Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction Company
taking a look at a ginormous revolver. This is a Tranter .577 calibre,
5 shot, double action revolver dating from 1869, approximately.
Now we looked at a gun like this a little while back,
that was a Webley-Pryse style of top-break .577. This is a solid frame.
It's a Tranter made gun, and William Tranter is really where the story starts with the .577s anyway.
So Tranter got his start (he's one of the big names in early British revolver manufacturing and development),
and he got his start in the 1850s actually making guns under contract for Adams.
And after a little bit of that he started doing some of his own designs, ... got his own patents, set up his own factory,
and did more than just revolvers. This gun is the largest version of his model 1868,
which was his first centrefire revolver. Prior to that he had a very similar gun, but it was a rimfire design.
Well, 1868 is right about the time when centrefire cartridges really kind of become a thing, the technology becomes available.
He knew this was gonna be a popular gun.
At the time he was ... just at the tail end of a contract making Snider rifles for the British military,
and he'd been in the business long enough, and he was a smart enough guy, that he knew
if he tried to fulfill all of the demand for ... his own 1868 pattern revolvers
he was going to put a tremendous strain on his factory and it would result in, well, poor customer service.
It would take a long time to get guns done, or if he tried to do them too fast the production quality would suffer.
And so he did the smart thing and he licenced out a lot of his production.
Now this is a cool example of ... a .577 that Tranter actually built himself, because it's a 5 shot.
Much more common are 6 shot .577s, like the Webley-Pryse that we looked at earlier,
and those were pretty much all licenced out to other manufacturers.
But it's Tranter who was responsible for the design.
So let's take a closer look at this one, because it is not just an extremely rare ... example of a 5 shot .577, it's also engraved.
Now these of course predate smokeless powder by about 20 years.
So this is a black powder cartridge. It's .577 Boxer is typically the name of the cartridge.
The gun is actually marked 577 Gauge on the front of the frame there.
It is also marked H. Holland, 98 New Bond Street on the top strap. That is Harris Holland,
and in 1878 he would become half of Holland & Holland, but when this revolver was made, 10 years earlier,
he was running his own independent shop in New Bond Street.
Now this gun is a little bit unusual for being engraved so fancily. In general the .577 calibre
pistols, both Tranter's and the ... guns made under licence by people like Webley and Tipping and Lawden,
typically these were sold to British, I guess you might say adventurers, army officers or ... hunters,
who are heading off typically either to Africa or India.
And they were looking for the most stopping power they could get in a handgun,
often for wild game like tigers in India or lions in Africa.
This is a relatively modest cartridge actually, surprisingly for its physical size,
This is .577 Boxer and it's approximately a 400 grain bullet at about 725 feet per second. [25.9 grams at 220m/s.]
So not what we would consider today a Magnum cartridge, and of course it is a black powder cartridge.
Anyway, this engraved one almost certainly went to someone a bit more aristocratic,
and probably didn't get taken out in the jungle or the savannah anywhere.
The grip is more or less standard sized, it's just got this humungous frame
up on top of it that makes this a kind of awkward, bulky handgun to handle.
And that's with only a five shot cylinder to it.
You might also notice that there is no loading gate or other mechanism on the back here.
In order to reload this you actually have to remove the cylinder. Going to take this lever,
push it down, and pull out our cylinder access pin. We can then put the hammer at
half-cock and drop the cylinder out.
One of Tranter's very successful early patents was for a conversion system
that would allow percussion revolvers to be used either with percussion or cartridges.
And the way he did that was by having a two-part cylinder, where he had a cylinder and a back plate.
And Tranter's early guns, his conversions, had a back plate where you could screw in percussion cap nipples
or you could screw in little firing pins that would hit the rims of rimfire cartridges.
By the development of the 1868 pistol he didn't need that any more,
and instead of making them convertible he just ... drilled out these holes and extended the hammer spur
(the firing pin on the end of the hammer), so that they could go straight through and hit the middle of centrefire cartridges.
But you're still left with a ... system where to reload it you have to pull out the back plate,
use this as an ejector rod to push out your empty cases, reload them.
You've got two pins, one there and one there,
that served to align this on the back, and then you put this back in the gun.
This was meant to give you as much firepower as possible very quickly.
But once you run out, once that cylinder is empty, you're not expected to reload it under stress.
... If five shots of .577 don't do it, you're in deep trouble and you've got to come up with some other solution.
The engraving on this is really quite nice, if we get it in the light there, sort of that floral scrollwork style of engraving.
I should point out we do have a serial number up here and a Tranter's patent mark.
All of Tranter's guns were serialised in a single continuous run.
So it's not like they made 33,000 .577s. That was just his 33,000th pistol manufactured overall.
That engraving ... doesn't quite cover the barrel fully,
there's some out at the muzzle, skips a little bit on the barrel flats,
and we've got it all around the frame.
The top strap is left unengraved so they can put Holland's mark on there.
And the front strap is also unengraved.
A little bit of decoration on the butt cap there.
.577 Boxer calibre revolvers are all very scarce.
The 5 shot actual Tranter made guns are even more so. There are two known examples of these, this one, and one other.
So it's very cool to get a chance to take a look at this one,
it's also like I think the only known engraved example.
It is a gorgeous and tremendously huge pistol that someone is really going to enjoy owning.
So if that's you, you can check out Rock Island's pictures, and all of their description, and other content
on their website. If that's not you, well, there's a lot of other stuff in this upcoming April auction
that you might be interested in. So check out the catalogue on Rock Island's website.
Thanks for watching.
[ cc by sk cn2 ]