The Peabody action was an early form of breechloading firearm action, where the heavy breechblock tilted downwards across a bolt mounted in the rear of the breechblock, operated by a lever under the rifle. The Peabody action most often used an external hammer to fire the cartridge.
The Peabody action was developed by Henry Oliver Peabody (13 May 1826 Boxford, Massachusetts – 28 June 1903 Hull, Massachusetts) [1] from Boston, Massachusetts, and was first patented on July 22, 1862. While the Peabody was not perfected in time for the American Civil War, a few were entered in the trials of 1864 with favorable reports.
Peabody carbines and rifles were made by the Providence Tool Company, Providence, Rhode Island; c. 1866–1871. The total production was 112,000 for all models. Calibers were: .45 Peabody rimfire; .45-70 Government; .50 rimfire; 50-70; 11 mm Spanish; 10.4 mm rimfire Swiss. Barrel length carbine 20", rifle 33". Finish: Receiver casehardened, barrel blued, iron mountings, walnut stock.
The majority of Peabody's production was for foreign contracts. They were adopted by the militaries of Canada (3,000 pieces), Spain, Mexico, France (33,000), Romania, and Switzerland (15,000) during the later 1860s. In the United States, Massachusetts purchased 2,941 rifles, Connecticut in circa 1871–72 purchased 2,000 Spanish model rifles and South Carolina in circa 1877 purchased 350 carbines.[ citation needed ]
The Peabody rifle was one of a half dozen different rifles that took part in the 1866 Norwegian-Swedish rifle trials, where it lost out to the Remington rolling block (which became the Remington M1867 in Norwegian and Swedish service) because of its greater complexity, with more parts than the Remington design.
The Swiss gunsmith Friedrich von Martini created an action that somewhat resembled Peabody's, but incorporated a hammerless internal striker and used a toggle moved by the striker to lock the action during firing. Mated to a barrel with rifling designed by Alexander Henry, the Martini–Henry M1871 would become the British Army's standard rifle for twenty years.
The Liberian 600 Peabody rifles were bought in 1910, during the war with the Grebo tribe, from the German government via the Woermann Co. (de). They had been captured from the French army during the Franco-Prussian War and were sold along with tonnes of gunpowder, 200,000 rounds of ammunition, and 400 Mauser M1888 carbines. The cost was $20,000. [2] In 1919, Liberians received Peabody rifles through US arms sales. [3]
Available records show that the third patent (No. 72,076, issued on Dec. 10, 1867) obtained by Mr. Peabody was on an action system specifically designed and constructed for use in converting military muzzleloading muskets into breech-loading arms. By the end of the American Civil War the self-contained metallic cartridge was well-established; conversions of muzzle-loading rifles had already commenced, and it seemed to be a profitable venture to get into. Evidently with this in mind, Peabody developed such an action based on his original idea of the rear-pivoted breechblock, for use with Springfield and Enfield muzzle-loading muskets. [4]
The Peabody alteration is simply a shallow version of his original action, but made without the finger lever, and with the breechblock made with a tailpiece. The steps required to convert the muzzle-loading musket to a breechloader with this action consists of removing the original barrel from the stock, cutting off a section of the breech end equaling the length of the conversion action, threading the barrel and fitting it to the action, routing out the stock as required to accept the action, refitting the barrel and action in the stock and installing a new hammer on the lock. There were a great many different “conversion” actions developed between 1860 and 1870 and the Peabody action was about as good as any of them. [4]
Although the U.S. Government never purchased any of them, this Peabody conversion was adopted by the Principality of Serbia in 1870, and some 50,000 muzzle loading rifles and Green percussion rifles were converted in 1870-1878. Serbian Peabody Model 1870 rifle was the main Serbian military weapon used in Serbian–Ottoman Wars (1876–1878). [4] [5] [6] [7]
Henry Oliver Peabody remained childless. He died at his summer house in Hull in 1903 at the age of 77. His will directed the executor of his estate to establish a trust to fund creation of the Henry O. Peabody School for Girls, using his King Gay Farm and $350,000 in additional assets. [1] The trustees were directed to retain and grow the assets of the trust until sufficient for construction and perpetual operation of the school. By 1938, the trust was valued at $750,000. [1] This is equivalent to $16,234,043in 2023. [8] In 1940, Norwood, Massachusetts voters approved building the Henry O. Peabody School for Girls, adjacent to the north end of the Norwood High School. The school closed in 1989, with the trustees establishing the Henry O. Peabody School for Girls Scholarship Program to provide annual renewable scholarships to women who reside in Norfolk County, Massachusetts to continue part- or full-time seeking bachelor, associate or vocational education. [9]
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.
In firearms terminology, an action is the functional mechanism of a breech-loading firearm that handles the ammunition cartridges, or the method by which that mechanism works. Actions are technically not present on muzzleloaders, as all those are single-shot firearms with a closed off breech with the powder and projectile manually loaded from the muzzle. Instead, the muzzleloader ignition mechanism is referred to as the lock.
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.
The Remington M1867 is a rolling-block rifle that was produced in the second-half of the 19th century. It was the first rifle using metallic cartridges to be adopted by the Norwegian and Swedish armies. Nominally, it had a caliber of 4 decimal lines, but the actual caliber was 3.88 Norwegian decimal lines or 4.1 Swedish decimal lines (12.17 mm), and it fired a rimfire round with a 12.615 mm lead bullet. The 12.17 mm caliber was chosen because the Swedish army had approximately 30,000 new muzzle-loading M1860 and breech-loading M1864 rifles in 12.17 mm caliber in stock, rifles that were suitable for conversion to M1867 rolling-block rifles. With the exception of the first 10,000 rifles and 20,000 actions, which were made by Remington in the US, all Remington M1867 rifles and carbines were made under license in Norway and Sweden, by Kongsberg Vaapenfabrik in Norway, and by Husqvarna Vapenfabriks Aktiebolag and Carl Gustafs stads Gevärsfaktori in Sweden with the two Swedish manufacturers producing about 80% of the weapons.
A breechblock is the part of the firearm action that closes the breech of a breech loading weapon before or at the moment of firing. It seals the breech and contains the pressure generated by the ignited propellant. Retracting the breechblock allows the chamber to be loaded with a cartridge.
The Spencer repeating rifles and carbines were 19th-century American lever-action firearms that were invented by Christopher Spencer. The Spencer was the world's first military metallic-cartridge repeating rifle, and over 200,000 examples were manufactured in the United States by the Spencer Repeating Rifle Co. and Burnside Rifle Co. between 1860 and 1869. The Spencer repeating rifle was adopted by the Union Army, especially by the cavalry, during the American Civil War but did not replace the standard issue muzzle-loading rifled muskets in use at the time. Among the early users was George Armstrong Custer. The Spencer carbine was a shorter and lighter version designed for the cavalry.
The Kammerlader, or "chamber loader", was the first Norwegian breech-loading rifle, and among the first breech loaders adopted for use by an armed force anywhere in the world. A single-shot black-powder rifle, the kammerlader was operated with a crank mounted on the side of the receiver. This made it much quicker and easier to load than the weapons previously used. Kammerladers quickly gained a reputation for being fast and accurate rifles, and would have been a deadly weapon against massed ranks of infantry.
The Springfield Model 1873 was the first standard-issue breech-loading rifle adopted by the United States Army. The rifle, in both full-length and carbine versions, was widely used in subsequent battles against Native Americans.
The British .577 Snider–Enfield was a breech-loading rifle. The American inventor, Jacob Snider created this firearm action, and the Snider–Enfield was one of the most widely used of the Snider varieties. The British Army adopted it in 1866 as a conversion system for its ubiquitous Pattern 1853 Enfield muzzle-loading rifles, and used it until 1880 when the Martini–Henry rifle began to supersede it. The British Indian Army used the Snider–Enfield until the end of the nineteenth century.
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.
The Springfield Model 1865 was an early breech-loading rifle manufactured by U.S. Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts. It was a modification of the Springfield Model 1861. It was later replaced with the Springfield Model 1866.
The Springfield Model 1870 was one of the rifles which used the trapdoor breechblock design developed by Erskine S. Allin. The Model 1870 was a minor improvement to the Springfield Model 1868, and retained most of the Model 1868 rifle features.
The .44 Henry, also known as the .44 Henry Flat, the .44 Rimfire, the .44 Long Rimfire, and the 11x23mmRF in Europe, is a rimfire rifle and handgun cartridge featuring a .875 in (22.2 mm)-long brass or copper case. The round has a total overall length of 1.345 in (34.2 mm), with a 200 or 216 gr .446 in (11.3 mm)-diameter cast solid-lead heeled bullet. The original propellant load is 26 to 28 gr of black powder. The round has a muzzle velocity of approximately 1,125 ft/s (343 m/s), giving a muzzle energy of 568 foot-pounds.
The Colt Lightning Carbine or Colt Lightning Rifle was a slide-action (pump-action) rifle manufactured by Colt from 1884 until 1904 and was originally chambered in .44-40 caliber. Colt eventually made the Lightning Rifle in three different frame sizes, to accommodate a wide range of cartridges, from .22 Short caliber and .38-40 to .50-95 Express. Its profile resembles the pump-action rimfire rifles made by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and Remington Arms. The Lightning saw use as a sporting arm in America and was adopted for use by the San Francisco Police Department, but was never as popular or as reliable as the various lever-action rifles of its day. It is however reported to have been used by American forces in the Spanish-American War, most likely as privately purchased weapons.
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.
The Colt-Burgess rifle, also known as the 1883 Burgess rifle or simply the Burgess rifle, is a lever-action repeating rifle produced by Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company between 1883 and 1885. The Burgess rifle was Colt's only entrance into the lever-action rifle market, produced to compete with Winchester Repeating Arms Company's line of popular rifles. The 1883 Burgess rifle was designed and patented by Andrew Burgess, an American firearms designer and photographer, who sold the design to Colt.
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.
In firearms, a trapdoor is a form of breech-loading mechanism for rifles in which a hinged breechblock rotates up and forward, resembling the movement of a trapdoor. The Springfield models 1865 and 1873 were best known for first employing this type of action.
Green percussion rifle was a breech-loading percussion rifle used in the army of the Principality of Serbia in the second half of the 19th century.
The Serbian Peabody rifle is a single-shot breech-loading rifle made and used in the Principality of Serbia in the second half of the 19th century. It was the first Serbian military rifle to use metallic cartridges.