on the lower front edge of the right side of the frame, and a tiny crowned British military proof mark is found on the front right edge of the topstrap. A pair of {Opposed Broad Arrows} are stamped behind the Enfield inspection mark on the lower right of the frame, indicating the revolver was removed from British military service. The right grip shows an extremely weak NWMP mark, which is barely visible, with only the “P” fully visible, but it is quite weak as well. The rack number 665 is stamped under the letters. That number makes sense, as at least 800 Mk II revolvers were acquired by the North-West Mounted Police. The serial number A2244 is stamped on the bottom of the frame and on the front face of the barrel web.
As noted, the revolver remains in about FINE condition and retains about 30%+ thinning blue overall. Most of the surviving blue is on the frame, with the barrel only retaining strong traces and the cylinder only retaining some traces in the protected areas like the cylinder flutes. Most of the areas where the finish has worn away, faded or thinned show a moderately oxidized brownish patina, with a few smaller areas where the dull pewter of bear metal is visible as well. The areas of wear with exposed metal are mostly along the highest edges and points of contact like the periphery of the cylinder and the muzzle. The metal is mostly smooth but does show some scattered freckles of oxidized surface roughens and some very small areas of lightly scattered pinpricking and minor pitting. The action of the revolver remains in fine condition and the revolver times, indexes and locks up very well. There is no noticeable wobble between the barrel and the frame, and latching system locks the revolver up tightly. The barrel release works as it should and the barrel tilts and the cylinder moves smoothly when the action is opened. The loading gate works correctly as well. The one-piece wood grip shows moderate wear and may have been lightly sanded at some point, which would explain the weak NWMP marking. The grip shows numerous bumps, dings and mars, but remains solid and is free of breaks or repairs. The original lanyard ring remains in place in the butt and still swivels as it should. The bore of the revolver in about FINE condition as well. It is mostly bright with crisp rifling and shows some scattered oxidation and moderate frosting.
Overall, this is an attractive and solid example of a fairly scarce Enfield Mk II Revolver. The gun shows real world use but no abuse and remains a fully functional and fairly crisp example with some nice period blue remaining on the metal. The North-West Mounted Police mark is weak but certainly adds to the interesting history of the revolver. This 1884 dated gun would have remained a front-line military revolver until sometime in the early 1890s and may well have had a second life with the NWMP into the early 20th Century. This revolver could have seen service during the Second Boer War (1899-1902) as well as in any one of numerous colonial conflicts including the conflicts in Sudan (1881-1899), the Third Anglo-Burmese War (1885-1887) and the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901). These revolvers do not appear on the American collector market very often and this would be a nice addition to a collection of British military service revolvers or a North-West Mounted Police Collection. This is a solid gun you will certainly be proud to add to your collection.