Forget everything you think you know about the Martini-Henry Rifle

to load it you simply open the lever the drop block s the drop here you slide the cartridge home bring up the lever it's now cocked and ready to fire there's no safety capture the martini there's an indicator to tell you that it's ready to fire when you fire it the rifle goes It goes off the firing pin fires forward and hits the center fire cartridge to eject the cartridges in the same action you simply open the lever and the round is ejected simple it was Soldier proof these will kill you at a mile the martini-henry rifle one of the most iconic weapons in British military history it was the rifle used by British infantryman during the anglo-zulu war of 1879. there are a lot of myths about it a lot of people blame it for the British defeater isandwana but is there any truth to this I'm joined today by a man called Neil aspenshaw who's the expert on the martini-henry fired at tens of thousands of times has written a book about it he's been here speaking at The Clash of Empire's exhibition that's currently taking place in London and I pulled him aside to tell me more all about this iconic weapon so stay tuned to the end guys to find out Neil's thoughts on all of the controversial issues and also if you've ever fired one please comment below let me know what it's like and let me know whatever rifles you'd love to fire yeah well these are two contemporary rifles of the time we've got a martian only mark one that's from 1874 through to about 1877 1878 then you've got a Martin Henry Mark II which was developed in 1977 and became the standard service arm for the next 10 years they're both single shot breach loading rifles they were adopted by the British Army in September of 1874 that are formally issued by October 1874 so by the Zulu War of 1879 the men had been well versed with them they'd had them for five years so they knew how to handle the weapons they knew its vices and its four boils and how to shoot them at range the soldiers expected to fire at least 90 live rounds a year live rounds in practice and also between 100 and 200 rounds of blank firing for volley fire exercise Etc but the rifle itself it's a single shot breach loader it's Simplicity in itself to load it you simply open the lever the drop blocks the drop here you slide the cartridge home bring up the lever it's now cocked and ready to fire there's no safety capture the martini there's an indicator to tell you that it's ready to fire when you fire it the rifle go it goes off the firing pin fires forward and hits the center fire cartridge to eject the cartridge in the same action you simply open the lever and the round is ejected sink simple it was Soldier proof these will kill you at a mile accuracy is incredible we're talking about a Target about the size of a dinner plate at 100 yards uh just been lit at 500 yards you will hit it to put a bullet through a railway sleeper at 500 yards I know because I've done it I was about to say I bet you've done that too it's a beautifully balanced Weapon It's cited to 1 400 yards but trials later we actually deciding would actually fire it to anything to 2 000 yards the problem with with that is the velocity of the bullet is actually just falling out of the sky at that range but for its time it was Soldier proof and it's an absolute man stopper and what's the background to how it came into service could you give us a brief potted history of the development of the rifle well the British army obviously we had the Enfield musket which the patent 53 Enfield musket and in the early 1860s After the franco-prussian War the British army had to devise a breach loading weapon the Germans had bought out a breach loaded and needle fire the dreads needle fire we saw that the breach loader was the way forward you didn't have to stand up to fire the weapon the British army decided to put a trials competition to see who could convert all their Enfield muskets and they came up with the Enfield Snyder and Snyder was just a stopgap weapon if I had a Centerfire cartridge but it was really popular it was still being used well into the 1880s but it was only a stop Gap so by 1865 the British army had a trials competition put it out to the Great and the good of the gun makers to who could come up with the best service rifle there's 104 competitors it was whittled down to 37 then nine but eventually there was no outright winner but what they chose was the rifling of Alexander Henry and Attenborough gun Smith and the breach mechanism of Friedrich Martini was a Swiss gun designer or swiss engineer later he became involved in water engine designs but together it was the perfect rifle so we adopted it as the martini Henry such was the British doctrine of naming the firearm after their inventor Snyder Martine Henry and later obviously after James Parish lead the Lee Enfield in the league Metford it was developed quite extensively up until about 1871 and eventually it was perfected and went out to the Army for field trials it was not adopted at that point and we developed the rifle until eventually we came out with this which is the Martin Henry mark one uh it's very similar to The Mark II there's a few design flaws inside it which they found about the trigger assembly the sighting but effectively this is the rifle this particular example was made in November 1874 but it's the classic Mark 1 rifle of its time a British Army actually took it on it was promulgated as an official rifle of the Army in September 1874 and delivery started taking place by October 1874 eventually but the 24th 4240 to San Luana would have got theirs in Malta in the early months of 1875 had to be shipped out there to change so they've changed from the Schneider to the Martin Henry it's a Quantum Leap and that's the first Battalion lead the first Battalion yeah absolutely and they would have been issued with this with the common Bennett of its time now the storage came what came first the chicken or the egg well when the British army took the martini they hadn't got an official bayonet for it so what they actually adopted was a conversion of the old Enfield musket bayonets which is this one which is the what called a 5374 pattern now you can see it's a socket bayonet so it locks on like a light bulb socket you can see that it curves away there's a definite curve to the blade yeah that's because it was for a muzzle loading rifle and it meant you could load the rifle without stabbing a hand which decide is an expedient way they bushed them and it was perfect for the martini did it did it weaken it with that curve does that make it a weaker blade inherently a triangle a soccer band it was very strong the disadvantage was that a lot of these Bandits were already 20 and 30 years old by the time they were bushed so you've got it basically a form of metal fatigue in 1876 they developed a new bayonet for it which is a variation on the on it which is called the common long socket bayonet or it's become known as the pattern 76 um first time now that is a 22 inch variant of the original 5374 it was designed to give you a six foot reach the reason being the French had developed a rifle with a banner which gave them different reach just under six feet our adversary was going to be the French not the Zulus and this was used by the second Battalion uh the Bee Company at rorke's drift is that right yeah um Henry Hawk says in his Memoirs in the Royal magazine in 1905 that they were using the lunge Bennett with the lunger Banner this became known but he did say that some of the men had the old pattern so it was going to prove but of course Bee Company most of the guys were shipped out from Chatham in 1878 the chancellor they could have had their banners upgraded by that time untrue their rifles could have been upgraded to the Mark II they were but they certainly um the 21st Battalion never came home they would have been they were fighting with what they got which was the Mark 1 rifle and the 53 pattern 74 bayonet and you've obviously shot these rifles a hell of a lot what are some of the foibles what are the strengths and weaknesses of both the mark one and the Mark II the mark one main disadvantage was the trigger assembly it had a high likelihood to go off if you've got dirt or something in the trigger mechanism then there's a good chance that the rifle could misfire in fact history has got a quite an enormous twist uh a certain lieutenant in the in the Battalion was actually shot in the back by one of his own men this was during the frontier war was during the frontier war and he was invalid at home he was one of the Godwin Austins now Godwin Austin was commander of Bee Company because it it would then when he was sent home because of a bullet shot through his two his shoulder and the tunic is still in the regimental museum with the bullet hole in it that he was had the commander company went to the second Lieutenant it was a certain gonville Brom head never heard of him [Laughter] so that was one of the four boils the mark won a particularly poor sighting on it they developed the sighting with the Mark II um they had a tendency to get quite hot on firing not unmanageable but given this fact that you could fire anything about 20 aimed rounds in about 90 seconds with any rifle or a shotgun it gets unmanageably hot but the men would get around that by making their own kind of carhide wraps or even using the ammunition packets the paper packets as a wrap to prevent them burning the fingers the other days are disadvantage is when it gets it particularly hot is there's a heat Haze that comes off the barrel which actually makes accurate sighting quite difficult so if you're shooting say Bisley in a competition you wait between rounds that the barrel actually cool down a little bit what the men did do though to clear filing they'd blow down the barrel so the moisture from your breath would actually lubricate the powder fouling in and keep it moist but they developed the ammunition for the cartridge for it and the cartridge that they use have got a wax plug behind the bullet a beeswax plug the idea was that atomized on firing and lining the ball with melted beeswax ready to lubricate for the next round so there was kind of completely developing the rifle over the next five or six years but it was decided by the late 188 by the early 1880s with European movements that we had to go to something faster and more efficient and hence the martini fell out of use by about 1889 when it was replaced by the Lee Medford but so it was a very short service rifle for the British army it's probably the most famous one or one of the most famous ones battle Rangers to Victorian tires is much misunderstood there's kind of a legacy that they opened five to 100 yards at pre at later battle as a standard procedures to open fire between five and eight hundred yards and the officer would call the range the men would set the sighting on his sight ladder and it's graduated so you've got a site ladder which is one to four hundred yards so you basically Slide the slider to set the site there it is set at 400 then you'd lift the ladder up and then excited between 500 and 1400 yards and you basically Elevate the rifle to suit you've got to think at 500 yards a man lying down firing a Target on the ground the bullet will go eight feet in the air to come back down so it's flying through what's an arch it's apogee would be eight feet at a thousand yards the apogee is more likely to about 25 feet but it's still accurate it's a Whitworth site and the the sighting is particularly accurate and then your talk today here at The Clash of Empires exhibition was was about a scapegoat of history that the martini Henry has perhaps been unfairly blamed for the British defeater isandrana could you talk us through a little bit about some of the accusations made against the weapon and and what your assessment is a lot of it revolves around the actual ammunition itself okay it's become I think after Donald Morris wrote the washing of the Spears and what's become history has become a little bit mixed so they take primary evidence from before the Zulu Wars and after so you've got the development of the martini and their worst problems there was problems with the cartridges delaminating and falling apart and becoming misshapen the Army developed that into the Mark III cartridge and the Mark III cartridges this is a kind of classic Mark III cartridge unlike the early examples there's the base plate is thicker the brass is thicker there's three base there's two base base and there's a steel interliner in place you can actually see on this there's a little uh Holier view hole so the inspector could see that the strengthening piece was actually in place this will it's loose fitting it fire forms when it fires it expands and fills the breeze and forms a gas type breach the issue at the history I said the base bait would could tear off the actual primer forms the UN like a rivet which holds it into place now in early examples that certainly happened but by 1873 with the development of the Mark III ammunition they basically eliminated that as a problem and all earlier marks our mission was actually withdrawn from service so did it did base x-ray yes they did and there's primary source reports of that happening but when I was researching the book I found a report from a captain air krubby of the fourth Grenadier Gorge now he was interviewed in 1885 at horse guards in the committee in front of the whole committee and the Duke of Cambridge was there the Small Arms Factory was there Buller was there and it was been asked questions about the Martinez performance in the Sudan and a revealing question came up from that and they asked Krabby on service did you ever see the base pay to the cars you detach rendering the rifle useless what krubby replied when I read it was staggering he said on service I never saw that before the Sudan campaign crabby had been the battalion's musketry inspector for seven years so he should know he must have seen hundreds of thousands of rounds fired he'd never seen the base bait detach the only person who reported it happening was actually a royal marine and one of the problems they found on sea service is the martini cartridge had vertigo on it that salt water affected the brass it raised an interesting point now that the gunpowder eroded the brass what was happening the woolish Arsenal was actually lining the inside of the case with shellac as a seal to prevent the gunpowder what's shellac shellac savonish what they found though is that in the earlier marks of ammunition up until 1878 the shellac was coming out and gluing the cases to the inside of the cartridge to the inside of the chamber and Barlow said our government Gatling is permanently being jammed with glued cases it raises the question if you're fighting away and firing away then you have to stop to fight at Bayonet Point you've got the cartridge in your breach and that shellac comes out and starts Clinic then you've got a problem there is a solution and that solution is to take off the ramrod of the rifle and use it to batter out the cartridge and what I'm going to do is extraction pole yeah from extraction but so what I do I'm going to show you how that actually works so when you when you've got a jam and if the cartridge may be partly in place and you can't eject it it's stuck in it nothing's ejecting it out the extractor's not working and that might be a misshaped cartridge it may have jammed in the breach what you do you take the ramrod and drop it down the barrel of the gun so you take the rammer and knock out the cartridge uh okay and we know that because hook said after the battle of rock shift I had to my rifle jammed several times and I had to use the ramrod freely to remove it and then you just tip the rifle it comes back out your tip the rifle the ramrod comes back out the cartridge has been ejected and you're ready to fire the next round which is not particularly good if somebody's running towards you the NASA guy uh but it proves the point the problem was is the early pattern ramrod that came with the martini didn't fit down the barrel so what I had to do then is apply the Jag and that's the Jag for them for the rifle yeah what exactly is a Jag right that screws on the end of the rum Rod so it's part of the cleaning equipment for the rifle what you have is a muzzle protector now the soldier at the March should have his muscle protector fitted that protects the rifle and the ball but it's got a hole in it that's actually a ferrule to help you clean the rifle so you what you did when you're cleaning the rifle you remove the ramrod you pushed it through the the muzzle protector and you screwed on the jack now the Jag is a rotary Capstone you put your piece of oiled rag around that which then rotates with the twist of the rifling of the barrel you simply put the muzzle protector on so that protects the ball from the rod so it's acting as a ferrule and you would wipe the rifle up or down the Jag is now rotating with the twist of the rifle and it's pulling through the dirt and filing from the rifling and we know with the earlier pattern ramrod that didn't fit down the barrel the standard shout from the ranks was who's got a Jag so the men knew they had to screw The Jug on to give it enough reach to knock out the cartridge every man had a jug it's the way the Casey took it out on the battlefield with him do you know what I find interesting maybe I'm going off on a tangent here is I've spent a lot of time in my day job I'm um embedded with the military including places like Iraq and Afghanistan and I remember the first time I got caught in a in a gunfight alongside the Royal Marines a guy next to me two minutes into it says has anyone got a hard extraction pole and you're in the end I had to give him my Leatherman to clear a stoppage in his sa80 and that's how many hundreds 140 years after understand a piece of equipment that was all came with a martini hen which is another Misty bunker you if you use an sa80 or modern or even the one of the old A1A l1a ones you get a combination tool every soldier gets it with his kit and with the martini Henry for every five rifles sent out to the field you got one of these which is a combination tool now this does everything on the rifle you can literally take it to bits so every core pool armor Sergeant worthy Soul would have one of these in his in his nap site because it you can use it do a variety of things on the rifle there's a pin on it to knock out the the the the the extractor there's a a pricker on it which you can use almost like a toothpick to clear out any dirt or debris there's a Anvil here which is like a vice so the pin which holds the firing pin on you can squeeze it the the breech block pin squeeze it to fit it in what's most important it's massively overlooked there's three screwdrivers the Legacy about not being able to do ammunition boxes because there's no screwdrivers tends to go a little bit Up in Smoke yeah this is the story that they didn't have enough ammunition at the firing line isandlana due to the inability to open them and the boxes yeah there's a chance obviously the arm recite the the regimental quartermaster would be undoing the boxes but when the firing got so intense he probably couldn't get them open fast enough and suddenly arrive at the ammunition boxes out to the line but of course standard fear regulations from 1877 it's it's categoric that there's stunning order that the distribution ammunition boxes which we carefully practiced carefully practice now if you're a lieutenant worth your salt you carefully practice when your men go out to the line you send ammunition boxes even though you've got 70 rounds on you there's a chance that to rifle that can fire 10 aimed rounds a minute will give you seven minutes worth of firing that was never really did you ever get to that range of rate of firing in fact a cambulla they only fired 31 rounds for during the battle but if there's a chance you'd be engaged you would ensure the reserve suppliers were sent out after a period of time you start to run out and this is where you get the uh the reports about and send in ammunition item mule courts they there would have become a time that the they're getting lower ammunition when they got the fire into the line to the actual boxer to the line there was its ways of getting in it yes you could smash it open um and if you ever repeat read Richard such Paul writing's book about the Battle of my wand there is evidence that they were struggling to get the boxes open because they was they were actually officers the chancellor they hadn't got a tour with them and that was Madison Bray Lieutenant already saw them getting ammunition boxes the line and trying to break it open with rifle Bulls so there's some conjecture in that but of course my wand the air expenditure of my one was phenomenal the official firing of the 516 men including the office of the 66th of my one was 97 075 rounds in a three-hour engagement think of that at rorke's drift a hundred men fired 22 000 that's one round every well 20 rounds per hour on that basis 20 rounds per hour per month and that basis at my one the expenditure in a three hour battle for 60 rounds per month wow 97 rounds average per man the mass about these rifles jamming up and not being used several time tends to go a little bit Up in Smoke although the result was the same at my wonders it was it's on the water of course so we can put to bed some of these myths finally then I think they missed they of course nobody survived the battlefield in sandal wanted to tell the story at least not from the firing not from the firing line but the fact that if the myths was put if the actual myth was put to fact it wrought shift that one in a very short battle indeed we know men survive hook only gives us a kind of a snapshot of the problems about his rifle jamming several times but any people who fire even a modern Firearms know is your friend fan art in Afghanistan that even a modern rifle jams periodically it's just something that happens uh would the men know how to overcome that of course they would they would have it would have been practiced using the ramrod and various ways of getting it out but I think it's become or myth has become law but with no primary evidence the actual evidence is the fact that it rarely happened but it's become part of the kind of the scapegoat for a disaster tell us about your book on the martini Henry and where can people get hold of it well the Martian Henry for Queen and Empire eight years in the writing it only started as an article for a magazine arms and legs because I got carried away by fact and debunking a lot of the myths uh it covers the whole development of the arm right the way through the trials right the way through the jamming the battle the bat ammunition boxes the bayonets and it was a result of hours spent at Q and they were all armors at least get in fact um it's available through my website the Martin Henry Society shop you can also get it direct from me emailing me directly uh there's some for sale at the show today or this weekend um it's 45 pounds a copy but it's a 256 000 words and 156 double back pages it took a lot of writing

Channel: Redcoat History

Views: 624,612

Keywords: military history, British army, war, redcoats, tactics, battlefield guide, martini-henry, zulu war, Isandlwana, rorkes drift

Id: s4Zcfe7xg-I

Length: 23min 16sec (1396 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 14 2023