Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
taking a look at what was initially mentioned to me
as a Kriegsmarine pistol. And I said,
"Kriegsmarine, eh? I don't see a Luger in this case."
Well, this isn't Kriegsmarine, this is actually Königliche Marine
(I think I've pronounced that close to correct).
This is a Colt 1851 Navy that was issued
to the Prussian Royal Navy in 1858,
and it's got a really cool backstory to it.
So basically these guns were acquired by Prussia in 1855,
and this is during the Crimean War [which] started in 1854.
Prussia is a neutral power in the Crimean War, they're not taking sides.
And they've got their borders open to Russian import and export of goods.
Russia is highly dependent on import/export and trade for its economy
as well as its small arms at this point.
But [the Prussians] have specifically prohibited the import/export of weapons,
because they don't want to interfere in the war.
So the British, by the way, are blockading the Baltic.
Russia ... like its ... international trade is pretty tightly constricted to land routes through Prussia.
Now a year earlier, sometime around 1853, Sam Colt had negotiated
the sale of a whole bunch of revolvers to the Russian military, ... kind of his thing.
By 1855 when ... the shipment actually happens, well they can't technically legally do it,
because they have to go through Prussia which has prohibited this. But they decide to do it anyway.
Sam Colt, by the way, appears to have foisted the blame for this on his brother,
instead of admitting to doing it himself. I don't know what the actual deal there is.
But they try to do it. What they do is they take 3,000 Colt 1851 Navies,
along with all of their accoutrements, things like bullet moulds, cappers, powder flasks and the like,
and they hide them in bales of cotton, 24 guns per bale, that are being shipped
from New York to Russia by way of Antwerp.
The problem is when they get to Antwerp, Prussian customs officials find them and confiscate them.
And the Prussians sit on these for a couple of years,
it's 1858 before they decide what they're going to do with them.
And what they decide is they're going to keep 1,000 to issue to their own navy,
and then they're going to sell the rest at auction.
So 2,000 of them go up for auction and get sold, those are floating around Europe.
But 1,000 of them get kept by the Prussians,
they are marked, as are almost all of their accessories, for the Prussian Royal Navy.
The Prussians make their own holsters for them, and it's a really cool holster design.
And they stick around, this is the first repeating ... pistol in Prussian naval service.
So let's take a closer look at it.
We'll start with the gun itself here, it is in
really I think quite remarkably good condition for its age and its provenance.
Normally you wouldn't expect naval-issued guns to survive nearly this well, but there it is.
The barrel markings there say "Address Sam Colt, New York City".
This is relevant because there is a similar batch of Austrian
Colt revolvers that are sometimes mistaken for these.
The Austrian guns were purchased through England, and they have the British Colt address.
Where these interdicted Russian contract guns are marked from New York.
We've got matching serial numbers here on the bottom,
frame, barrel and trigger guard, as well as the bottom of the butt there.
And on the cylinder, so this one is 33,000 and change.
Pistols from this contract fall into a range between about 31,600 and about 39,500.
Obviously they're not all of the guns in that range, but Colt didn't often try to
send all consecutive serial numbered guns in its contract batches.
The most important marking, of course though, is this one on the back strap.
That is "KM", again for Königliche Marine, and this is number 750 out of 1,000.
And they were numbered consecutively when the Prussians decided to keep them.
In addition to that, we have a two chamber bullet mould here.
So you've got one chamber for round ball, and one chamber for bullet, that's a standard Colt thing.
And this is a Colt production piece, but it is not marked.
And would not have been with the German ... batch.
We have powder flasks, so an angled spout powder flask.
These were supplied to the Russians, but they were also marked by the Prussians.
So the powder flask here does not match the revolver,
but they are both from the same Prussian group.
One nice, handy capping tool that actually still has some caps in it.
This is also KM marked right there on the back, but not numbered.
And that's appropriate to this batch, they didn't number the capping tools.
And then to my mind the coolest piece by far is the holster.
So these holsters were made in Prussia specifically for the Prussian Navy
for these guns once they had been issued out to the Navy.
What we have here is a holster for the pistol, which drops in here,
and then this comes down over the hammer.
Got a ... pair of belt loops for it.
There is a pocket on the front for the capping tool.
And then there's actually a pocket here on the side for a spare cylinder.
Now a lot of people will ask, "Well, if you're carrying a cap and ball revolver, why don't you
pre-load a second cylinder so you can reload it more quickly?"
And usually the answer to that is, "Well, it doesn't really work that way."
But if you were in the Prussian Navy it did actually work that way,
because that is exactly what this holster is designed to have. So that's really cool.
You can see the reinforcing here at the mouth of the holster.
There's got to be some metal in there, because that is quite stiff.
I'm not going to close the holster down all the way, because the leather is 160 years old.
But the gun would drop in like that, and the flap sits over.
So there you go, there's the whole set of all the accoutrements with the gun.
If you are looking to put together a Prussian Navy kit from the 1850s, that is what you need.
Of course only 1,000 of these were initially issued out to the Königliche Marine.
(Again, hopefully I got that close to right.)
Only something like three dozen of them are known to still exist today,
this is the sort of thing that just doesn't survive in large numbers.
So I think it's really cool to have got a chance to look at myself,
and also show to you guys a complete set of the gun and its accoutrements.
Hopefully you enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.