The Pattern 1851 Minié Rifle is one of the least often encountered of all general issue British military percussion long arms. The gun was the first rifled percussion arm to be widely issued to the British line infantry, replacing the smoothbore Pattern 1842 percussion musket, and foreshadowing the end of the Napoleonic Era “rifle regiment”. The gun was adopted in 1851 and was manufactured from 1852 through 1855, with some 35,000 total rifle muskets being produced. It appears that nearly every one of the Pattern 1851s saw service, as arms researcher and author DeWitt Bailey notes that by April of 1855 approximately 34,000 Pattern 1851s were issued for service. At the beginning of the Crimean War, the Pattern 1851 was the most advanced weapon readily available in the British military small arms arsenal. It retained much of the styling of the earlier Pattern 1842 musket, with a barrel secured by keys (wedges), and brass pipes to retain the ramrod. Unlike the .75 caliber Pattern 1842, the gun had a slightly smaller bore, measuring .708 and a 39” long barrel that was rifled with four broad, fairly deep grooves of uniform depth. An adjustable long-range rear sight was affixed to the upper rear of the barrel, which was graduated to a maximum distance of 900 yards. The balance of the gun was essentially the same as the earlier pattern smoothbore percussion muskets that it was designed to replace. 

The Pattern 1851 Minié Rifles performed fairly well in the Crimea but were quickly supplanted by the newly adopted Pattern 1853 “Enfield” Rifle Musket. This gun was a major advance in infantry long arm design and featured a reduced caliber bore of .577, a more advanced rear sight and a barrel secured by clamping barrel bands, instead of the Pattern 1851’s wedges. The Pattern 1851 was so quickly replaced by the new technology of the “Enfield” that at the conclusion of the Crimean War the guns were considered completely obsolete. The hierarchy of the British military expected long arms to have a useable service life of 10 years and required even obsolete weapons to be held in reserve for emergency issue for at least that long before being offered for sale. The Pattern 1851 Minié Rifle was held in such low regard after the adoption of the Pattern 1853 that the many of the guns were “stored” outside, exposed to the weather in an area adjacent to the Tower of London known simply as “the ditch”. More than likely this “storage area” was in fact the old moat that surrounded the Tower in earlier days, and it appears that due to a poorly managed and somewhat corrupt ordnance supply system, much of the surplus materiel from the war in the Crimea suffered a similar fate. 

With the coming of the American Civil War, and the urgent need for infantry long arms by both sides, a large number of obsolete British arms were sold as surplus, most of which were sold to the Confederacy by S. Isaac, Campbell & Company. According to Confederate purchasing records, some 14,900 British Pattern 1851 Minié Rifles were purchased during the early days of the war. Most of these arms were purchased between August of 1861 and January of 1862, with a handful purchased in the summer of 1862. Records indicate that at least 10,000 of these arms (and probably all of them) were purchased from J.E. Barnett & Sons of London, who had acquired the guns from the British Ordnance Department. Due to the fact that the arms had been left exposed to the elements in the Tower ditch for several years, Barnett refurbished the guns to make them functional. This apparently included the replacement of worn, damaged or missing parts and also involved re-proving the guns at the London Proof House. It is also likely that bayonets had to be contracted for to provide with the guns, as many of the bayonets were no doubt missing, damaged or unserviceable due to exposure to the weather. All known examples of Confederate imported Pattern 1851 Minié Riflesshow a set of London commercial proofs, applied during the Barnett refurbishment process, in addition to their original British military proofs, or their remnants. Barnett sold the majority of these arms to S. Isaac & Campbell at a rate of 40 shillings each, including the socket bayonet, and the Confederacy was charged 44 shillings, a simply 10% mark up for handling the sale. The summer of 1862 purchases were sold to the Confederacy at the lower rate of 40 shillings each. The guns were inspected by Messrs. Curtis and Hughes, who had been hired by S. Isaac & Campbell to act as viewers (inspectors) of arms. The Pattern 1851s inspected by Curtis & Hughes bear the inspection mark of CH / 1 in a small circle, on the upper comb of the stock, forward of the buttplate tang. Confederate documents refer to the Pattern 1851 rifle muskets by a number of different names, including “Old Army Pattern, rifled,” “Second-Hand Government Rifles,” “Minié Rifles,” “Second-Hand Rifles 1851 Pattern,” “Brown Bess Rifles 1851 Pattern” and “Rifled Brown Bessies.” Pattern 1851 Rifle Muskets were arriving in Confederate ports no later than January of 1862, with deliveries continuing throughout most of that year. According to the McRae Papers, Pattern 1851s were included in the cargos of the blockade runners Gladiator, Harriett Pinckney, Southwick, Stephen Hart and Ella Warley. While the guns that were aboard the Ella Warley and Stephen Hart (some 3,520 guns) were lost to capture by the Federal blockading squadron, 11,380 Pattern 1851 Minié Rifles were successfully delivered to Confederate ports and were subsequently issued for service. These guns had already seen hard use in the Crimea and saw additional hard service in Confederate hands. The end result is that the Pattern 1851 Minié Rifle is now a rarely encountered weapon and to my knowledge, only about two dozen Confederate marked Pattern 1851s are known to exist today.

The only item related to the Pattern 1851 Minié Rifle that is scarcer on the market than the gun itself is its accompanying socket bayonet; the Pattern 1851 Socket Bayonet. The standard Pattern 1851 bayonet was an adaptation of the British Pattern 1842 Socket Bayonet that had been in use with the British military previously. Only two changes dimensionally were made to the new Pattern 1851 bayonet when compared to the earlier Pattern 1842 bayonet. First, the muzzle diameter of the new bayonet was reduced to .87” from .945”. This was a result of the reduced .708” caliber of the Pattern 1851 versus the earlier .75” caliber bore of the Pattern 1842. Secondly, the muzzle to stud distance was reduced on the new Pattern 1851 bayonet because the Pattern 1851’s front sight was placed closer to the muzzle than the bayonet stud was on the P1842. This new distance was only 1.2”, versus the earlier 1.6”. Otherwise, the bayonets are visually nearly identical with an overall length of 21”, a nominally 17” triangular blade (approximately 18” when measured from the tip to the neck) and a 3” socket with a three step mortise and no locking ring. The bayonet was secured by an eccentric ridge on the rear edge of the socket that engaged the Lovell bayonet catch under the muzzle of the musket. Like most British socket bayonets of the period the construction was of a combination of iron and steel with the iron socket and neck blued and the steel blade left bright.

The first 18,000 Pattern 1851 bayonets were actually modified from existing stocks of Pattern 1842 bayonets by having their sockets shrunk by a process of heating and cooling and having the third step of the bayonet’s mortise cut an additional .4” to get the right muzzle to stud distance. Additional bayonets were supplied by the various British Ordnance Department contractors in Birmingham, as none of the bayonets were produced at Enfield. British military examples were inspected, typically with a {CROWN}/B/7. Those bayonets produced for commercial sale were not inspected. For whatever reason, the survival rate of these bayonets is extremely low. Over the last two decades while I have had the opportunity to own and sell several Pattern 1851s, but this is only the fourth Pattern 1851 bayonet I have ever had the opportunity to offer for sale, and two of the previous three were actually the same bayonet that I sold twice, several years apart!

Offered here is a VERY GOOD condition example of a scarce Pattern 1851 Minié Rifle Socket Bayonet. The bayonet is a rare British military inspected example and is marked by the contractor who delivered the bayonet, HEIGHINGTON & LAWRENCE. The blade is War Department inspected on its face about 2” from the shank junction with a {CROWN}/B/2. There are an illegible set of initials or an additional inspection mark closer to the junction. The Heighington & Lawrence mark is very weak and only partially visible. It is stamped on the blade in two lines and located about 1.5” from the shank.

The first contract to produce the Pattern 1851 Socket Bayonet was given to Heighington & Co. and required them to deliver 10,000 bayonets at the contract price of £2.6, at rate of 1,000 per week. Due to difficulty in making deliveries of bayonets that passed the Tower viewer’s inspections, they were unable to deliver as promised. This actually turned into quite a kerfuffle between the T. Lawrence of the firm, Inspector of Arms George Lovell, the Board of Ordnance and even Lovell’s son, the Assistant Inspector of Arms. In the end, after presenting their case to the Select Committee on Ordnance Contracts, Heighington was allowed to deliver roughly 2,000 bayonets with the balance of the order broken up between six other vendors. These contractors included S. Hill & Son, G. Salter & Co., W. Deakin & Sons, G&E Roe, J. Roe & Son, and R&W Aston. The first three of these contractors received an order for 1,666 bayonets and the last three an order for 1,664. Heighington & Son received a slightly larger order for 1,998 bayonets. Additional contracts for Pattern 1851 Bayonets were let on May 28 and September 8, 1852, but Heighington did not receive any additional orders. In the end some 30,081 Pattern 1851 bayonets contracted for by the War Department between January 1852 and April 1855. With Heighington & Son only receiving the one order and only delivering about 7% of all Pattern 1851 socket bayonets. Heighington & Lawrence would not resume making bayonets for the Board of Ordnance until the issuance of the first Pattern 1853 Enfield Bayonet contracts in later 1853.

As noted, the bayonet is in VERY GOOD condition and has a lovely untouched attic patina. All o of the metal of the bayonet has a nicely oxidized brown patina that is mostly smooth but does show some scattered light surface roughness and some small, scattered areas of minor pitting. The 3” socket remains nice, crisp condition with no real pitting, and both ends of the socket remain perfectly round. The muzzle diameter measures .878” and the muzzle to stud distance measures 1.2”. The bayonet blade is full-length with an 18” blade, measured from the face of the shank, and remains quite sharp at the tip. As noted, the markings on the blade are weak and barely legible, with the exception of the inspection mark. File slash mating marks are present on the rear edge of the bayonet’s socket.

Overall, this is a very good example of an extremely scarce British Pattern 1851 Minié Rifle Socket Bayonet by Heighington & Lawrence, the original contractor for all of the Pattern 1851 Socket Bayonets. This bayonet was likely imported along with the nearly 15,000 refurbished British military Pattern 1851 Minié Rifles that were purchased by the Confederacy. This is an extremely rare bayonet that is seldom found for sale, and it would be a fantastic addition to the display of your Pattern 1851 Minié Rifle, whether it is a British military one or a Confederate imported example.

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