Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons dot com, I'm Ian McCollum
And I'm here today at the Rock Island auction company where we are taking a look at just an interesting and unusual
pre Civil War
Cartridge firing pistol, but it's not a metallic cartridge. This actually used a
Paper and leather cartridge. This is a pistol that was designed and manufactured by one William Walker Marston now
Marston would continue to have a significant career for several decades in firearms manufacturing
He was born in 1822, he passed away in 1872 and both he and his father actually were gunsmiths working in New York City
Now, he's probably the gun that he manufactured that is best known would be the Gibbs carbine
We actually have a video on that particular gun
It was not designed by him
But he was the company that where he owned the manufacturing facility that was approached to actually manufacture those Gibbs carbines
Which worked really well until the New York City
Conscription riots burned down his factory, the Phoenix Armory, and all that ended the Gibbs carbine
But anyway, this is a pistol he designed in the early 1850s
So it's a single-shot breech-loading pistol. Let me go ahead and show you it up close and describe what that cartridge was
We only really have one substantial marking here and that's on the top of the barrel. It is WW Marston, William Walker Marston patent 1852 New York.
And then there's also a serial number on the bottom both on the frame and the barrel so
535 out of about a thousand total. This is right nicely in the middle
Now the gun itself is just a single-shot pistol. It's a percussion pistol so we have a percussion hammer here
We'll touch on this in a minute, that's a Tang sight that's been added
Single action pistol, of course
Fires. Now what makes it interesting is this
sliding breech opening
If you look inside there, you can see that there's a small hole in the center of the breech face
There's going to be a tunnel that connects that hole there
To that hole right up in there, which is where the flame from the cap comes through. So when the breech is closed
Firing it here will result in the cartridge detonating
Now, the cartridge that was used here was patented as well by Marston and it was a cardboard or paper
Tube cartridge body with, actually a leather like a fairly heavy leather base to it and the idea
was that, I believe, that the tube was supposed to blow downrange with the bullet when you fired and then that leather
baseplate, base pad, was supposed to stay there in the breech and when you loaded the next round
It would push that leather pad in front of it
Which would clean the bore as it traveled down the barrel in front of the bullet, the next bullet.
Now, whether that actually worked is kind of questionable
that's a concept that a number of people came up with at various times and
I haven't seen anything really conclusive on it.
While they made that sort of thing may have helped
It certainly didn't remove the need for cleaning and that's normally what guys were claiming with this sort of thing
Like oh you don't have to clean it because it's a self-cleaning cartridge and that never really worked out
So the advantage here of course, while this is still black powder, you still have to carry around percussion caps
The cartridge means that your bullet and your powder are contained together
so the powder is pre-measured you don't have to worry about it and trying to
Use a funnel of some sort or something else to make sure it all goes down the barrel
You don't need a ramrod. You don't have to push the bullet in from the front. You can simply open the breech
Thumb in a cartridge, close the breech, cock the hammer and fire
The proper sights on this pistol are a little rear notch here and
a front blade there and that's
Not a great sight system, but that's exactly what I would expect in the 1850s for a commercial sort of pistol
What's a bit unusual is that this Tang sight has been added. It's
Threaded into the rear of the receiver there
So you can adjust at elevation just by screwing it in or out and it has an absolutely tiny
little hole at so, I mean
This is, I don't think I'll even be able to get a camera shot through to show you the site picture
Yeah, my camera can't even focus on that because it's so small
What's interesting to me is that's, that sight becomes usable only if the gun is about 10 inches away from your eye
Which makes me wonder if someone hadn't perhaps made some sort of clip-on, drop-in sort of
like probably wireframe shoulder stock to use with these because
Unless you're using a really weird shooting position and kind of crimping this thing, you know
Bending your elbow severely and holding this really close to your face
I don't see any way for this site to actually have been useful
But if you put a little compact wire stock on it
Then this makes a lot of sense, so I don't I haven't found any pictures of these with stocks
There doesn't appear to be any modification to the butt of this gun to use a stock
But who knows that that's an interesting question that this leaves out there
For what it's worth Marston would produce a wide variety of other pistols throughout his career
Including a bunch of kind of weird sorts of designs, he had some double barrel swivel pistols
He made a three barrel derringer that's kind of notable, he did get a contract for signal pistols during the US Civil War
He made a lot of pepper boxes, he made some standard sort of typical pattern percussion revolvers
Really quite a range of different things beyond this
Interesting breech-loading pistol. And by the way, I should also point out
He did make a version of this that was straight muzzleloading percussion
So before it was a breech loader, it was just a single-shot
Muzzleloading pistol
In total just about a thousand of these were manufactured
Some iron frame, some brass frame apparently and they were made in three different calibers
you could get them in 31 36 or
44 caliber with a variety of barrel lengths from about 4 inches to about 8 inches, so
100 to 200 millimeters and
you know, they're just a neat interesting pistol, all the early breech loaders are I think very interesting
So, if you would like to see a little bit more about this, if you'd like to see, well the Rock Island company's
Detailed pictures, their description, their value estimate you can get to all of that on their catalog page
and get there by way of the link in the description text below to
Forgotten weapons. Thanks for watching