Uh-oh, this can only mean one thing, you're going to need a bigger boat.
[ Greener MkII Light Harpoon Gun ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Quin ... I mean Ian, and I am here today at the Rock Island Auction Company
taking a look at some of the guns that they are going to be selling
in their upcoming June of 2017 Regional Auction.
And yes, this is exactly what you recognise from that famous 1975 film "Jaws".
This is a Greener Mark 2 Harpoon Gun.
And it was actually not something made for the movie, this was a legitimate firearm
that was manufactured by Webley & Scott
and imported into the United States starting in the late 1960s through the 1970s.
Imported by Navy Arms Corporation, appropriately and ironically so.
Navy Arms actually did a lot of surplus and modern firearms importation,
and they just happen to be called "Navy Arms" and be importing harpoon guns in this case.
But this thing ... a harpoon gun is a little bit of an exaggeration for it,
it's more like a spear fishing sort of gun.
Just to put things in perspective, Webley & Scott in the manual for this
say that accuracy-wise it will hold about an 8 inch circle at 30 metres.
And ... they say at 30 metres it has sufficient penetration
to deal with pretty much any fish you're going to shoot with it.
So that's where they intended this to be used, this wasn't some long range thing.
This was a large fish, like a tuna, pretty much at or right near the surface within 30 yards.
You have a [pulpit] that goes out the front of the bow of a boat,
and you stand out there, and shoot one of these ... harpoon spear darts into the fish.
There is in this case (actually here we have another one back here),
this is like a 1 pound dart, half a kilo almost.
And we have a wire tie on this one, which you would then connect to a rope.
We have a handful of those included in the case with the gun.
And this looks like it's kind of flimsy twine,
but according to the manual this is 300 pound test line.
So that's good for a reasonably sized fish.
And if you wanted more than that, ... you could buy from Webley & Scott
(presumably through Navy Arms), you could buy line up to 1,200 pound.
Or of course you could get ... I mean it's just string, rope, basically.
So up to ... 1,200 pounds of resistance ... you could deal with with one of these guys.
So the idea is you'd hook it, and then you would use a mechanical line or play the fish in by hand.
And that's what this was for, this is large fish hunting, that really is a thing.
Now this is actually based on a quite real firearm.
This is ... basically a Greener shotgun action.
You'll find these also as Greener Police Guns in 12 and 14 gauge.
And what they did on this one was they made some modifications, basically to the front end.
The rear end is a pretty stock Greener-Martini action,
single shot, activates with this lever to eject a cartridge and to lock.
It has an automatic safety that engages every time you work the action.
And then the front end here is removable.
For one thing so you can fit the whole assembly in this case.
And then it is chambered for a .38 Special blank cartridge.
And in fact we have a couple of boxes here, we'll take a look at all of this up close in a moment.
But you would fit in a blank cartridge, and then the harpoon or dart itself
slides over the end of your barrel.
We have a couple of basically gas rings here at the end.
... Oh, and then this thing is a frame to hold all the rest of your trailing rope.
So you would wind it carefully on here, so that when the harpoon fires
the string is pulled very rapidly off of this frame.
And by the way, make sure to tie the other end of the rope
to something secure so that you don't lose it.
Presumably a longer piece of line that's connected to your mechanical winch,
or something larger in diameter that's easier to grab on by hand.
Anyway, once you fire the cartridge gas pressure accumulates in here,
and it's going to shoot this dart right off the end of the gun.
... Honestly, it seems like the sort of thing that's pretty similar to a grenade launcher
in terms of recoil, and grenade launchers can be pretty punishing in terms of recoil.
They did a couple of things to ameliorate that on this gun,
they have a nice heavy rubber butt pad on it.
The gun itself weighs, I think with the dart on it, about 8 pounds.
With the frame and the dart and all that.
And apparently the couple of first-hand reports I've seen
suggests that the recoil isn't all that bad with these, remarkably.
According to Greener in the manual that is because
the gas pressure has lots of time to build up in the barrel
before it actually throws the dart off.
I don't know, that sounds true of grenade launchers too to me.
But apparently they're not too punishing to actually shoot.
And I'm sure there is an element of thrill of the hunt.
If you're actually shooting one of these things at a many hundreds of pounds fish,
the excitement is going to outweigh any experience of recoil that you have.
Now this particular one is in its complete case:
cleaning rods, ropes, darts, cartridges, cleaning kit down here.
In fact, speaking of cleaning, Greener made a point to make these
well suited, or as well suited as they could, to a marine environment.
So the darts themselves are made of stainless steel so they won't corrode.
The gun itself is all hard chromed so that it won't corrode.
That's not perfect, you still do have to take care of the things,
but they do at least make an effort to allow them to survive in a marine saltwater environment.
Alright, let's take a closer look at the action, I'll show you how this all goes together.
But - spoiler - when you see Quint doing it in Jaws,
he's pretty much doing it perfectly, except he doesn't bother to attach the rope frame.
Alright, the complete kit here, and you know it's original because of that 1960s green colour,
this weighs in at right about 35 pounds with all of its accoutrements.
So let's take a look. We do have the manual here.
There is, by the way, no mention in the manual of boat sizing.
I think they leave that for someone else to decide,
or assume that you'll make the right decision on your own.
Then inside we have the gun.
So we have the barrel section,
the stock and action.
Three harpoons, or three darts or spears come here in the case,
and just lift out like so.
Six coils of shooting line, and two of these line frames.
Down over here we have a couple of boxes of cartridges.
And then the rest of this is kind of packed with some cleaning gear.
So we'll take a look at one of these right now, and then I'm going to put them away
because I don't need to have live ammo lying around
while we're assembling the gun and loading darts onto it.
So this is a box of 50 cartridges,
made specially for the Mark 2 Greener Light Harpoon Gun by Kynoch.
And they look like that.
It's based on the .38 Special, and it's just a crimped blank cartridge.
I don't have any data on what exact pressure these generate,
or what velocity you'd get with that 1 pound light harpoon.
"These cartridges have been specially loaded
and must only be used in the Greener Mark 2 Harpoon Gun."
Go ahead, and assemble this, it is marked Greener Light Harpoon Gun Mark 2.
I mentioned earlier that this safety automatically engages, I was mistaken on that.
The Greener Police Gun does, on the Harpoon Gun it's just a manual safety.
So turns on when you turn it on, turns off when you turn it off.
We do also have marking on the other side: Greener in Birmingham.
... Now the end of the barrel is threaded, and you'll notice there's a step cut here at the end.
And that's to make space for the extractor, which on the Martini action is this half-moon shape
that takes up the entire bottom half of the chamber there.
Now you can see the extractor down there, and I have the action open most of the way.
It is important when you install this, when you get to the last two revolutions
you have to open the action all the way so that the extractor is pulled back like this,
in order to make enough space to finish threading the barrel on.
But we'll start with the lever just open normally.
Set that in there.
So once I get to this point, if I start tightening this any more
the extractor is going to jam against the face of the barrel.
And so what I need to do is pull the lever all the way down to get the extractor out of the way.
They kind of skip showing you Quint doing this in the movie.
So the last two revolutions are like that, then our barrel is all the way threaded in.
And the last bit is you take this screw, and just gently tighten it.
So the manual specifies that it doesn't have to be overly tight,
in fact just tightening it down with a coin works just fine.
So we've got it finger tight there, which is perfect for our application today.
Then we can close the action.
Now at this point we're going to start the loading procedure,
and as the manual says, it's correct on this point,
the very last thing you would do is actually put a blank cartridge in here.
We're going to be messing around with a 1 pound giant pointy sharp dart on the end of this thing,
and as long as you're playing with the muzzle end of this,
you do not want a cartridge in the action. Just a safety concern there.
Next step is to install the line frame.
That is going to sit in this lug.
There's a plug on it here which goes in that hole,
and we have a little leaf spring right here that locks it in place.
One side of this frame has a flat for that leaf spring, the other side does not.
It is very important to put the flat facing the leaf spring,
or else when you fire this there's a decent chance
that the whole line frame will go shooting downrange with your rope and your dart.
And if that was a fish you hit, you will not catch it
because it will swim away with all of your shooting bits.
Alright, so this slides ... you see that's upside down, we want it this way.
That slides in there.
A spring sits in that little flat surface, which in theory prevents that from happening.
See if we can ...
There we go. Line frame is in there.
Next up we will attach the dart, and this only goes in one direction.
This extra little lug goes on the bottom.
Now you could have this connected by a rope.
In this case, the previous owner of this has attached a wire to the darts
with a nice little quick detach clip here.
So you would loop this through the end of your rope, but we don't need to do that yet.
What we're going to do is just insert the hollow dart onto the barrel.
And there's a little spring ball detent down in the bottom there,
and that's what keeps the dart tensioned in place.
So that will come off when you fire it,
but it's not going to fall off if you're just pointing the thing downward towards a fish.
Lastly you take your rope and loop it around these two studs on the frame.
Then you're all ready to open the action, load a blank cartridge,
make sure the safety is disengaged, and fire away.
You might be wondering how to aim this thing,
well, just like a Greener Police Shotgun this notch is your rear sight.
And you use the top of this expanding hook on the dart as your front sight.
So these hooks are both going to fold back into the dart when it's travelling.
After it goes through into a fish these open up
and lock it in place in a kind of nasty, and I'm sure a very painful, way.
Now in terms of actual use, you know what,
I'm pretty sure most of these guns were purchased and never actually fired.
In fact, I'm not up on ocean-going fishing laws,
but I believe it's actually generally illegal to use something like this on a fish these days.
I think ... it's legal to hunt by hand with a spear,
but not so much with a ... harpoon gun.
So I'm sure if I'm not correct, someone correct me down in the comments.
But most people I think use these ... just for display, and for the cool factor.
And maybe for a few entertaining test shots in the back yard
on an archery target, or a straw bale of some sort.
Of course this one is ... a really nice example, complete kit,
all the accessories with it, and it's of course coming up for sale here at Rock Island.
So if you're interested in one, whether it will hang on the wall to awe your friends,
or whether you actually have a boat and you're going to go out
and actually shoot something with one of these,
well, take a look at the description text below.
You'll find a link there to the catalogue page on this particular set.
And you can take a look at their pictures and price estimate, description, all of that good stuff.
If you're interested, place a bid online or over the phone,
or come here and participate in the auction live if you're in the area.
Thanks for watching.