英國皇家軍械博物館 英國皇家軍械庫 由1853型步槍改造而來的1853型火槍（英屬印度部隊專用）

Hi guys, Jonathan here once more with three apparently identical guns and I'm using the term guns advisedly because two of these are not in fact rifles or rifle muskets which is the term at the time the time being the 1850s and these actually relate to a very important but also very sad and difficult period of British colonial history and that is the traditionally called the Indian Mutiny or the Indian Rebellion The most famous kind of technological arms connection to that event or that incident, that conflict is the cartridge famously and I think we can categorically say that there was in fact animal fat that was problematic in religious and cultural terms for Indians in that paper cartridge issues about when they were actually issued and how the government responded to that I'm not going to get into here there are arguments on both sides but it's a fact that one of the triggers for the Indian Rebellion was the greased cartridge that was due to be issued with the patent 1853 rifle musket which had yet to actually see issue into the hands of the troops at least I think we can say that that is this here patent 1853 or P53 rifle or rifle musket or rifled musket depending on the source actually and this is one of our sealed patents that we're very fortunate to have here at the armories so as well as being in basically pristine condition it has the literal seal of approval two of them in fact the seal of the master general of the ordinance is the important one on the butt and it also has inscribed on there what sealed patent this actually is because there are more than one this is for a P53 that was shortened in the butt by one inch after a lot of tedious committee meetings which if you come to the archive you can use the reference that's on here go and look that up and learn why it was they shortened the butt by an inch and it was to do with I guess early ergonomic considerations for soldiers of different sizes ultimately we go to optional length butts on service rifles but that's kind of by the by but it is important that we compare what's on the table in front of me with this most obviously the P53 rifle required a full on rifle sight so at its lowest graduation it's flat and then it's flip up and adjustable so long you have to be careful not to clout anything with it and you slide you know how these tangent sights work and then the very top which I think at least from 1856 was a thousand yards that very top notch there which of course means you're shooting almost like an archer at very long range you won't hit a man but you will hit a baggage train or whatever it is you're trying to harass or cause problems for very capable very important historical British rifle I have missed out the middle step of the sighting system which is that you have ramps here that allow you to adjust this notch as well and then the other very key point I can point the muzzle toward the camera without terrifying anybody and it may not show up that well we'll get you a close up if we need to there's rifling in the bore because that's what makes a rifle a rifle spiral groove spins the bullet for stability and therefore accuracy three grooves on this type very shallow because they're using the Minie pattern or Minie type bullet not pattern because there are different patterns the Pritchett bullet is the most famous for this shallow rifling because you have to load it essentially like a musket ball without jamming it into the grooves because when you fire it that's when the lead expands at the base and grips the rifling so you can't have deep obvious rifling but it is there and it is critical to reaching out beyond 100 yards 100 yards being the standard effective range of a smooth ball musket now what we're really here to look at are these two so this one is the pattern 1858 musket for quote native infantry and right away now that I've been going on about sights you can probably see this has a much simplified rear sight so try to show you that it is just a notch it's very similar to the sight on the previous or what would have still been standard issue at the time for Indian regiments regiments of the British Indian Army the P42 percussion musket smooth ball it's just a U shape it does have a notch in the bottom for a slightly finer aiming and things like this are more accurate than people give them credit for but they're really not that capable beyond 100 yards and that's significant well the other bit I need to show you so down the bore it is in fact smooth ball so that relatively small amount of metal that allows you to have the lands of the rifling the lands being the uppy bits and the grooves being the grooves all they did for the P1858 was take a standard P53 barrel and ream out the rifling so it's now a smooth ball musket so what you've done is create essentially a P42 musket that looks like a P53 rifle now if you know your guns you'll know that what you've given the indigenous troops is a far less capable weapon the P53 in terms of some sort of effective fire is 10 times more accurate than this thing this is essentially brown bass we've gone back to brown bass now why have we done that well you can probably guess it's essentially to in video game language nerf the weapons of the local troops so they can't turn them against their masters has happened in the Indian Mutiny slash Indian Rebellion so a really significant very small detail for most people at the time and even perhaps today if you're just looking at these things but it speaks volumes to the attitude to the Indian Army in the immediate aftermath of that event now that's not the whole story incidentally this is also a sealed pattern and before I continue I will show you now full disclosure shocking bit of museum practice before things were properly established as they now are is that museums or collections would sometimes nail numbers into objects which is absolutely horrific by any modern measure for display we will typically have these carefully removed but this has never been on display this still has its various things nailed into it I just wanted to point that out because I know people will ask and we are up front about these things needless to say I didn't do it what I wanted to point out though is this is also a sealed pattern so you will come across or you'll see on the market on the antiques market this pattern of weapon what you won't probably see is the sealed pattern so we are very fortunate to have I'd say the best collection of P53 Enfield family weapons anywhere in the world but it makes sense this collection came from the Tower of London and the factory at Enfield where these things were mostly made and then on the buttstock it actually says first pattern smoothbore musket you'll notice they are qualifying the word musket there because very technically the best kind of technically a musket is just a military long arm that takes a bayonet now they are nearly always smoothbore so you don't usually have to qualify smoothbore but they have done that here as if to emphasize they are giving these people something less capable and .656 is on there that's the caliber that's the resulting caliber when you bore a 577 rifle out to a musket bore 656 and then you've got approved 19th of May 58 that's the date that it was officially approved we've taken a bit of time to see introduction and then finally that fractional number is again how you go and look this up in the archive so as a historical item this is like an archive item and a 3D object as are all of the sealed patterns which is why we like them so much the reason I say the story isn't over yet is that there's a second pattern of native infantry musket which is the 1859 now I'm not great at math but that's quite soon after 1858 and that's because boring out the barrel it was thought I don't know if there was any actual negative outcome from this made the walls of the barrel too thin for that 656 caliber so for the second go at keeping rifles out of the hands of your troops they went with a thicker walled barrel that they were happy with in terms of pressure proof and all of that it meant manufacturing new barrels that was a cost they were willing to bear you're still making savings on the stocking, the lock the furniture barrel bands and so forth so it's still quite an economical thing to make and in terms of making barrels once you've set up the machinery to do it you're not having to rifle as many of your barrels so yeah once you've set up to manufacture it you're not really losing out too badly now that's not the only change they made interestingly so the rear sight stays the same but the front sight turns into a little how I tend to think of it so people have referred to it as a dog kennel Peter Smithhurst our curator emeritus who is Mr P53 he knows all about these incidentally check out his Osprey book and check out his thesis which is available online we can link to that in the description but they have done away with what was the same front sight as the P53 so a blocky base with a truncated blade as your front sight and they've replaced it with a simple faceted block now that is so both sights have a block and that is the mounting point for the bayonet I haven't got any bayonets out for these because I don't want to mark up the barrels by trying to fit a bayonet to these very important and unique items but it's a standard socket bayonet goes over that block and locks in and then whatever sight on top of that doesn't really matter you can choose whatever you like and they've gone for a simple angle like that now we don't have documentation on why they did that or at least we haven't found it I assume it's to ease production it's easier to make a simple house shaped block than it is to take the time to file a blade you don't need a precision blade because you haven't got a precision rear sight and you haven't got any rifling so why bother so that's the pattern 1859 so if you ever do come across what looks like a P53 but doesn't have a proper sight on it chances are it's either a P58 or a P59 that's still not the whole story because these are not the only smoothbore members of the Enfield family the Irish constabulary carbine was also smoothbore, pattern 1858 different pattern 1858 all of these pattern designations are qualified by a name and that's the Irish constabulary carbine now we don't know this for sure but I assume that that was also to do with, it may have been to do with worries of constabulary officers having their weapon taken from them in the event of an insurrection or something getting a bit speculative there but the fact is by all rights they probably should have had a rifle carbine but they issued a smoothbore one and there are various others so this would have been issued to Indian Army soldiers sepoys just like the proper P53, there were shorter versions sergeant's fusils cavalry carbines you name it, the full family but in smoothbore so I think that's a really fascinating bit of history and shows how weapons can they're more than just weapons they're always more than just weapons they're tools, they're historical documents and they're echoes of empire as always guys thank you very much for watching we really appreciate it you can actually, if you'd like to, donate to us check out the website there's a way to do that we just mainly want you to subscribe and like and do all of that YouTube stuff you can also check out our, as well as the website our social media channels they're all linked on the website anyway and very importantly we'd like you to visit us we are a museum at the end of the day well, several museums, Tower of London, Fort Nelson and here in Leeds so if you're in the UK and even if you're not, if you're on vacation or something please do come and see us, we'd love to see you thanks a lot