Lee-Metford Rifle

Origins

By the 1880s the single-shot Martini-Henry Rifle was being overtaken by the magazine rifles of the continental armies. A British committee tested the designs on offer and chose the bolt action and detachable box magazine of James Paris Lee, a Scottish-born American, and the rifling of William Ellis Metford, an English engineer whose shallow, rounded seven-groove bore was meant to resist black-powder fouling. The pattern was sealed in December 1888 as the Magazine Rifle Mark I, in a new .303-inch caliber, and the army called it the Lee-Metford. Its first cartridge was loaded with compressed black powder; cordite, the British smokeless propellant, replaced it in 1891. The Mark II of 1892 had a ten-round magazine in place of the first pattern's eight, a lighter barrel and a simpler bolt, and a cavalry carbine followed in 1894. Cordite burned hot enough to wear out Metford's shallow rifling in a few thousand rounds, and in 1895 the deeper Enfield rifling was adopted; the rifle so changed became the Lee-Enfield Rifle.

Design & Construction

The Lee action locks at the rear of the bolt, which gives a short lift and a smooth, fast stroke, and the striker is cocked by the closing of the bolt. The magazine was a detachable steel box under the action, held to the rifle by a short chain so that it would not be lost; it was meant to be filled with loose rounds through the open action, and British doctrine of the 1890s treated it as a reserve, to be shut off by a cut-off plate and used only in an emergency while the soldier fired single rounds. There was no provision for chargers. The rifle was a little over four feet long, weighed about nine and a half pounds, and had a leaf rear sight graduated to 1,800 yards and a long-range dial sight on the side of the stock for volley fire out to 2,800 yards. The Mark I took the Pattern 1888 sword bayonet with a ten-inch blade.

Combat Use

The Lee-Metford first saw action on the North-West Frontier of India and in the Chitral relief of 1895. At Omdurman in 1898 the British brigades fired it by volleys, with the Maxims and artillery, into the Mahdist charges at ranges beyond a thousand yards. In the second of the Boer Wars most of the regulars who went out in 1899 had either the Lee-Metford or the near-identical Lee-Enfield, and the two served side by side through the sieges, Black Week and the advance on Pretoria. Against the Boer Mauser Model 1895 the British rifle held twice the cartridges but was slower to refill, and the volley fire the soldiers had been drilled in was useless against men lying hidden in trenches a mile away. Boers captured many and used them when their own ammunition ran short. After the war the Lee-Metford went to the volunteers, the militia and the colonies, and worn examples were still being used for training in 1914.

Legacy

The Lee-Metford mattered less for what it did than for what it began. Its action, magazine and cartridge, carried on with Enfield rifling, became the Lee-Enfield, which the British Empire kept for sixty years, and the lessons of South Africa, charger loading, a shorter rifle and rapid aimed fire, were built into the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield of 1903. Lee-Metfords were converted to charger loading and to .22 training rifles after 1900, so unaltered Mark I and Mark II rifles with their Metford bores are scarce and are prized by collectors of British service arms; the Omdurman and Boer War associations add to their appeal.