A little-known competitor to the well-known "Peacemaker"
Here it is - almost a complete analogue of the Colt M1873 revolver of the year - the Forehand and Wadsworth revolver. Just as powerful, reliable, simple ... but somehow "not seen" by the US military. Photo forgottenweapons.com
“... the mustanger took out of the saddle bag
the most perfect weapon,
that has ever risen
against the inhabitants of the prairie -
for attack or defense,
against Indians, bison or bears.
It was a six shot revolver
Colonel Colt's systems."
Mine Reed "The Headless Horseman"
the most perfect weapon,
that has ever risen
against the inhabitants of the prairie -
for attack or defense,
against Indians, bison or bears.
It was a six shot revolver
Colonel Colt's systems."
Mine Reed "The Headless Horseman"
Weapon stories. Everyone knows that there was such a revolver as the "Peacemaker" (Peacemaker), an army Colt single-action model 1873 chambered in .45 caliber. It was not easy for Colt's widow's company to recognize her next revolver as a weapon for the American army. Its competitors, such as Remington and Smith & Wesson, were also strong. But the military chose the Colt, which was simple, reliable, and designed to be successfully used in the hands of the most stupid and mediocre soldier. But there was another competitor on the way to success with Colt, about which little is known, but which did not get any worse from this. And story it is so intricate that it is simply impossible not to tell.
"Colt-Army" M1873 single action. Produced around 1875. Overall length - 280 mm, barrel length - 138 mm. Weight - 1,03 kg. Royal Arsenal, Leeds
And it so happened that in 1831 a certain Ethan Allen began to manufacture cutlery in the city of Milford, Massachusetts. In addition, Allen made knives and tools needed by shoemakers. Allen then moved his small business to North Grafton, in the same state, where in 1836 he added a .31 caliber single-action long rifled pistol to the cobbler's tool line.
The pistol was a success, and Allen went on to develop a double-action pocket pistol, and eventually produced several models of pepperbox revolvers, which he produced over the next 20 years.
In 1837, he brought his son-in-law Charles Thurber into the business and formed the Allen & Thurber Company. In 1842, the company moved to Norwich, Connecticut, and in 1847 relocated to Worcester, Massachusetts, where it remained until it went out of business in 1871. In 1854, Allen's brother-in-law Thomas Wheelock entered the business, and the firm was renamed Allen, Thurber and Co. When Charles Thurber retired in 1856, the company changed its name again to Allen & Willock.
In 1865, Allen's business partner Willock died, and the company was renamed for the next (by the way, for the last) time during the life of Allen himself in "I. Allen & Co. The new company included members of the extended Allen family, most notably his sons-in-law Sullivan Forehand and Henry Wadsworth. Forehand entered the company in 1860 by marrying one of Allen's daughters, and worked in the management of the firm. Wadsworth married another of his daughters and went to work for his father-in-law after being discharged from the US Army at the end of the Civil War.
In 1871, Ethan Allen died, and the 34-year-old company changed its name again and became known as Forehand and Wadsworth. Like their father-in-law before them, Forehand and Wadsworth continued to manufacture pistols and revolvers for sale on the civilian market. But then a momentous event occurred, which all American gunsmiths and revolver manufacturers were looking forward to: in 1869, Rollin White's patent for a through drum expired. And this meant that the company needed to develop new types of weapons in order to remain a competitive enterprise.
Ethan Allen's cartridge case, in which the rim with a charge of mercury fulminate occupied only 1/8 of the circumference of the cartridge. The economy was considered successful, but it was very, very inconvenient to load such cartridges, especially in the dark!
In the early 60s, their father-in-law came up with an innovative cartridge with a metal sleeve and a protruding primer on the side and created cartridge revolvers of the 1860 model for it, but a successful lawsuit filed by White and Smith and Wesson forced him to stop their production. Now patent law no longer stood in the way of Forehand and Wadsworth, so that they had a direct path to the production of revolvers for metal cartridges.
One of their first steps was to resurrect the old Allen and Willock .22 rimfire sidehammer. They also introduced a center-action pocket revolver chambered in .32, .38, and .41 caliber for those who wanted a more powerful but small self-defense revolver.
In their attempt to break into the world of oversized revolvers dominated by the Colt, Smith & Wesson, and to a lesser extent Remington, Forehand and Wadsworth decided to introduce a revolver called the Old Army Model, which they had developed in the early 1870s. . It was an oversized single action revolver in .44 caliber.
Although most sources note that it was chambered in the Russian style and chambered in .44 Smith & Wesson, it is likely that the earliest models could have been chambered for the slightly shorter (and less powerful) US .44 Smith & Wesson cartridge. The Russian .44 cartridge case was slightly longer than the American cartridge case, so these models differed in barrel length. The revolver was based on an earlier patent by Allen in 1861 and two new patents by Forehand and Wadsworth in 1871 and 1873. That is, here its creators have secured themselves one hundred percent!
Forehand and Wadsworth 1871 patent. The main thing, as you can see, what was emphasized here is fixing the axis of the drum and the extractor rod for unloading the revolver
Unlike the Colt and Remington revolvers, the Forehand and Wadsworth revolver did not have an ejector rod mounted along the barrel on the left. Instead, it had a thin ejector rod that was stored in the center of the hollow axis of the drum, and it could be pulled out and turned to the left, used to remove spent cartridges from the drum chambers.
A similar system first appeared in America around 1860-1861, when the French "Perrin" revolvers got there. The same system was used by Webley in the Bulldog revolver. Forehand and Wadsworth shamelessly copied it, but at the same time introduced a spring-loaded latch to fix both the ejector rod itself and the drum axis. Various foreign designs used friction or spring pressure to secure the rod, but did not require the latch to actuate.
Revolver "Forehand and Wadsworth" with a nickel-plated case. Photo littlegun.be
The "Army" Forehand and Wadsworth revolver had a six-shot drum and was loaded through the "Abadie door" on the right side of the frame. In total, the firm produced about 1 "Old Models", and although at least one example was submitted to the US military for evaluation, no military contracts were awarded to the firm. Why this revolver did not suit the military is unknown. In principle, it was no worse than the M000 Colt Single Action revolver, and it differed only in a more “chamber” discharge system. Moreover, in the late 1873s, the company introduced a modernized New Model Army, which had some sales success, but was excluded from its catalog by the mid-1870s.
The revolver was very easy to disassemble, it was enough to press a key on the front of the frame. Photo littlegun.be
Instead, the firm concentrated on the production of its only truly successful line of British Bulldog revolvers, of which it produced around 114 units, far more than all the other revolvers produced by the firm combined.
In 1890, Henry Wadsworth retired and the company was renamed the Forehand Arms Company, in which capacity it remained until Forehand's death in 1898. The Allen family continued to run the company under that name until 1902, with limited success, after which all of its assets were sold to one of the company's main competitors, Hopkins and Allen.
Here is such an inscription on its trunk guaranteed "brand quality":
+FORHAND & WADSWORTH, WORCHESTER, MASS. US PAT.D OCTOBER 22'61–JUNE 27'71–OCTOBER 28'73+
Photo forgottenweapons.com
+FORHAND & WADSWORTH, WORCHESTER, MASS. US PAT.D OCTOBER 22'61–JUNE 27'71–OCTOBER 28'73+
Photo forgottenweapons.com
For convenience, the head of the drum axis was made with a semicircular cutout for the barrel. Photo littlegun.be
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