Pattern 1853 Enfield

Origins

In the early 1850s the British Army was replacing its smoothbore muskets — the descendants of the Brown Bess Musket — with rifles firing the hollow-based, expanding bullet developed by the French officer Claude-Étienne Minié. The first British Minié rifle, the Pattern 1851, was heavy and large-bored, and trials at Enfield in 1852-53 produced a lighter, smaller-bored replacement. Adopted as the Pattern 1853 rifle-musket, it combined the length and bayonet of a musket with the accuracy of a rifle, and was made at the new Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield Lock, by contractors in Birmingham, and by the London Armoury Company, using increasingly machine-made, interchangeable parts.

Design & Construction

The P53 is a muzzle-loading percussion arm with a 39-inch barrel of .577 caliber and three-groove rifling, held in a walnut stock by three barrel bands. It fired a paper cartridge containing powder and a conical lead bullet with a hollow base, plugged at first with boxwood and later with clay; the powder gas expanded the base into the rifling. A ladder rear sight was graduated to 900 yards and later to 1,000, far beyond the range at which most soldiers could hit a target. Loaded, capped and fitted with its socket bayonet, it weighed about nine and a half pounds. The rifling was progressive in depth in some contract barrels, and the finish was browned or blued with case-hardened lock parts. Its bore was close enough to the American .58 caliber that the Springfield Model 1861 and the Enfield could, in practice, share ammunition such as the Minié Ball.

Combat Use

The Enfield first saw combat with British troops in the Crimean War of 1854-56. In India, rumors that its new cartridges, which a soldier tore open with his teeth, were greased with beef tallow and pork lard — offensive to Hindu and Muslim sepoys alike — became a spark of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Its greatest use came in the American Civil War: the Confederacy, with few arsenals, bought several hundred thousand through agents in Britain and ran them through the blockade, and the Union bought as many in the early years before Springfield production caught up. Over 900,000 are thought to have reached America, making the Enfield the war's second most common infantry weapon.

Legacy

From 1866 Britain converted its Enfields into breech-loaders using Jacob Snider's hinged breech, producing the Snider-Enfield, which served until the Martini-Henry replaced it. In America, Confederate-imported Enfields with blockade-runner or Southern markings are among the most collected Civil War arms. The P53 is a favorite of Civil War reenactors and of the North-South Skirmish Association, and faithful reproductions, including build-it-yourself kits, are made in Italy and India. Reproductions are not firearms under U.S. federal law, though several states regulate them.