The Calisher and Terry Carbine was an early bolt-action breech-loading carbine. It used a waterproof paper cartridge ignited with a percussion cap.
Approved by the British War Office for use by cavalry, it was first issued to the 18th Hussars, but is best known for its use by the Colonial governments in Australia and New Zealand - particularly by the NZ Colonial Defence Force (NZ Forest Rangers) from July 1863 - and its occasional use in the American Civil War.
William Terry patented the design on April 7, 1856 [1] (after patenting a different design a year earlier [2] ). The design used a bolt and a unique cartridge which held the bullet encapsulated within a nitrated paper wrapper holding the appropriate powder charge, with a greased felt wad at the base to help seal the breech. The cartridges were chambered in .54-calibre (13-mm) Minie.
The following year Terry formed a partnership with Bertram Calisher, and they were successful in promoting both private sales and having it adopted by the British War Department. In addition to being issued to the 18th Hussars, the system in rifle and carbine form enjoyed a brisk civilian sale and was popular with colonial military and constabulary units, most notably those of New Zealand. [3]
A number were used during the American Civil War, particularly by the Confederates, but they were never a standard issue for any unit.
Metal cartridges became increasingly popular from the 1860s onward, and many competing arms such as the Sharps were converted to these, but the basic design of the Terry meant that this was not feasible, and the company closed down in 1870. [4]
In firearm designs, the term single-shot refers to guns that can hold only a single round of ammunition inside and thus must be reloaded manually after every shot. Compared to multi-shot repeating firearms ("repeaters"), single-shot designs have no moving parts other than the trigger, hammer/firing pin or frizzen, and therefore do not need a sizable receiver behind the barrel to accommodate a moving action, making them far less complex and more robust than revolvers or magazine/belt-fed firearms, but also with much slower rates of fire.
Bolt-action is a type of manual firearm action that is operated by directly manipulating the bolt via a bolt handle, most commonly placed on the right-hand side of the firearm. The majority of bolt-action firearms are rifles, but there are also some variants of shotguns and handguns that are bolt-action.
A breechloader is a firearm in which the user loads the ammunition from the breech end of the barrel, as opposed to a muzzleloader, in which the user loads the ammunition from the (muzzle) end of the barrel.
A repeating rifle is a single-barreled rifle capable of repeated discharges between each ammunition reload. This is typically achieved by having multiple cartridges stored in a magazine and then fed individually into the chamber by a reciprocating bolt, via either a manual or automatic action mechanism, while the act of chambering the round typically also recocks the hammer/striker for the following shot. In common usage, the term "repeating rifle" most often refers specifically to manual repeating rifles, as opposed to self-loading rifles, which use the recoil, gas, or blowback of the previous shot to cycle the action and load the next round, even though all self-loading firearms are technically a subcategory of repeating firearms.
Blowback is a system of operation for self-loading firearms that obtains energy from the motion of the cartridge case as it is pushed to the rear by expanding gas created by the ignition of the propellant charge.
Edward Maynard was an American dentist and firearms inventor, most famous for his breechloading rifle design.
Sharps rifles are a series of large-bore, single-shot, falling-block, breech-loading rifles, beginning with a design by Christian Sharps in 1848 and ceasing production in 1881. They were renowned for long-range accuracy. By 1874, the rifle was available in a variety of calibers, and it was one of the few designs to be successfully adapted to metallic cartridge use. The Sharps rifles became icons of the American Old West with their appearances in many Western-genre films and books. Perhaps as a result, several rifle companies offer reproductions of the Sharps rifle.
The origins of the modern British military rifle are within its predecessor the Brown Bess musket. While a musket was largely inaccurate over 100 yards (91 m), due to a lack of rifling and a generous tolerance to allow for muzzle-loading, it was cheap to produce and could be loaded quickly. The use of volley or mass firing by troops meant that the rate of fire took precedence over accuracy.
David Marshall Williams was an American firearms designer and convicted murderer who invented the floating chamber and the short-stroke gas piston. Both designs used the high-pressure gas generated in or near the breech of the firearm to operate the action of semi-automatic firearms like the M1 Carbine.
The Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle-musket was a .577 calibre Minié-type muzzle-loading rifled musket, used by the British Empire from 1853 to 1867; after which many were replaced in service by the cartridge-loaded Snider–Enfield rifle.
The Maynard carbine was a breech-loaded carbine used by cavalry in the American Civil War. The First Model was manufactured between 1858 and 1859. About 5,000 were made. In United States service it was distributed to the 9th Pennsylvania and 1st Wisconsin cavalry regiments, United States Marines aboard the USS Saratoga and the United States Revenue Cutter Service. About 6,770 Maynard carbines were in Confederate hands during the war; 5,000 in .35 caliber were purchased by Florida, 650 in .50 by Georgia, and 325 in .50 and 300 in .35 by Mississippi. Around 800 were purchased by militias in South Carolina and Louisiana. The Second Model or Model 1863 was manufactured between 1863 and 1865. Over 20,000 were made. This model lacked the tape primer and stock patch box, and was used by the 9th and 11th Indiana cavalry regiments and 11th Regiment Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, among others. The Maynard had a good reputation for long-range accuracy, and Confederate sharpshooters made extensive use of it, especially during the Siege of Charleston.
The Burnside carbine was a breech-loading carbine that saw widespread use during the American Civil War.
The Tarpley Carbine was a Confederate weapon produced and used during the American Civil War; however, it was not produced in great numbers. The Tarpley Carbine was a breechloader, and was comparable in this sense to the Sharps Rifle and Carbine more widely used by the Union.
The Starr carbine was a breechloading single-shot rifle used by the United States Army. Designed in 1858, the Starr was primarily used by cavalry soldiers in the American Civil War.
The term Joslyn Rifle refers to a series of rifles produced in the mid-19th century. The term is often used to refer specifically to the Joslyn Model 1861/1862, which was the first mass-produced breech-loading rifle produced at the Springfield Armory.
Recoil operation is an operating mechanism used to implement locked-breech autoloading firearms. Recoil operated firearms use the energy of recoil to cycle the action, as opposed to gas operation or blowback operation using the pressure of the propellant gas.
Frank Wesson rifles were a series of single-shot rifles manufactured between 1859 and 1888 in Worcester, Massachusetts. They were purchased by many state governments during the American Civil War, including Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio. They were one of the first rifles to use rimfire metallic cartridges.
The Palmer model 1865 carbine is a single-shot bolt-action rifle patented in 1863 by E. G. Lamson and Company of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. 1000 Palmer carbines were delivered to Union forces in the American Civil War one month after the war ended. All rifles were subsequently sold to civilians after the war. The rifle was the first bolt-action rifle to be accepted for use by the US Army Ordnance Department.
The Swinburn–Henry rifle was a breech-loading lever-actuated single-shot rifle that was used by British Commonwealth forces in the late 1870s as substitute for the Martini–Henry, which was at the time in short supply.
A repeating firearm or repeater is any firearm that is capable of being fired repeatedly before having to be manually reloaded with new ammunition into the firearm.