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| - The Lancaster Pistol was a multi-barrelled (either 2 or 4 barrels) handgun produced in England in the mid-late 19th century,[1] chambered in a variety of centrefire pistol calibres—chiefly .380", .450 Adams, .455 Webley, and .577 calibre.[2] Sometimes classified as a Howdah pistol, the Lancaster pistol enjoyed popularity with British officers in India and Africa during the British Raj owing to its faster rate of fire and increased reliability over contemporary revolvers.
- The Lancaster worked on the basis of simplicity, over the more complicated mechanisms of the revolvers of the time. The lack of complicated firing mechanism, protected by a relatively bulky (but by no means unncessarily) frame casing, meant that the Lancaster could cope with almost any condition without the risk of jamming or suffer particularly from wear and tear.
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| abstract
| - The Lancaster Pistol was a multi-barrelled (either 2 or 4 barrels) handgun produced in England in the mid-late 19th century,[1] chambered in a variety of centrefire pistol calibres—chiefly .380", .450 Adams, .455 Webley, and .577 calibre.[2] It was a modernised version of the pepper-box pistol popular in the early-mid 19th century.[3] Unlike these earlier guns, which had percussion cap ignition the Lancaster was chambered for the more modern brass cartridges. It had a faster rate of fire than the standard-issue Adams revolver and was often fitted with a Tranter-type trigger to overcome the heavy pull of the revolving striker.[3] Sometimes classified as a Howdah pistol, the Lancaster pistol enjoyed popularity with British officers in India and Africa during the British Raj owing to its faster rate of fire and increased reliability over contemporary revolvers. Its ammunition had greater stopping-power than the contemporary Beaumont-Adams and Colt Navy revolvers, making it ideal for colonial warfare. When facing charging tribesmen like the Zulus or Dervishes more modern ammunition tended to go straight through the enemy who would keep going. What was needed was a heavy lead bullet that would lodge in their body and bring them down.[3] It was eventually displaced by the various Webley revolvers in the late 19th century, as revolvers became more reliable and faster to reload, thus removing many of the advantages of the multi-barrel design. A few were still in use as late as World War I, and they were well known to be solidly built and easy to maintain.
- The Lancaster worked on the basis of simplicity, over the more complicated mechanisms of the revolvers of the time. The lack of complicated firing mechanism, protected by a relatively bulky (but by no means unncessarily) frame casing, meant that the Lancaster could cope with almost any condition without the risk of jamming or suffer particularly from wear and tear. The Lancaster was manufactured with either two or four barrels. Interestingly the Lancaster was not given a conventional form of rifling. Instead the bore of the barrel was made with a slight ovaloid (rather than conventional round) shape. This shape imparted a slight twist to the bullet, which was a simpler solution to the issue of rifling without the problem of fouling when the pistol was shot (a result of the blackpowder used at the time which had a habit of blocking the grooves of the rifling, effectively making the rifling redundent and, after prolonged use, cause the gun to jam). The Lancaster featured a break-barrel design, supported by a hinge underneath the barrels at the point at which they joined the frame. This allowed the Lancaster to be reloaded much like a revolver and, because of the lack of a cylinder rotating behind the barrel, a virtually air tight seal could be formed at the end of the barrel, making the Lancaster safer to use (in British Officers eyes) then the revolvers of the time (which would produce gas from the sides of the cylinder, potentially burning the user). The barrels were then locked into position via a latch on the top of the frame. The Lancaster features an unusual firing mechanism, featuring a grooved cylinder (located inside the frame) upon which the firing pin/striker would follow to strike the cartridge loaded into each barrel. This mechanism was held within the frame of the Lancaster and was accessable through the removal of the grips. The grooved cylinder would later appear on the Webley-Fosbery Automatic Revolver, a novel attempt at an automatic revolver.
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