Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are going to look at the Ross.
Specifically we're going to look at the very beginnings of the Ross rifle story.
The Ross rifle is of course the unique and interesting straight-pull
that was developed and produced in Canada, and was used as the Canadian Expeditionary Force's primary
combat rifle at the very beginning of World War One, until it was ultimately replaced by the Lee-Enfield.
Over the course of several videos here we'll get into exactly what happened, and what led to its replacement.
But the story begins with Sir Charles Ross, born in Scotland in Ross-shire, of course, in 1872.
And he was born into an extremely wealthy family. They were in fact the second-largest land holders in Great Britain.
And at the time of his birth fairly cash-rich as well, although less so by the time he reached adulthood.
Ross was an interesting character. He was large, physically large, physically strong, athletic.
He was charming, but also had quite the temper to him.
Not probably the sort of guy you would really want to become a business partner with.
Definitely not the sort of guy you wanted to get into a big argument with.
He was sued at one point for nearly choking a guy to death ... over some stupid argument.
He was at the same time, in many ways, an inventive genius and developed this rifle on his own.
... I mean there are not many people who can develop a rifle, have it be a commercial sporting success and also adopted by a major military.
So, it's an interesting rifle of contradictions in that ... Ross was a brilliant engineer,
and yet this was also one of the least successful, ultimately, combat rifles in modern history.
So, the story begins in approximately 1900.
Ross had gone off to fight in the Boer War because it seemed like the fun and interesting thing to do.
He had a somewhat short attention span and kind of easily bored by things, and the idea of,
"Hey, well, we'll go and fight in the Boer War and it'll be a grand adventure." That was exactly his sort of thing.
Commanded an artillery unit there, and came back with a great appreciation and interest
in the Steyr-Mannlicher straight-pull system, which the Boers had used in some small numbers.
And he put together his own, not a copy of the Steyr, but a rifle largely inspired by the Steyr.
In fact, the very first ones had Steyr-Mannlicher style magazines, although that would change fairly quickly.
This rifle began as a sporting rifle. And what we have here is actually one of the very early ones.
This is a 1902 to 1903 transitional sporting Ross rifle.
So we're gonna take a look at this, and then how it transitioned into the very first Mark I military patterns.
So, let's dig right into this one.
So this sporting rifle is pretty cool. It is in its original actual transit case here. Belonged to Lieutenant-Colonel
Gerald James Cuthbert of the Scots Guards, and he took it all over the world. There's a stamp on here somewhere for Egypt.
But if we go ahead and take a closer look at the rifle.
These early sporting rifles predate the existence of a Ross rifle factory,
and so Ross actually had the guns manufactured by subcontractors.
The receivers here were manufactured in Hartford, Connecticut.
And barrels were supplied by Charles Lancaster, specifically his oval bore barrels,
which you may be familiar with from ... the Lancaster multi-barrel oval bore pistols.
Lancaster supplied both complete guns and gun parts to a lot of different people,
so this was a well known and well regarded name at the time.
What we have is something that is clearly recognisable as a Ross straight-pull action,
but has a lot of subtle differences from the late pattern military rifles that are much more common.
So Ross had actually started patenting rifles as early as 1893, well before the Boer War.
It was after he came back that he patented this style, much in the pattern, or in the model of the Steyr-Mannlicher.
We have a 2 lug, straight-pull bolt action here, and the way this works is that there is a series of basically gear teeth
inside the bolt body here. So when you pull the bolt body back, it forces the bolt head to rotate, which will either lock,
right here,
lock like that. Or unlock on opening.
It is interesting to note that these very early rifles are actually cock on closed designs,
where all of the subsequent patterns would be cock on open.
Now inside here, the very first sporters that Ross made actually had a Mannlicher-style magazine.
But he changed that to this Harris pattern, or dump magazine as it's often called.
It's a 5 round, double stack internal magazine. You can see the follower.
And there's no stripper clip guide to it. Of course this was a sporting design, it didn't need stripper clips.
Instead it has this lever up ... in front of the action.
When you push that down it manually depresses the follower, and then you simply drop cartridges in.
This seems to me to have a substantial potential for rim lock, but speaking to those who have actually used these,
at least with a little bit of practice, that's not actually a problem in practice, so.
The idea was it allows very quick reloading. You can load it with 1 round, 2 rounds, all the way up to 5.
You don't actually have to depress this, you can leave spring tension on the follower, put a round in and just pop it into place.
Or to do it more quickly, you can take the spring tension off yourself.
Now a couple of the features that are on this early sporting model that we will see depart fairly quickly.
There is a dust cover on it over the top of the bolt.
One of the most interesting bits to me is that the rear sight
(there is an aperture rear sight as well as express sights on the barrel, which we'll look at in a moment),
but the aperture sight is actually located on the striker.
So, sits right back out there. This doesn't seem to be the most stable position for this sort of thing,
but this striker doesn't move, it's pretty solid in there. So, especially for a sporting rifle, that was perfectly sufficient.
There is also a safety here on the back of the bolt,
you just push that laterally over and it locks the system in place.
As a sporting rifle this sort of thing could be had in a huge variety of configurations, basically anything you wanted.
Colonel Cuthbert here decided that he wanted to have a series of express sights all the way out to 500 yards.
So you have a variety of flip-up express sights.
Sling swivel attachment on the bottom of the barrel, as well as one on the side of the barrel.
And this style of early, hooded front sight.
So it's against this backdrop of Ross starting to have a decent market for high quality, straight-pull
sporting rifles that the Canadian government comes into play, and the Canadian military.
The Canadians had originally back in the 1890s purchased tens of thousands of Lee rifles, Long Lees,
for their military from the British.
That was kind of the standard practice, there wasn't a major rifle factory in Canada.
Well, after the Boer War they need to replenish those supplies of military rifles,
and the Canadians go to the British and basically say, "Hey, we want to buy some more rifles."
And the British reply that they can't, there aren't any available. So, no.
This didn't go over well. Canada needed something, and so they came back and started to look at their options.
And private industry like BSA, Birmingham Small Arms, was not interested in setting up its own factory in Canada,
which would have been a good solution.
Instead it looked like the Canadian government was going to have to set up its own manufacturing plant.
They did consider buying rifles from other countries, from the United States as well as from Europe,
and decided that that just wasn't a good strategic move. They should be either supplied by the British empire or from within Canada.
And at this point Charles Ross, entrepreneur, inventor, engineer, comes along and sees a great opportunity
and he says, "Well, I'll tell you what. I will build a plant. I'll ... build the rifle plant with my own money."
(Because he is tremendously wealthy, he's able to draw on extensive land holdings in Scotland
as credit to pay for the construction of a rifle factory.)
"I'll do all of that. It'll use Canadian labour, it'll be Canadian industry, and we'll make all the rifles here in Canada."
And this sounds like a fantastic option to the Canadians, in particular to Minister of War, Sam Hughes.
(Who will be in power, by the way, through the beginning of World War One.)
And Ross has a rifle already, he's got his sporting rifle.
So he adapts it to military pattern, runs it through some tests with the Canadian military.
And it has a few issues, but they seem like issues that can be fairly easily worked out.
And by 1903 he has contracts to start delivering rifles.
He goes ahead and builds this plant near the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec, and we get the Mark I Ross.
In contrast to the sporting rifles, the Mark I Ross military rifle has of course a military pattern of buttstock. No checkering.
Very nice and easy to open, a little bit stiffer to close. Has the same Harris dump style of magazine in it.
It is of course now chambered for the .303 British cartridge. This was one of the major considerations for the Canadian military.
And ... the way that they overcame the objections of the British government,
who of course wanted the Canadians to use Lee-Enfields, just didn't want to sell them right now.
The British were very concerned about non-standard rifles and Ross's response to this was,
"Well look, it uses the same cartridge as the British Lee, and, hey, the British are using something like 7 different
variations of rifle already. They have Long Lees, they have Lee-Metfords, they have Lee-Enfields,
they have carbines, they have long rifles. Obviously exact standardisation isn't an issue. It's the cartridge that's the issue."
And the Canadian government was highly sympathetic to Ross's plan from the beginning,
because they really liked the idea of a domestically produced, domestically designed rifle.
And they went ahead with these arguments and said, "Yeah, it's in the right calibre and that's what really matters", so.
We have a magazine cut off located in the side of the stock, just above the trigger guard.
The rear sight is kind of indicative of what would ... clearly become the problems with the early Ross.
... This sight by the way goes out to 2,800 yards. It is a really tall leaf sight there, and it's thin, it's fragile,
it's spindly. You can pretty clearly see that here.
This was very quickly reduced in length, but still this wasn't the only part of the Mark I Ross
that would be a little too fragile for field use. So.
Handguard. Rear sight.
We have a hooded barleycorn style front sight there that is dovetailed onto the barrel. That would become a bit of an issue.
And then a front band and bayonet lug. There originally would have been a stacking swivel back here as well.
So the markings on the receiver here are (let's bring a highlight in there), Ross Rifle Company, Quebec, Canada.
Patent 1903. So this is a Mark I, which is also sometimes referred to as a 1903 pattern of Ross.
The serial number is stamped into the stock here, along with a Quebec roundel indicating government property.
The configuration of the numbers on these was a letter prefix followed by a serial number that went from 1 to 999.
So each letter is 1,000 rifles.
The very first 500 of these were actually issued out to the Department of Oceans and Fisheries,
... by kind of coincidence they were the first people that really needed them. They got the first batch.
And these were actually not delivered until about 1905. There were ... the inevitable delays in getting the factory set up,
followed by some issues with rear sights.
So this pretty quickly led to the development of a Mark I star. So of course in
British colonial Commonwealth parlance you have Marks which are your major changes,
and then minor changes are designated by an asterisk, a star.
So what we have here is a Mark I star. There were a total of 10,000 Mark I Rosses that were actually delivered.
The first 500 ... went to the Oceans and Fisheries department, it wasn't very ... long after that
they revised this design to the Mark I star.
The most significant change was a different rear sight. This thing, even after being shortened, was still way too flimsy.
And so they actually came up with a sight that is very much like the Gewehr 98 Lange Visier, which is kind of cool.
They changed the handguard to match at the same time.
So this guy has a single continuous handguard that comes all the way out to the barrel band.
Where this new pattern of rear sight goes all the way down to the stock.
And so it has a rear handguard, and a little short front handguard up here.
Range markings are noted here on the top of the sight. It goes out to 2,200 yards.
It is also windage adjustable with this dial. This one's taken a bit of an impact at one point.
But that allows you to adjust your windage.
The front sight was also considerably enlarged and strengthened.
So there's your Mark I star compared to the original early, much smaller, and kind of on this little fragile dovetail mount, Mark I.
With the adoption of the Mark I star there would also be a bit of a change to the buttstock markings.
And at this point these markings tell you a lot about the history of each individual rifle.
So we still have the Quebec roundel here, a little harder to see. It is now marked with its Mark designation,
so I and then a little asterisk. The serial number on this guy is G 176.
And then we have the date of actual production, or military acceptance
(to be honest I'm not sure exactly which, they generally are the same anyway),
1905 there is when this one was actually delivered. And this has also been marked "D.P.", that means drill purpose.
Which means the rifle was basically taken out of service to be used as a training rifle by the military.
As these rifles started to be issued out and actually started to be used, a number of fairly serious problems came to light with them.
Which frankly isn't all that surprising, these rifles never went through a major field trial,
kind of because the Canadian government was eager to get them into service and excited about the project.
So in many ways the Mark I Ross was kind of the beta test model of the system.
And so, specifically, one of the really significant problems was the bolt stop here,
(... you push this button down to remove the bolt from the rifle),
this was not strong enough. And there were significant numbers of issues of, in particular in parade dress drill
one of the parts of drill is to bring the rifle down by your side
and smartly smack the the bottom of the buttstock on the ground, and if you did that
occasionally the bolt would simply fall out of the rifle and clatter embarassingly to the ground.
That was perhaps not the most significant combat style of problem,
but it was the most visible and publicly embarrassing issue with the rifle.
In addition, there was no primary extraction built into the bolt system.
There were only two cam grooves or sets of cams inside the bolt body.
This made the action typically fairly stiff to open.
... Well, some of those problems were resolved by having the bolts kind of reworked at the factory to make them a bit smoother,
but that was something that would have to be addressed mechanically in later revisions of the rifle.
In addition, the nose cap was relatively small, relatively weak.
Especially the nice square corner here was a perfect propagation site for cracking,
and these nose caps had a tendency to break during bayonet drill.
So, all of these problems put together came out really pretty quickly as soon as the rifles started hitting troops hands.
And, well, they would cause some problems.
So ultimately the legacy of the Mark I Ross was that of, kind of, what should have been a rifle that went into further field trials.
There were significant problems, and they were recognised pretty quickly.
And they very quickly led to the development of the Mark II.
... In fact Mark II production began almost...
... well, it began before a lot of the Mark I rifles were actually delivered.
By late 1905 the Mark II had been developed, had been approved, and was already going into production
while Mark Is were still coming off the production line.
So we will ... dig into all of the different iterations of the Mark II in the next video. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this.
Thanks for watching.